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+Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians
+
+Author: G. G. Findlay
+
+Editor: W. Robertson Nicoll
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2012 [EBook #39196]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [Transcriber’s Note:
+
+  This e-text includes Greek characters and punctuation that will only
+  display in UTF-8 (Unicode) text readers, e.g. ὁ λόγος. If any of these
+  characters do not display properly, make sure your text reader’s
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+  also need to change the default font. As a last resort, use the
+  ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) version of this text instead, in which the Greek
+  words have been transliterated.
+
+  _Italic_ words in the original have been enclosed in underscores in
+  this version.
+
+  A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+
+  The Table of Contents refers to original page numbers.
+
+  All advertising material has been placed at the end of the text.]
+
+
+
+
+         THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE
+
+           EDITED BY THE REV.
+    W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
+    _Editor of “The Expositor,” etc._
+
+      THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+
+
+                 THE
+       EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+             THIRD EDITION
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+    _Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
+
+
+
+
+    CONTENTS.
+
+
+    _INTRODUCTION._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    CHAPTER I.
+
+    THE WRITER AND READERS.
+                                                                  PAGE
+    Contrast of Galatians and Ephesians--Pauline qualities of
+    Ephesians: intellectual, historical, theological, spiritual,
+    ethical--The Idea of the Church--The Person of
+    Christ--Ephesians and Colossians--Style of
+    Ephesians--Circular Hypothesis--Epistle from
+    Laodicea--Designation of the Readers--Faithful Brethren          3
+
+
+    _PRAISE AND PRAYER._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+    CHAPTER II.
+
+    THE ETERNAL PURPOSE.
+
+    The Apostle’s Hymn of Praise--Blessed be God!--Blessing
+    spiritual, heavenly, Christian--In the Beginning the
+    Election of Grace--The World and its Founder--Redemption
+    embedded in Creation--God’s prescient
+    Choice--Our Holiness His Purpose--Divine Adoption--Who
+    are the Elect?                                                  21
+
+    CHAPTER III.
+
+    THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE.
+
+    Structure of the Paragraph--Grace an Experience--Christ the
+    Beloved--Forgiveness and its Price--The Value of
+    Forgiveness--Wisdom a Gift of Grace--The Gospel as an
+    intellectual Force--God’s Will the Goal of human
+    Thought--Sonship and Heritage--The Fulness of the Times--The
+    Christian Inventory of the Universe--Reconciliation and
+    Reconstitution--Gathering in and Gathering out                  34
+
+    CHAPTER IV.
+
+    THE FINAL REDEMPTION.
+
+    Mutual Inheritance--Jewish and Gentile Heirs--Uses of the
+    Seal--The Stamp of Sanctity--Promise fulfilled and to be
+    fulfilled--Hearing and Believing--Salvation by the
+    Truth--Salvation for the Gentiles--Faith and the Holy
+    Spirit--The two Redemptions--The encumbered Property--The
+    Earnest of our consummate Life                                  50
+
+    CHAPTER V.
+
+    FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART.
+
+    Thanksgiving for the Readers--The God of Christ, the Father
+    of Glory--Christian Enlightenment--Seeing with the
+    Heart--What is our Hope?--God’s Wealth in Men--The true
+    Standard of Value--The Power of Christ’s Resurrection           65
+
+
+    THE DOCTRINE.
+
+    CHAPTER i. 20--iii. 13.
+
+    CHAPTER VI.
+
+    WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST.
+
+    Prayer and Teaching--Historical Effect of Christ’s
+    Resurrection--The Stages of His Exaltation--Christianity
+    without Miracles--The efficient Cause of Christianity--The
+    perfect Resurrection--The First-begotten out of the
+    Dead--The Risen One, the Holy One--Resurrection and
+    Ascension--Ascension to Rule--Christ and the Angels--Christ
+    glorified God’s Gift to the Church--Christ the Fulness of
+    God                                                             81
+
+    CHAPTER VII.
+
+    FROM DEATH TO LIFE.
+
+    Raised with Christ--Sin is Death--Jesus Christ in a dead
+    World--Alive in Body, dead in Spirit--Religious
+    Difficulties--Antipathy to God--The Power of the Air--God’s
+    Anger against Sinners--The Soul’s Awaking--Consciousness of
+    God--Fellowship in Salvation                                    95
+
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    SAVED FOR AN END.
+
+    Beginning and End of God’s Plan--Mercy, Love, Kindness,
+    Grace and Gift--Not of Works--Boasting excluded--Evangelical
+    Assurance--In the heavenly Places--Grace a
+    Task-master--Creation and Redemption--The apostolic Church
+    and the coming Times                                           109
+
+    CHAPTER IX.
+
+    THE FAR AND NEAR.
+
+    Wherefore remember!--Sudden and gradual Conversion--The
+    Gentile World: Godless, hopeless, Christless--Away with the
+    Atheists!--The double Pessimism--The Uncircumcision--Nigh in
+    the Blood of Christ--Reunion in Guilt and in Pardon            120
+
+    CHAPTER X.
+
+    THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION.
+
+    The Jewish War--The two Parties in the Church--The Jewish
+    Enmity typical--The new Christian Humanity--The Church in
+    the first Century and the nineteenth--Hindrances to Unity:
+    external, internal--The Ground of Reconciliation--Enemies of
+    God--The Atonement of the Cross--Moral Communism--Personal
+    Faith--The Fraternization of Mankind                           131
+
+    CHAPTER XI.
+
+    GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.
+
+    The Divine Occupant--The Service of Man and of God--One
+    Temple and many Buildings--The Variety of the apostolic
+    Church--The primitive Catholicism--Church and Dissent--Union
+    by Approximation--Our Lord’s Prayer for Unity--The apostolic
+    Basis--The Builder Spirit--The sure Foundation Stone           143
+
+    CHAPTER XII.
+
+    THE SECRET OF THE AGES.
+
+    St Paul’s Style of Composition--Christ the Mystery of
+    God--Christ in the Old Testament--The Exploration of
+    Christ--The Portion of the Gentiles in Israel--The Organs of
+    the new Revelation--The unique Office and Influence of the
+    Apostle Paul                                                   155
+
+    CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN.
+
+    Christ the Bond of Angels and Men--Our Lord and
+    theirs--Jesus of Nazareth the Lord of the Ages--The Reality
+    of the Angels--Their Interest in the Church--The Peculiarity
+    of the human Problem--The Docility of the heavenly
+    Potentates--The angelic Standpoint--The Grandeur of
+    Christianity inspires Courage                                  167
+
+
+    _PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+    CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.
+
+    Contents of St Paul’s Prayer--The Father of Angels and of
+    Men--Strength of Spirit and of the Spirit--Christ abiding in
+    the Heart--Christ and the Christ--Christ’s Claim on the
+    Intellect--Neglect of Theology--Dimensions of God’s
+    Building--Strength to grasp the Magnitude of
+    Christianity--The true Broad Churchman                         183
+
+    CHAPTER XV.
+
+    KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE.
+
+    Knowledge in the Growth--Paul’s Study of the Love of
+    Christ--Christ’s manifested Love--God’s Fulness our
+    final Aim--The Fulness more than Love--Praise out-soaring
+    Prayer--God’s Gifts beyond our Requests--The
+    Divine Power immanent in Men--The Inspirer of Prayer
+    its Fulfiller--The Union of the Church and Christ in
+    God’s Praise--The eternal Glory                                197
+
+
+    _THE EXHORTATION.
+    ON CHURCH LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 1-16.
+
+    CHAPTER XVI.
+
+    THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES.
+
+    The Prisoner in the Lord--The Foes of Church Peace:
+    Low-mindedness, Ambition, Resentfulness--The Basis of Unity:
+    sevenfold, threefold--One Body despite Divisions--One Spirit
+    makes one Body--Unity of Life and Hope--One Lord in all
+    Churches--Baptism a Sign of Christ’s Rule, the Seal of a
+    corporate Life--The one God, and the many                      213
+
+    CHAPTER XVII.
+
+    THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST.
+
+    Unity in Diversities--Christ the Administrator--The
+    Ascension of David and of David’s Son--Height and
+    Breadth--The Giving of Jesus--Christ’s Descent and
+    Ascent--The Warfare of Christ--The Spoils of His
+    Victory--The Enlistment of His Prisoners--Apostles and
+    Prophets, Evangelists and Pastors--Paul, Augustine, Luther,
+    Knox, Wesley--The Demands of the Future--Individual
+    Responsibility                                                 227
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+    THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    The Aim of the Christian Ministry--A perfect
+    Manhood--Sleight or Sport?--Junctures of Supply--Reunion in
+    the Knowledge of the Son of God--The Stature of Christ our
+    Standard--The Dangers of Childishness--Speculative
+    Error--Gnosticism and Agnosticism--Conditions of
+    Safety--Church Organization--The Framework of the Body of
+    Christ--Its Continuity of Tissue                               244
+
+
+    _ON CHRISTIAN MORALS._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 17-v. 21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIX.
+
+    THE WALK OF THE GENTILES.
+
+    The old World and the old Man--Impotence of Gentile
+    Reason--Science and Pessimism--Loss of the Life of
+    God--Ignorance the Mother of Indevotion--Induration of
+    Heart--Impudicity of Paganism                                  261
+
+    CHAPTER XX.
+
+    THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.
+
+    Defective Views of Christ amongst Paul’s Readers--The
+    historical Jesus the true Christ--Paul and the Tradition of
+    Jesus--Jesus the human Model--Nero a Type of the Pagan
+    Order--The Fraud of Sin--The Growth and the Birth of the new
+    Man--Righteousness and Holiness                                275
+
+    CHAPTER XXI.
+
+    DISCARDED VICES.
+
+    The seven Gentile Sins--Truthfulness and the Truth--The
+    Perils of Anger--The Antidote to Theft--Sinfulness of vain
+    Speech--Malice and its Brood--Imitation of the Divine
+    Love--Filthiness and Jesting--The golden Leprosy               290
+
+    CHAPTER XXII.
+
+    DOCTRINE AND ETHICS.
+
+    The Intrinsic and Experimental in Morals--Originality of
+    Christian Ethics--Ethical Art and Science--Four Principles
+    of Pauline Ethics--Personality and Morals--Ethical
+    Character of Christ’s Forgiveness--Auguste Comte and the
+    Gospel--The moral Import of the Resurrection--And of the
+    Atonement                                                      305
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+    THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.
+
+    Right the Fruit of Light--All Virtue from one
+    Source--Unbelief and Immorality--Christian Goodness--The Way
+    of Righteousness--Truth the Hall-mark of Sanctity--Verity
+    and Veracity--Specialists in Virtue--Reproof of open and of
+    hidden Sins--Manifestation and Transformation                  321
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+    THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+    Soberness and Excitement--The heedful Look--Evil Days for
+    the Asian Christians--Wisdom to know God’s Will--Wine and
+    social Pleasure--The Craving for Excitement--Fulness of the
+    Spirit--The Rise of Christian Psalmody--The Music of the
+    Heart--Enthusiasm and Order                                    336
+
+
+    _ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    CHAPTER XXV.
+
+    CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.
+
+    The Divine Character of Marriage--Religious Equality of the
+    Sexes--The Glory of the Man--Women’s Rights--Christ’s
+    undivided Headship--Masculine Selfishness--Greek Terms for
+    Love--The Husband and the Priest--The double
+    Self--Indelibility of Wedlock                                  353
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+    CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    Marriage and the Doctrine of the Church--The Individual and
+    the Church--The Glory of the vicarious Death--Christ the
+    Sanctifier of His Church--The Signification of Baptism--The
+    Water and the Word--The Bride made ready--The Church a
+    Christocracy--Adam’s Wedding-song--The Church inherent in
+    Christ                                                         366
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+    THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.
+
+    Children in the Church--The initial Form of
+    Duty--Commandment and Promise--Gentleness of fatherly
+    Rule--Spoilt Children--The Lord’s Nurture--Greek and Roman
+    Slaves--The Church and the Slaves--Christ a Pattern for
+    Slaves--Servants of Society--Care, Honesty, Heartiness in
+    Work--The heavenly Master’s Reward--Responsibility of the
+    earthly Master                                                 380
+
+
+    _ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 10-18.
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+    THE FOES OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    Henceforth be strong!--The two Panoplies--The Personality of
+    Satan--The Devil and his Angels--Paul’s Demonology--The
+    spiritual Combat--Interior Temptations--Persecution and
+    Heresy--The Region of the Struggle--The Siege of the
+    heavenly City                                                  397
+
+    CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+    THE DIVINE PANOPLY.
+
+    The coming evil Day--Comparison with Revelation ii.,
+    iii.--The Girdle of Truth--The Breastplate of
+    Righteousness--Shoes of Gospel Readiness--The great Shield
+    of Faith--Fire-tipped Darts--The Helmet of Salvation--The
+    Spirit’s Sword--The Weapon of All-prayer                       410
+
+
+    _THE CONCLUSION._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    CHAPTER XXX.
+
+    REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION.
+
+    Paul’s Need of the Church’s Prayers--Christ’s Ambassador
+    before the Emperor--Speaking the Word given--Good News for
+    the Asian Churches--Character and Services of
+    Tychicus--Peace to the Brethren--Love with Faith--Love
+    toward Christ and Grace from God--The Love incorruptible       427
+
+
+
+
+_THE INTRODUCTION_
+
+CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    Οὐ μόνον Ἐφέσου ἀλλὰ σχεδὸν πάσης τῆς Ἀσίας ὁ Παῦλος οὗτος πείσας
+    μετέστησεν ἱκανὸν ὄχλον (Demetrius the Silversmith).
+
+    ACTS xix. 26.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_THE WRITER AND READERS._
+
+    “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the
+    saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and
+    peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”[1]--EPH. i. 1,
+    2.
+
+
+In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle we are conscious of
+entering a different atmosphere. We leave the region of controversy for
+that of meditation. From the battle-field we step into the hush and
+stillness of the temple. Verses 3-14 of this chapter constitute the most
+sustained and perfect act of praise that is found in the apostle’s
+letters. It is as though a door were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts
+behind us, and earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these two
+writings, following each other in the established order of the epistles,
+is singular and in some ways extreme. They are, respectively, the most
+combative and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned, the most
+concrete and abstract, the most human and divine amongst the great
+apostle’s writings.
+
+Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity of character. The
+two letters are not the expression of different minds, but of different
+phases of the same mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians
+is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic behind the
+ardent missionary and the masterly debater. Those critics who recognize
+the genuine apostle only in the four previous epistles and reject
+whatever does not conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how
+much is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul. Without the
+inwardness, the brooding faculty, the power of abstract and metaphysical
+thinking displayed in the epistles of this group, he could never have
+wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those earlier writings,
+nor grasped the principles which he there applies with such vigour and
+effect. That so many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny, St
+Paul’s authorship of this epistle on internal grounds and because of the
+contrast to which we have referred, is one of those phenomena which in
+future histories of religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities
+of a hypercritical age.[2]
+
+Let us observe some of the Pauline qualities that are stamped upon the
+face of this document. There is, in the first place, the apostle’s
+intellectual note, what has been well called his _passion for the
+absolute_. St Paul’s was one of those minds, so discomposing to
+superficial and merely practical thinkers, which cannot be content with
+half-way conclusions. For every principle he seeks its ultimate basis;
+every line of thought he pushes to its furthest limits. His gospel, if
+he is to rest in it, must supply a principle of unity that will bind
+together all the elements of his mental world.
+
+Hence, in contesting the Jewish claim to religious superiority on the
+ground of circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant, St Paul developed in
+the epistle to the Galatians a religious philosophy of history; he
+arrived at a view of the function of the law in the education of mankind
+which disposed not only of the question at issue, but of all such
+questions. He established for ever the principle of salvation by faith
+and of spiritual sonship to God. What that former argument effects for
+the history of revelation, is done here for the gospel in its relations
+to society and universal life. The principle of Christ’s headship is
+carried to its largest results. The centre of the Church becomes the
+centre of the universe. God’s plan of the ages is disclosed, ranging
+through eternity and embracing every form of being, and “gathering into
+one all things in the Christ.” In Galatians and Romans the thought of
+salvation by Christ breaks through Jewish limits and spreads itself over
+the field of history; in Colossians and Ephesians the idea of life in
+Christ overleaps the barriers of time and human existence, and brings
+“things in heaven and things in earth and things beneath the earth”
+under its sway.
+
+The second, historical note of original Paulinism we recognize in the
+writer’s _attitude towards Judaism_. We should be prepared to stake the
+genuineness of the epistle on this consideration alone. The position and
+point of view of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles are unique in
+history. It is difficult to conceive how any one but Paul himself, at
+any other juncture, could have represented the relation of Jew and
+Gentile to each other as it is put before us here. The writer is a Jew,
+a man nourished on the hope of Israel (i. 12), who had looked at his
+fellow-men across “the middle wall of partition” (ii. 14). In his view,
+the covenant and the Christ belong, in the first instance and as by
+birthright, to the men of Israel. They are “the near,” who live hard by
+the city and house of God. The blessedness of the Gentile readers
+consists in the revelation that they are “fellow-heirs and of the same
+body and joint-partakers with us of the promise in Christ Jesus” (iii.
+6). What is this but to say, as the apostle had done before, that the
+branches “of the naturally wild olive tree” were “against nature grafted
+into the good olive tree” and allowed to “partake of its root and
+fatness,” along with “the natural branches,” the children of the stock
+of Abraham who claimed it for “their own”; that “the men of faith are
+sons of Abraham” and “Abraham’s blessing has come on the Gentiles
+through faith”?[3]
+
+For our author this revelation has lost none of its novelty and
+surprise. He is in the midst of the excitement it has produced, and is
+himself its chief agent and mouthpiece (iii. 1-9). This disclosure of
+God’s secret plans for the world overwhelms him by its magnitude, by the
+splendour with which it invests the Divine character, and the sense of
+his personal unworthiness to be entrusted with it. We utterly disbelieve
+that any later Christian writer could or would have personated the
+apostle and mimicked his tone and sentiments in regard to his vocation,
+in the way that the “critical” hypothesis assumes. The criterion of
+Erasmus is decisive: _Nemo potest Paulinum pectus effingere._
+
+St Paul’s doctrine of _the cross_ is admittedly his specific
+theological note. In the shameful sacrificial death of Jesus Christ he
+saw the instrument of man’s release from the curse of the broken law;[4]
+and through this knowledge the cross which was the “scandal” of Saul the
+Pharisee, had become Paul’s glory and its proclamation the business of
+his life. It is this doctrine, in its original strength and fulness,
+which lies behind such sentences as those of chapter i. 7, ii. 13, and
+v. 2: “We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
+trespasses--brought nigh in the blood of Christ--an offering and
+sacrifice to God for an odour of sweet smell.”
+
+Another mark of the apostle’s hand, his specific spiritual note, we find
+in the _mysticism_ that pervades the epistle and forms, in fact, its
+substance. “I live no longer: Christ lives in me.” “He that is joined to
+the Lord is one spirit.”[5] In these sentences of the earlier letters we
+discover the spring of St Paul’s theology, lying in his own
+experience--_the sense of personal union through the Spirit with Christ
+Jesus_. This was the deepest fact of Paul’s consciousness. Here it meets
+us at every turn. More than twenty times the phrase “in Christ” or its
+equivalents recur, applied to Christian acts or states. It is enough to
+refer to chapter iii. 17, “that the Christ may make His dwelling in your
+hearts through faith,” to show how profoundly this mysterious
+relationship is realized in this letter. No other New Testament writer
+conceived the idea in Paul’s way, nor has any subsequent writer of whom
+we know made the like constant and original use of it. It was the habit
+of the apostle’s mind, the index of his innermost life. Kindred to this,
+and hardly less conspicuous, is his conception of “God in Christ” (2
+Cor. v. 19) saving and operating upon men, who, as we read here, “chose
+us in Christ before the world’s foundation--forgave us in Him--made us
+in Him to sit together in the heavenly places--formed us in Christ Jesus
+for good works.”
+
+The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception of the _new
+man_ in Christ Jesus, whose sins were slain by His death, and who shares
+His risen life unto God (Rom. vi.). From this idea, as from a
+fountainhead, the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle (ch. iii.)
+deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and disposition of the
+believer, his conduct in all social duties and practical affairs are the
+expression of a “life hid with Christ in God.” It is the identical “new
+man” of Romans and Colossians who presents himself as our ideal here,
+raised with Christ from the dead and “sitting with Him in the heavenly
+places.” The newness of life in which he walks, receives its impulse and
+direction from this exalted fellowship.
+
+The characteristics of St Paul’s teaching which we have described--his
+logical thoroughness and finality, his peculiar historical, theological,
+spiritual, and ethical standpoint and manner of thought--are combined in
+the conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz., its
+idea of _the Church_ as the body of Christ,--or in other words, of _the
+new humanity_ created in Him. This forms the centre of the circle of
+thought in which the writer’s mind moves;[6] it is the meeting-point of
+the various lines of thought that we have already traced. The doctrine
+of personal salvation wrought out in the great evangelical epistles
+terminates in that of social and collective salvation. A new and
+precious title is conferred on Christ: He is “Saviour of _the body_” (v.
+23), _i.e._, of the corporate Christian community. “The Son of God who
+loved _me_ and gave up Himself for _me_” becomes “the Christ” who “loved
+_the Church_ and gave up Himself for _her_.”[7] “The new man” is no
+longer the individual, a mere transformed _ego_; he is the type and
+beginning of a new mankind. A perfect society of men, all sons of God in
+Christ, is being constituted around the cross, in which the old
+antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is restored, and a
+body is provided to contain the fulness of Christ, a holy temple which
+God inhabits in the Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its
+centre and Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form the
+material--“the Jew first,” lying nearest to the site.[8]
+
+The apostle Paul necessarily conceived the reconstruction of humanity
+under the form of a reconciliation of Israel and the Gentiles. The
+Catholicism we have here is Paul’s Catholicism of _Gentile
+engrafting_--not Clement’s, of _churchly order and uniformity_; nor
+Ignatius’, of _monepiscopal rule_. It is profoundly characteristic of
+this apostle, that in “the law” which had been to his own experience the
+barrier and ground of quarrel between the soul and God, “the strength of
+sin,” he should come to see likewise the barrier between men and men,
+and the strength of the sinful enmity which distracted the Churches of
+his foundation (ii. 14-16).
+
+The representation of the Church contained in this epistle is,
+therefore, by no means new in its elements. Such texts as 1 Corinthians
+iii. 16, 17 (“Ye are God’s temple,” etc.) and xii. 12-27 (concerning the
+_one body and many members_) bring us near to its actual expression.
+But the figures of the _body_ and _temple_ in these passages, had they
+stood alone, might be read as mere passing illustrations of the nature
+of Christian fellowship. Now they become proper designations of the
+Church, and receive their full significance. While in 1 Corinthians,
+moreover, these phrases do not look beyond the particular community
+addressed, in Ephesians they embrace the entire Christian society. This
+epistle signalizes a great step forwards in the development of the
+apostle’s theology--perhaps we might say, the last step. The Pastoral
+epistles serve to put the final apostolic seal upon the theological
+edifice that is now complete. Their care is with the guarding and
+furnishing of the “great house”[9] which our epistle is engaged in
+building.
+
+The idea of the Church is not, however, independently developed.
+Ephesians and Colossians are companion letters,--the complement and
+explanation of each other. Both “speak with regard to Christ and the
+Church”; both reveal the Divine “glory in the Church and in Christ
+Jesus.”[10] The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians
+on the latter of these objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and
+that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal step. The two
+epistles form one process of thought.
+
+Criticism has attempted to derive first one and then the other of the
+two from its fellow,--thus, in effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr.
+Holtzmann, in his _Kritik der Epheser-und Kolosserbriefe_,[11] undertook
+to show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the other. There is,
+Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus hidden in Colossians, which he has
+himself extracted. By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second
+century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned to the brief
+Colossian writing of St Paul, and worked it up, with his own Ephesian
+composition lying before him, into our existing epistle to the
+Colossians. This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not
+satisfied any one except its author, and need not detain us here. But
+Holtzmann has at any rate made good, against his predecessors on the
+negative side, the unity of origin of the two canonical epistles, the
+fact that they proceed from one mint and coinage. They are _twin_
+epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostle’s mind. Much of
+their subject-matter, especially in the ethical section, is common to
+both. The glory of the Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths
+inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each other. To the
+confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” His
+response ever is, “_I will build my Church_.”[12] The same
+correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic
+movement of the apostle’s thought.
+
+At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two
+writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Paul’s
+hand, and who admits that “among all the epistles bearing the name of
+Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most
+anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles,” yet
+speaks of this epistle as a “verbose amplification” of the other, “a
+commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and
+repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevancies, full of
+pleonasms and obscurities.”[13]
+
+In this instance, Renan’s literary sense has deserted him. While
+Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so
+sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure,[14] Ephesians from
+beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and
+obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and
+involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which
+the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance.
+Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole
+difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of
+Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles,[15] we find the
+stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in
+this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those
+unfinished sentences and _anacolutha_, the grammatical inconsequence
+associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main
+characteristic of St Paul’s style.[16] The epistle to the Colossians is
+like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that
+to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters
+restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict
+and repose which alternated in St Paul’s mobile nature.
+
+In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the
+apostle’s imprisonment and advancing age,[17] display less passion and
+energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy.
+They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the author’s mind had
+been much thrown in upon itself. They have been well styled “the
+afternoon epistles,” being marked by the subdued and reflective temper
+natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical
+representative of the third group of Paul’s epistles, as Galatians is of
+the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter
+came, as it purports to do, from _Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
+through God’s will_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But that it was addressed to “the saints which are _in Ephesus_” is more
+difficult to believe. The apostle has “heard of the faith which prevails
+amongst” his readers; he presumes that they “have heard of the Christ,
+and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus.”[18] He hopes
+that by “reading” this epistle they will “perceive his understanding in
+the mystery of Christ” (iii. 2-4). He writes somewhat thus to the
+Colossians and Romans, whom he had never seen;[19] but can we imagine
+Paul addressing in this distant and uncertain fashion his children in
+the faith? In Ephesus he had laboured “for the space of three whole
+years” (Acts xx. 31), longer than in any other city of the Gentile
+mission, except Antioch. His speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus,
+delivered four years ago, was surcharged with personal feeling, full of
+pathetic reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance with the
+individual membership of the Ephesian Church. In the epistle such signs
+are altogether wanting. The absence of greetings and messages we could
+understand; these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But how the
+man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians and Corinthians could have
+composed this long and careful letter to his own Ephesian people without
+a single word of endearment or familiarity,[20] and without the least
+allusion to his past intercourse with them, we cannot understand. It is
+in the destination that the only serious difficulty lies touching the
+authorship. Nowhere do we see more of _the apostle_ and less of _the
+man_ in St Paul; nowhere more of _the_ Church, and less of _this or
+that_ particular church.
+
+It agrees with these internal indications that the local designation is
+wanting in the oldest Greek copies of the letter that are extant. The
+two great manuscripts of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic
+codices, omit the words “in Ephesus.” Basil in the fourth century did
+not accept them, and says that “the old copies” were without them.
+Origen, in the beginning of the third century, seems to have known
+nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the second century, while
+he condemns the heretic Marcion (who lived about fifty years earlier)
+for entitling the epistle “To the Laodiceans,” quotes only the _title_
+against him, and not the text of the address, which he would presumably
+have done, had he read it in the form familiar to us. We are compelled
+to suppose, with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally,
+that these words form no part of the original address.
+
+Here the _circular hypothesis_ of Beza and Ussher comes to our aid. It
+is supposed that the letter was destined for a number of Churches in
+Asia Minor, which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of the
+journey which took him to Colossæ.[21] Along with the letters for the
+Colossians and Philemon, he was entrusted with this more general
+epistle, intended for the Gentile Christian communities of the
+neighbouring region at large. During St Paul’s ministry at Ephesus, we
+are told that “all those that dwell in Asia heard the word of the Lord,
+both Jews and Greeks” (Acts xix. 10). In so large and populous an area,
+amongst the Churches founded at this time there were doubtless others
+beside those of the Lycus valley “which had not seen Paul’s face in the
+flesh,” some about which the apostle had less precise knowledge than he
+had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus, but for whom he was no less
+desirous that their “hearts should be comforted, and brought into all
+the wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge
+of the mystery of God” (Col. ii. 1, 2).
+
+To which or how many of the Asian Churches Tychicus would be able to
+communicate the letter was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at
+Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance by Tychicus
+(vi. 21, 22) supplied the only limit to its distribution. Proconsular
+Asia was the richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so
+populous that it was called “the province of five hundred cities.”
+Ephesus was only the largest of many flourishing commercial and
+manufacturing towns.
+
+At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St Paul directs this
+Church to procure “from Laodicea,” in exchange for their own, a letter
+which he is sending there (iv. 16). Is it possible that we have the lost
+Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So Ussher suggested; and
+though the assumption is not essential to his theory, it falls in with
+it very aptly. Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence of
+the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in this letter. The
+conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot, who says, writing on Colossians iv.
+16: “There are good reasons for the belief that St Paul here alludes to
+the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact a circular
+letter, addressed to the principal Churches of proconsular Asia.
+Tychicus was obliged to pass through Laodicea on his way to Colossæ, and
+would leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was delivered.”[22]
+The two epistles admirably supplement each other. The Apocalyptic letter
+“to the seven churches which are in Asia,” ranging from Ephesus to
+Laodicea (Rev. ii., iii.), shows how much the Christian communities of
+this region had in common and how natural it would be to address them
+collectively. For the same region, with a yet wider scope, the “first
+catholic epistle of Peter” was destined, a writing that has many points
+of contact with this. Ephesus being the metropolis of the Asian
+Churches, and claiming a special interest in St Paul, came to regard the
+epistle as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it was
+communicated to the Church in other provinces. Hence it came to pass
+that when Paul’s epistles were gathered into a single volume and a title
+was needed for this along with the rest, “To the Ephesians” was written
+over it; and this reference standing in the title, in course of time
+found its way into the text of the address. We propose to read this
+letter as _the general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia_, or _to
+Ephesus and its daughter Churches_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But how are we to read the address, with the local definition wanting?
+There are two constructions open to us:--(1) We might suppose that a
+space was left blank in the original to be filled in afterwards by
+Tychicus with the names of the particular Churches to which he
+distributed copies, or to be supplied by the voice of the reader. But if
+that were so, we should have expected to find some trace of this variety
+of designation in the ancient witnesses. As it is, the documents either
+give Ephesus in the address, or supply no local name at all. Nor is
+there, so far as we are aware, any analogy in ancient usage for the
+proceeding suggested. Moreover, the order of the Greek words[23] is
+against this supposition.--(2) We prefer, therefore, to follow
+Origen[24] and Basil, with some modern exegetes, in reading the sentence
+straight on, as it stands in the Sinaitic and Vatican copies. It then
+becomes: _To the saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus_.
+
+“The saints” is the apostle’s designation for Christian believers
+generally,[25] as men consecrated to God in Christ (1 Cor. i. 2). The
+qualifying phrase “those who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus,” is
+admonitory. As Lightfoot says with reference to the parallel
+qualification in Colossians i. 2, “This unusual addition is full of
+meaning. Some members of the [Asian] Churches were shaken in their
+allegiance, even if they had not fallen from it. The apostle therefore
+wishes it to be understood that, when he speaks of the saints, he means
+those who are true and steadfast members of the brotherhood. In this way
+he obliquely hints at the defection.” By this further definition “he
+does not directly exclude any, but he indirectly warns all.” We are
+reminded that we are in the neighbourhood of the Colossian heresy.
+Beneath the calm tenor of this epistle, the ear catches an undertone of
+controversy. In chapter iv. 14 and vi. 10-20 this undertone becomes
+clearly audible. We shall find the epistle end with the note of warning
+with which it begins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Salutation is according to St Paul’s established form of greeting.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised
+Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations will
+be explained in the exposition.
+
+[2] The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson’s
+_Introduction to the N. T._; see also Baur’s _Paul_, Pfleiderer’s
+_Paulinism_, Hilgenfeld’s _Einleitung_, Hatch’s article on “Paul” in the
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_. The case for the defence may be found in
+Weiss’, Salmon’s, Bleek’s, or Dods’ _N. T. Introduction_--the last
+brief, but to the point; in Reuss’ _History of the N. T._; Milligan’s
+article on “Ephesians” in _Encycl. Brit._; Gloag’s _Introduction to the
+Pauline Epp._; Meyer’s, or Beet’s, or Eadie’s _Commentary_; Sabatier’s
+_The Apostle Paul_.
+
+[3] Rom. xi. 16-24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.
+
+[4] Gal. iii. 10-13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.
+
+[5] Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.
+
+[6] See ch. i. 9-13, ii. 11-22, iii. 5-11, iv. 1-16, v. 23-32.
+
+[7] Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.
+
+[8] Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17-20.
+
+[9] 1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.
+
+[10] Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.
+
+[11] _Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres
+Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses_ (Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and
+scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than
+this of Holtzmann, we do not know.
+
+Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann’s
+collaborateur in the new _Hand-Commentar_, accepts Colossians in its
+integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the
+subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple
+of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.
+
+[12] Matt. xvi. 15-18; John xvii. 10: _I am glorified in them._
+
+[13] See his _Saint Paul_, Introduction, pp. xii.-xxiii.
+
+[14] See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20-23.
+
+[15] _E.g._, in Rom. i. 1-7, viii. 28-30, xi. 33-36, xvi. 25-27.
+
+[16] See the Winer-Moulton _N. T. Grammar_, p. 709: “It is in writers of
+great mental vivacity--more taken up with the thought than with the mode
+of its expression--that we may expect to find anacolutha most
+frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style
+of the apostle Paul.”
+
+[17] Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.
+
+[18] Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.
+
+[19] Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.
+
+[20] “My brethren” in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even
+the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in the _third person_--a
+thing unexampled in St Paul’s epistles.
+
+[21] Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7-9.
+
+[22] Compare Maclaren on _Colossians and Philemon_, p. 406, in this
+series.
+
+[23] Τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ... καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῳ Ἰησοῦ. The
+interposition of the heterogeneous attributive between ἁγίοις and
+πιστοῖς is harsh and improbable--not to say, with Hofmann, “quite
+incredible.” The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck
+and of von Soden (in the _Hand-Commentar_), interpreters of opposite
+schools, agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regarding
+πιστοῖς as the complement of τοῖς οὖσιν.
+
+[24] Origen, in his fanciful way, makes of τοῖς οὖσιν a predicate by
+itself: “the saints _who are_,” who possess real being like God Himself
+(Exod. iii. 14)--“called from non-existence into existence.” He compares
+1 Cor. i. 28.
+
+[25] See, _e.g._, ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.
+
+
+
+
+PRAISE AND PRAYER.
+
+CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+        Οὓς προέγνω, καὶ προώρισεν
+    συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ,
+    εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν πρωτότοκον ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδέλφοις;
+      οὕς δὲ προώρισεν, τούτους καὶ ἐκάλεσεν;
+      καὶ οὓς ἐκάλεσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδικαίωσεν;
+      οὓς δὲ ἐδικαίωσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδόξασεν.
+
+    ROM. viii. 29, 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_THE ETERNAL PURPOSE._
+
+
+We enter this epistle through a magnificent gateway. The introductory
+Act of Praise, extending from verse 3 to 14, is one of the most sublime
+of inspired utterances, an overture worthy of the composition that it
+introduces. Its first sentence compels us to feel the insufficiency of
+our powers for its due rendering.
+
+The apostle surveys in this thanksgiving the entire course of the
+revelation of grace. Standing with the men of his day, the new-born
+community of the sons of God in Christ, midway between the ages past and
+to come,[26] he looks backward to the source of man’s salvation when it
+lay a silent thought in the mind of God, and forward to the hour when it
+shall have accomplished its promise and achieved our redemption. In this
+grand evolution of the Divine plan three stages are marked by the
+refrain, thrice repeated, _To the praise of His glory, of the glory of
+His grace_ (vv. 6, 12, 14). St Paul’s psalm is thus divided into three
+strophes, or stanzas: he sings the glory of redeeming love in its past
+designs, its present bestowments, and its future fruition. The
+paragraph, forming but one sentence and spun upon a single golden
+thread, is a piece of thought-music,--a sort of _fugue_, in which from
+eternity to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by Paul’s bold and
+exulting thought.
+
+Despite the grammatical involution of the style here carried to an
+extreme, and underneath the apparatus of Greek pronouns and participles,
+there is a fine Hebraistic lilt pervading the doxology. The refrain is
+in the manner of Psalms xlii.-xliii., and xcix., where in the former
+instance “health of countenance,” and in the latter “holy is He” gives
+the key-note of the poet’s melody and parts his song into three balanced
+stanzas. In such poetry the strophes may be unequal in length, each
+developing its own thought freely, and yet there is harmony in their
+combination. Here the central idea, that of God’s actual bounty to
+believers, fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there is a
+pause within it, at verse 10, which in effect resumes the idea of the
+first strophe and works it in as a _motif_ to the second, carrying on
+both in a full stream till they lose themselves in the third and
+culminating movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying
+expression the phrase “in Christ--in the Beloved--in Him--in whom,”
+weaving the verses into subtle continuity. The theme of the entire
+composition is given in verse 3, which does not enter into the threefold
+division we have described, but forms a prelude to it.
+
+    “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath
+        blessed us,
+    In every blessing of the spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ.”
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the song of the universe, in which heaven and
+earth take responsive parts. “When the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy,” this concert began, and continues
+still through the travail of creation and the sorrow and sighing of men.
+The work praises the Master. All sinless creatures, by their order and
+harmony, by the variety of their powers and beauty of their forms and
+delight of their existence, declare their Creator’s glory. That praise
+to the Most High God which the lower creatures act instrumentally, it is
+man’s privilege to utter in discourse of reason and music of the heart.
+Man is Nature’s high priest; and above other men, the poet. Time will
+be, as it has been, when it shall be accounted the poet’s honour and the
+crown of his art, that he should take the high praises of God into his
+mouth, making hymns to the glory of the Supreme Maker and giving voice
+to the dumb praise of inanimate nature and to the noblest thoughts of
+his fellows concerning the Blessed God.
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the perpetual strain of the Old Testament, from
+Melchizedek down to Daniel,--of David in his triumph, and Job in his
+misery. But not hitherto could men say, Blessed be _the God and Father
+of our Lord Jesus Christ_! He was “the Most High God, the God of
+heaven,”--“Jehovah, God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous
+things,”--“the Shepherd” and “the Rock” of His people,--“the true God,
+the living God, and an everlasting King”; and these are glorious titles,
+which have raised men’s thoughts to moods of highest reverence and
+trust. But the name of _Father_, and _Father of our Lord Jesus Christ_,
+surpasses and outshines them all. With wondering love and joy
+unspeakable St Paul pronounced this _Benedictus_. God was not less to
+him the Almighty, the High and Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in
+the days of his youthful Jewish faith; but the Eternal and All-holy One
+was now his Father in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name: and let the
+whole earth be filled with His glory!
+
+The apostle’s psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving to God _blessing and
+blessed_. The second clause rhythmically answers to the first. True, our
+blessing of Him is far different from His blessing of us: ours in
+thought and words; His in mighty deeds of salvation. Yet in the fruit of
+lips giving thanks to His name there is a revenue of blessing paid to
+God which He delights in, and requires. “O Thou that inhabitest the
+praises of Israel,” grant us to bless Thee while we live and to lift up
+our hands in Thy name!
+
+By three qualifying adjuncts the blessing which the Father of Christ
+bestowed upon us is defined: in respect of its _nature_, its _sphere_,
+and its _personal ground_.
+
+The blessings that prompt the apostle’s praise are not such as those
+conspicuous in the Old Covenant: “Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and
+in the field; in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and
+the increase of thy kine; blessed shall be thy basket, and thy
+kneading-trough” (Deut. xxviii. 3-5). The gospel pronounces beatitudes
+of another style: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed the meek, the
+merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted.” St Paul had small share
+indeed in the former class of blessings,--a childless, landless,
+homeless man. Yet what happiness and wealth are his! Out of his poverty
+he is making all the ages rich! From the gloom of his prison he sheds a
+light that will guide and cheer the steps of multitudes of earth’s sad
+wayfarers. Not certainly in the earthly places where he finds himself is
+Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus blessed; but “in spiritual blessing”
+and “in heavenly places” how abundantly! His own blessedness he claims
+for all who are in Christ.
+
+Blessing _spiritual_ in its nature is, in St Paul’s conception of
+things, blessing in and of the Holy Spirit.[27] In His quickening our
+spirit lives; through His indwelling health, blessedness, eternal life
+are ours. In this verse justly the theologians recognize the Trinity of
+the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.--Blessing _in the heavenly
+places_ is not so much blessing coming from those places--from God the
+Father who sits there--as it is blessing which lifts us into that
+supernal region, giving to us a place and heritage in the world of God
+and of the angels. Two passages of the companion epistles interpret this
+phrase: “Your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. iii. 3); and again,
+“Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. iii. 20).--The decisive note of St
+Paul’s blessedness lies in the words “in Christ.” For him all good is
+summed up there. Spiritual, heavenly, and Christian: these three are
+one. In Christ dying, risen, reigning, God the Father has raised
+believing men to a new heavenly life. From the first inception of the
+work of grace to its consummation, God thinks of men, speaks to them and
+deals with them _in Christ_. To Him, therefore, with the Father be
+eternal praise!
+
+    “As He chose us in Him before the world’s foundation,
+      That we should be holy and unblemished before Him:
+    When in love He foreordained us
+      To filial adoption through Jesus Christ for Himself,
+          According to the good pleasure of His will,--
+                To the praise of the glory of His grace” (vv. 4-6a).
+
+Here is St Paul’s first chapter of Genesis. _In the beginning was the
+election of grace._ There is nothing unprepared, nothing unforeseen in
+God’s dealings with mankind. His wisdom and knowledge are as deep as His
+grace is wide (Rom. xi. 33). Speaking of his own vocation, the apostle
+said: “It pleased God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, to reveal
+His Son in me” (Gal. i. 15, 16). He does but generalize this conception
+and carry it two steps further back--from the origin of the individual
+to the origin of the race, and from the beginning of the race to the
+beginning of the world--when he asserts that the community of redeemed
+men was chosen in Christ before the world’s foundation.
+
+“The world” is a work of time, the slow structure of innumerable yet
+finite ages. Science affirms on its own grounds that the visible
+universe had a beginning, as it has its changes and its certain end. Its
+structural plan, its unity of aim and movement, show it to be the
+creation of a vast Intelligence. Harmony and law, all that makes science
+possible is the product of thought. Reason extracts from nature what
+Reason has first put there. The longer, the more intricate and grand the
+process, the farther science pushes back the beginning in our thoughts,
+the more sublime and certain the primitive truth becomes: “In the
+beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
+
+The world is a system; it has a method and a plan, therefore a
+foundation. But before the foundation, there was _the Founder_. And man
+was in His thoughts, and the redeemed Church of Christ. While yet the
+world was not and the immensity of space stretched lampless and
+unpeopled, _we_ were in the mind of God; His thought rested with
+complacency upon His human sons, whose “name was written in the book of
+life from the foundation of the world.” This amazing statement is only
+the logical consequence of St Paul’s experience of Divine grace, joined
+to his conviction of the infinite wisdom and eternal being of God.
+
+When he says that God “chose us in Christ _before the foundation of the
+world_”--or _before founding the world_--this is not a mere mark of
+time. It intimates that in laying His plans for the world the Creator
+had the purpose of redeeming grace in view. The kingdom which the
+“blessed children” of the Father of Christ “inherit,” is the kingdom
+“_prepared_ for them _from the foundation of the world_” (Matt. xxv.
+34). Salvation lies as deep as creation. The provision for it is
+eternal. For the universe of being was conceived, fashioned, and built
+up “in Christ.” The argument of Colossians i. 13-22 lies behind these
+words. The Son of God’s love, in whom and for whom the worlds were made,
+always was potentially the Redeemer of men, as He was the image of God
+(Col. i. 14, 15). He looked forward to this mission from eternity, and
+was in spirit “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev.
+xiii. 8). Creation and redemption, Nature and the Church, are parts of
+one system; and in the reconciliation of the cross all orders of being
+are concerned, “whether the things upon the earth or the things in the
+heavens.”
+
+Evil existed before man appeared on the earth to be tempted and to fall.
+Through the geological record we hear the voice of creation groaning for
+long æons in its pain.
+
+            “Dragons of the prime,
+    That tare each other in their slime,”
+
+grim prophets of man’s brutal and murderous passions, 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
+God” (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing its bondage to
+corruption, God 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God “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
+God”--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 God’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--God’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. God’s sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons.
+For this end “we” were elected of God in the beginning. Nay, with this
+end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to
+provide God 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 God by their own choice and will, meeting God’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 God’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] God 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 God. The ideal
+which God 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 God, 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 sanctity, is now
+pronounced by Jesus: “You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
+perfect.” Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: God 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
+God 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 institution of Roman law,
+familiar to Paul as a citizen of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile
+believers their relation to the family of God. “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 assumed
+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 God, 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 passed away and all
+things became new.’”[31]
+
+This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose of God from eternity;
+but as a matter of fact it was instituted “through Jesus Christ,” the
+historical Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in God’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 God
+_Father_! This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for them through
+the ages past in God’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 pronoun
+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 God 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 pronoun further; we cannot allow
+that the sonship here signified is man’s natural relation to God, 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 God’s redeeming love toward sinners. God’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] εἰς αὐτόν, _for Him_; not αὐτῳ, _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 trespasses,
+                  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.
+
+God “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 God’s eternal
+thought regarding Christ. And that regard of God 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 God and brings us into fellowship with God 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 trespasses_ (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
+God 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 participate “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 trespasses.[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 trespasses as men against God’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 God and to the laws of his being. We
+cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the
+bestowments of God’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 God’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 God’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 God 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 God who is more merciful
+than the God of our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a God
+who is not righteous, a God who does not glow with fiery indignation
+against sin, is no God 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 God_,
+what will this avail us? If “the redemption through Christ’s blood, the
+forgiveness of our trespasses,” is no longer to us the momentous and
+glorious fact that it was to the apostles, then it is time to ask
+whether our God is in truth the same as theirs, whether He is still the
+God 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 God’s benefits to men. Without
+this sentiment, we can only wonder at the passionate gratitude with
+which he receives the atonement and measures by its completeness the
+riches of God’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 associate 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 God 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 God’s special favour and blessing. “I give thanks
+always for you,” he writes to the Corinthians, “for the grace of God
+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 God “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 God 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: _phronēsis_ 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 God’s purpose to reconstitute 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 God’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 God. It craves to
+know _the mystery of His will_.
+
+III. Verse 11 fills up the measure of the bestowment of grace on sinful
+men. The present anticipates the future; faith and love are lifted to a
+glorious hope. “In whom also--_i.e._, in Christ--_we received our
+heritage_, predestinated [to it], according to His purpose who works all
+things according to the counsel of His will.”
+
+Following Meyer and other great interpreters, we prefer in this passage
+the rendering of the English Authorized Version (_we obtained an
+inheritance_) to that of the Revised (_we were made a heritage_).[39]
+“Foreordained” carries us back to verse 5--to the phrase “foreordained
+to sonship.” The believer cannot be predestinated to sonship without
+being predestinated to an inheritance.[40] “If children, then heirs”
+(Rom. viii. 17). But while in the parallel passage we are designated
+heirs _with_ Christ, we appear in this place, according to the tenor of
+the context, as heirs _in_ Him. Christ is Himself the believer’s wealth,
+both in possession and hope: all his desire is to gain Christ (Phil.
+iii. 8). The apostle gives thanks here in the same strain as in
+Colossians i. 12-14, “to the Father who qualified us [by making us His
+sons] to partake of the inheritance of the saints in the light.” In that
+thanksgiving we observe the same connexion as in this between our
+_forgiveness_ (ver. 7) and our _enfeoffment_, or investment with the
+forfeited rights of sons of God (vv. 5, 11).[41]
+
+The heritage of the saints in Christ is theirs already, by actual
+investiture. The liberty of sons of God, access to the Father, the
+treasures of Christ’s wisdom and knowledge, the sanctifying Spirit and
+the moral strength and joy that He imparts, these form a rich estate of
+which ancient saints had but foretastes and promises. In the
+all-controlling “counsel of His will,” God wrought throughout the
+course of history to convey this heritage to us. We are children of “the
+fulness of the times,” heirs of all the past. For us God has been
+working from eternity. On us the ends of the world have come. Thus from
+the summit of our exaltation in Christ the apostle looks backward to the
+beginning of Divine history.
+
+From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the end. God’s purpose
+embraces the ages to come with those that are past. His working will not
+cease till the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our
+inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise of infinitely
+more; and the Holy Spirit is the “earnest of our inheritance” (ver. 14).
+God intends “that we should be to the praise of His glory.” As things
+are, His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. “It doth not yet
+appear what we shall be,”--and it will not appear until the unveiling of
+the sons of God (Rom. viii. 18-25). One day God’s glory in us will burst
+forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and earth will then sing
+_to the praise of His glory_, when it is seen in His redeemed and
+godlike sons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 (_which He purposed ... upon the earth_) are, as we have
+said, a parenthesis or episode in the passage just reviewed. Neither in
+structure nor in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this clause
+been wanting. With the “in Him” repeated at the end of verse 10, St Paul
+resumes the main current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment
+while he dwells on “the mystery of God’s will.”
+
+This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he has said in
+verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He will pause for an instant to
+set forth once more the eternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the
+Church is now admitted. The communication of this mystery is, he says,
+“according to God’s good pleasure which He purposed in Christ [comp.
+ver. 4], for a dispensation of the fulness of the times, intending to
+gather up again all things in the Christ--the things in the heavens, and
+the things upon the earth.”
+
+God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation of His grace, in
+due time to re-unite the universe under the headship of Christ. This
+mysterious design, hitherto kept secret, He has “made known unto us.”
+Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all the wisdom of
+former ages.[42] Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.
+
+The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for its interpretation.
+The _fulness of the times_, in St Paul’s dialect, can only be the time
+of Christ.[43] The dispensation which God designed of old is that in
+which the apostle himself is now engaged;[44] it is the dispensation, or
+administration (_economy_), of the grace and truth that came by Jesus
+Christ, whether God be conceived as Himself the Dispenser, or through
+the stewards of His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul’s Jewish
+thought the dénouement of antecedent history. How long this age would
+continue, into what epochs it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for
+him the fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was come; the
+kingdom of God was amongst men. It was the beginning of the end. It is
+a mistake to relegate this text to the dim and distant future, to some
+far-off consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian
+reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The decisive epoch
+fell when “God sent forth His Son.” All that has followed, and will
+follow, is the result of this mission. Christ is all things, and in all;
+and we are already complete in Him.
+
+What, then, signifies this _gathering-into-one_ or _summing-up_ of all
+things in the Christ? Our _recapitulate_ is the nearest equivalent of
+the Greek verb, in its etymological sense. In Romans xiii. 8, 9 the same
+word is used, where the several commands of the second table of the
+Decalogue are said to be “comprehended in this word, namely, Thou shalt
+love thy neighbour as thyself.” This summing up is not a generalization
+or compendious statement of the commands of God; it signifies their
+reduction to a fundamental principle. They are unified by the discovery
+of a law that underlies them all. And while thus theoretically
+explained, they are made practically effective: “For love is the
+fulfilling of the law.”
+
+Similarly, St Paul finds in Christ the fundamental principle of the
+creation. For those who think with him, God has by the Christian
+revelation already brought all things to their unity. This summing
+up--the Christian inventory and recapitulation of the universe--the
+apostle has formally stated in Colossians i. 15-20: “Christ is God’s
+image and creation’s firstborn. In Him, through Him, for Him all things
+were made. He is before them all; and in Him they have their basis and
+uniting bond. He is equally the Head of the Church and the new creation,
+the firstborn out of the dead, that He might hold a universal
+presidence--charged with all the fulness, so that in Him is the ground
+of the reconciliation no less than of the creation of all things in
+heaven and earth.” What can we desire more comprehensive than this? It
+is the theory and programme of the world revealed to God’s holy apostles
+and prophets.
+
+The “gathering into one” of this text includes the “reconciliation” of
+Colossians i. 20, and more. It signifies, beside the removal of the
+enmities which are the effect of sin (ii. 14-16), the subjection of all
+powers in heaven and earth to the rule of Christ (vv. 21, 22),[45] the
+enlightenment of the angelic magnates as to God’s dealings with men
+(iii. 9, 10),--in fine, the rectification and adjustment of the several
+parts of the great whole of things, bringing them into full accord with
+each other and with their Creator’s will. What St Paul looks forward to
+is, in a word, the organization of the universe upon a Christian basis.
+This reconstitution of things is provided for and is being effected “in
+the Christ.” He is the rallying point of the forces of peace and
+blessing. The organic principle, the organizing Head, the creative
+nucleus of the new creation is there. The potent germ of life eternal
+has been introduced into the world’s chaos; and its victory over the
+elements of disorder and death is assured.
+
+Observe that the apostle says “in _the Christ_.”[46] He is not speaking
+of Christ in the abstract, considered in His own Person or as He dwells
+in heaven, but in His relations to men and to time. The Christ manifest
+in Jesus (iv. 20, 21), the Christ of prophets and apostles, the Messiah
+of the ages, the Husband of the Church (v. 23), is the author and
+finisher of this grand restoration.
+
+Christ’s work is essentially a work of _restoration_. We must insist,
+with Meyer, upon the significance of the Greek preposition in Paul’s
+compound verb (_ana_-, equal to _re_-in _restore_ or _resume_). The
+Christ is not simply the climax of the past--the Son of man and the
+recapitulation of humanity, as man is of the creatures below him,
+summing up human development and lifting it to a higher stage--though He
+is all that. Christ _rehabilitates_ man and the world. He re-asserts the
+original ground of our being, as that exists in God. He carries us and
+the world forward out of sin and death, by carrying us back to God’s
+ideal. The new world is the old world repaired, and in its reparation
+infinitely enhanced--rich in the memories of redemption, in the fruit of
+penitence and the discipline of suffering, in the lessons of the cross.
+
+_All things_ in heaven and earth it was God’s good pleasure in the
+Christ to gather again into one. Is this a general assertion concerning
+the universe as a whole, or may we apply it with distributive exactness
+to each particular thing? Is there to be, as we fain would hope, no
+single exception to the “all things”--no wanderer lost, no exile finally
+shut out from the Holy City and the tree of life? Are all evil men and
+demons, willing or against their will, to be embraced somehow and at
+last--at last--in the universal peace of God?
+
+It is impossible that the first readers should have so construed Paul’s
+words (comp. v. 5). He has not forgotten the “unquenchable fire,” the
+“eternal punishment”; nor dare we. “If anything is certain about the
+teaching of Christ and His apostles, it is that they warned men not to
+reject the Divine mercy and so to incur irrevocable exile from God’s
+presence and joy. They assumed that some men would be guilty of this
+supreme crime, and would be doomed to this supreme woe” (Dale). There is
+nothing in this text to warrant any man in presuming on the mercy or the
+sovereignty of God, nothing to justify us in supposing that,
+deliberately refusing to be reconciled to God in Christ, we shall yet be
+reconciled in the end, despite ourselves.
+
+St Paul assures us that God and the world will be reunited, and that
+peace will reign through all realms and orders of existence. He does
+not, and he could not say that none will exclude themselves from the
+eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made it possible for them to
+contradict Him, so long as they have any being. The apostle’s words have
+their note of warning, along with their boundless promise. There is no
+place in the future order of things for aught that is out of Christ.
+There is no standing-ground anywhere for the unclean and the unjust, for
+the irreconcilable rebel against God. “The Son of man shall send forth
+His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that
+offend and them that do iniquity.”
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] The arrangement above made of the lines of this intricate passage
+is designed to guide the eye to its elucidation. Our disposition of the
+verses has not been determined by any preconceived interpretation, but
+by the parallelism of expression and cadences of phrase. The rhythmical
+structure of the piece, it seems to us, supplies the key to its
+explanation, and reduces to order its long-drawn and heaped-up relative
+and prepositional clauses, which are grammatically so unmanageable.
+
+[34] Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη. It is impossible to reproduce in English the
+beautiful assonance--the _play_ of sound and sense--in Gabriel’s
+greeting, as St Luke renders it.
+
+[35] See Rom. i. 16-18, iii. 19-v. 21, vi. 7, vii. 1-6, viii. 1-4,
+31-34, x. 6-9; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 17, 56, 57; 2 Cor. v. 18-21; Gal. ii.
+14-iii. 14, vi. 12-14. The latter passages the writer has endeavoured to
+expound in Chapters X. to XII. and XXVIII. of his Commentary on
+_Galatians_ in this series.
+
+[36] It is an error to suppose, as one sometimes hears it said, that
+_trespasses_ or _transgressions_ are a light and comparatively trivial
+form of sin. Both words denote, in the language of Scripture, definite
+offences against known law, departures from known duty. Adam’s sin was
+the typical “transgression” and “trespass” (Rom. v. 14, 15, etc.; comp.
+ii. 23; Gal. iii. 19).
+
+[37] Gal. iii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.
+
+[38] See _The Evangelical Revival, and other Sermons_, pp. 149-170, on
+“The Forgiveness of Sins.”
+
+[39] Bishop Ellicott, who advocates the latter rendering, objects to
+Meyer’s interpretation that it is “doubtful in point of usage.” _Pace
+tanti viri_, we must retort this objection upon the new translation. _To
+obtain by lot, to have (a thing) allotted to one_, is the meaning
+regularly given to κληροῦσθαι in the classical dictionaries; and in O.T.
+usage the _lot_ (κλῆρος) becomes the _inheritance_ (the thing
+_allotted_). The verb is repeatedly used by Philo with the meaning _to
+obtain_, or _receive an inheritance_; whereas there seems to be no real
+parallel to the other rendering. It is true that κληροῦσθαι in the sense
+of the A.V. requires an object; but that is virtually supplied by ἐν ᾧ:
+“we had our inheritance allotted _in Christ_.” Comp. Col. i. 12, “the
+lot of the saints _in the light_,” which signifies not the locality, but
+the nature and content of the saints’ heritage.
+
+[40] See Gal. iii. 22--iv. 7; and Chapters XV.--XVII. in the
+_Expositor’s Bible_ (Galatians), on Sonship and Inheritance in St Paul.
+
+[41] Compare Acts xxvi. 18, which also speaks to this association of
+ideas in St Paul’s mind, with vers. 4, 5, 7, and 11 in this chapter.
+
+[42] Vv. 8, 9, ch. iii. 4, 5; comp. Col. ii. 2, 3; 1 Cor. ii. 6-9.
+
+[43] “The fulness of the time,” Gal. iv. 4; “in due season,” Rom. v. 6;
+“in its own times,” 1 Tim. ii. 6. These are all synonymous expressions
+for the Messianic era. Comp. Heb. i. 2, ix. 26; 1 Pet. i. 20.
+
+[44] Ch. iii. 8, 9; Col. i. 25; 1 Cor. iv. 1; 1 Tim. i. 4, i. 7; 2 Tim.
+i. 9-11; and especially Rom. xvi. 25, 26.
+
+[45] Comp. ch. v. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 24-28; Phil. ii. 9-12; Heb. ii. 8; Rev.
+i. 5, xi. 15, xvii. 14; Dan. vii. 13, 14.
+
+[46] One wonders that our Revisers, so attentive to all points of Greek
+idiom, did not think it worth while to discriminate between _Christ_ and
+_the Christ_ in such passages as this. In Ephesians this distinction is
+especially conspicuous and significant. See vv. 12, 20 iii. 17, iv. 20,
+v. 23; similarly in 1 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. xv. 3.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_THE FINAL REDEMPTION._
+
+          “[That we might be to the praise of His glory:]
+    We who had before hoped in the Christ, in whom also ye _have hoped_,
+      Since ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,--
+    In whom indeed, when ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy
+        Spirit of the promise,
+      Which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of
+        _God’s_ possession,--
+                                 To the praise of His glory.”
+
+    EPH. i. 12-14.
+
+
+When the apostle reaches the “heritage” conferred upon us in Christ
+(ver. 11), he is on the boundary between the present and the future.
+Into that future he now presses forward, gathering from it his crowning
+tribute “to the praise of God’s glory.” We shall find, however, that
+this heritage assumes a twofold character, as did the conception of the
+inheritance of the Lord in the Old Testament. If the saints have their
+heritage in Christ, partly possessed and partly to be possessed, God has
+likewise, and antecedently, His inheritance in them, of which He too has
+still to take full possession.[47]
+
+Opening upon this final prospect, St Paul touches on a subject of
+supreme interest to himself and that could not fail to find a place in
+his great Act of Praise--viz., _the admission of the Gentiles_ to the
+spiritual property of Israel. The thought of the heirship of believers
+and of God’s previous counsel respecting it (ver. 11), brought before
+his mind the distinction between Jew and Gentile and the part assigned
+to each in the Divine plan. Hence he varies the general refrain in verse
+12 by saying significantly, “that _we_ might be to the praise of His
+glory.” This emphatic _we_ is explained in the opening phrase of the
+last strophe: “that have beforehand fixed our hope on the Christ,”--the
+heirs of Israel’s hope in “Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets
+did write.” With this “we” of Paul’s Jewish consciousness the “ye also”
+of verse 13 is set in contrast by his vocation as Gentile apostle. This
+second pronoun, by one of Paul’s abrupt turns of thought, is deprived of
+its predicating verb; but that is given already by the “hoped” of the
+last clause. “The Messianic hope, Israel’s ancient heirloom, in its
+fulfilment is _yours_ as much as ours.”
+
+This hope of Israel pointed Israelite and Gentile believer alike to the
+completion of the Messianic era, when the mystery of God should be
+finished and His universe redeemed from the bondage of corruption (vv.
+10, 14). By the “one hope” of the Christian calling the Church is now
+made one. From this point of view the apostle in chapter ii. 12
+describes the condition in which the gospel found his Gentile readers as
+that of men cut off from Christ, strangers to the covenants of
+promise,--in a word, “having no hope”; while he and his Jewish
+fellow-believers held the priority that belonged to those whose are the
+promises. The apostle stands precisely at the juncture where the wild
+shoot of nature is grafted into the good olive tree. A generation later
+no one would have thought of writing of “the Christ in whom _you_
+(Gentiles) _also_ have found hope”; for then Christ was the established
+possession of the Gentile Church.
+
+To these Christless heathen Christ and His hope came, when they “heard
+the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation.” A great light had
+sprung up for them that sat in darkness; the good tidings of salvation
+came to the lost and despairing. “To the Gentiles,” St Paul declared,
+addressing the obstinate Jews of Rome, “this salvation of God was sent:
+they indeed will hear it” (Acts xxviii. 28). Such was his experience in
+Ephesus and all the Gentile cities. There were hearing ears and open
+hearts, souls longing for the word of truth and the message of hope. The
+trespass of Israel had become the riches of the world. For this on his
+readers’ behalf he gives joyful thanks,--that his message proved to be
+“the gospel of _your_ salvation.”
+
+Salvation, as St Paul understands it, includes our uttermost
+deliverance, the end of death itself (1 Cor. xv. 26). He renders praise
+to God for that He has sealed Gentile equally with Jewish believers with
+the stamp of His Spirit, which makes them His property and gives
+assurance of absolute redemption.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are three things to be considered in this statement: _the seal_
+itself, _the conditions_ upon which, and _the purpose_ for which it is
+affixed.
+
+I. A seal is a token of proprietorship put by the owner upon his
+property;[48] or it is the authentication of some statement or
+engagement, the official stamp that gives it validity;[49] or it is the
+pledge of inviolability guarding a treasure from profane or injurious
+hands.[50] There is the protecting seal, the ratifying seal, and the
+proprietary seal. The same seal may serve each or all of these purposes.
+Here the thought of possession predominates (comp. ver. 4); but it can
+scarcely be separated from the other two. The witness of the Holy Spirit
+marks men out as God’s _purchased right_ in Christ (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20).
+In that very fact it guards them from evil and wrong (iv. 30), while it
+ratifies their Divine sonship (Gal. iv. 6) and guarantees their personal
+share in the promises of God (2 Cor. i. 20-22). It is a bond between God
+and men; a sign at once of what we are and shall be to God, and of what
+He is and will be to us. It secures, and it assures. It stamps us for
+God’s possession, and His kingdom and glory as our possession.
+
+This seal is constituted by _the Holy Spirit of the promise_,--in
+contrast with the material seal, “in the flesh, wrought by hand,”[51]
+which marked the children of the Old Covenant from Abraham downwards,
+previously to the fulfilment of the promise (Gal. iii. 14). We bear it
+in the inmost part of our nature, where we are nearest to God: “The
+Spirit witnesseth to our spirit.” “The Israelites also were sealed, but
+by circumcision, like cattle and irrational animals. We were sealed by
+the Spirit, as sons” (Chrysostom). The stamp of God is on the
+consciousness of His children. “We know that Christ abides in us,”
+writes St John, “from the Spirit which He gave us” (1 Ep. iii. 24).
+Under this seal is conveyed the sum of blessing comprised in our
+salvation. Jesus promised, “Your heavenly Father will give His Holy
+Spirit to them that ask” (Luke xi. 13), as if there were nothing else to
+ask. Giving us this, God gives everything, gives us Himself! In
+substance or anticipation, this one bestowment contains all good things
+of God.
+
+The apostle writes “the Spirit of the promise, _the Holy_ [Spirit],”
+with emphasis on the word of quality; for the testifying power of the
+seal lies in its character. “Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try
+the spirits, whether they are of God” (1 John iv. 1). There are false
+prophets, deceiving and deceived; there are promptings from “the spirit
+that works in the sons of disobedience,” diabolical inspirations, so
+plausible and astonishing that they may deceive the very elect. It is a
+most perilous error to identify the supernatural with the Divine, to
+suppose mere miracles and communications from the invisible sphere a
+sign of the working of God. Antichrist can mimic Christ by his “lying
+wonders and deceit of unrighteousness” (2 Thess. ii. 8-12). Jesus never
+appealed to the power of His works in proof of His mission, apart from
+their ethical quality. God’s Spirit works after His kind, and makes ours
+a holy spirit. There is an objective and subjective witness--the obverse
+and reverse of the medal (2 Tim. ii. 19). To be sealed by the Holy
+Spirit is, in St Paul’s dialect, the same thing as to be _sanctified_;
+only, the phrase of this text brings out graphically the promissory
+aspect of sanctification, its bearing on our final redemption.[52]
+
+When the sealing Spirit is called the Spirit _of promise_, does the
+expression look backward or forward? Is the apostle thinking of the past
+promise now fulfilled, or of some promise still to be fulfilled? The
+former, undoubtedly, is true. _The_ promise (the article is
+significant[53]) is, in the words of Christ, “the promise of the
+Father.” On the day of Pentecost St Peter pointed to the descent of the
+Holy Spirit as God’s seal upon the Messiahship of Jesus, fulfilling what
+was promised to Israel for the last days. When this miraculous effusion
+was repeated in the household of Cornelius, the Jewish apostle saw its
+immense significance. He asked, “Can any one forbid water that these
+should be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?”
+(Acts x. 47). This was the predicted criterion of the Messianic times.
+Now it was _given_, and with an abundance beyond hope,--_poured out_, in
+the full sense of Joel’s words, _upon all flesh_.
+
+Now, if God has done so much--for this is the implied argument of verses
+13, 14--He will surely accomplish the rest. The attainment of past hope
+is the warrant of present hope. He who gives us His own Spirit, will
+give us the fulness of eternal life. The earnest implies the sum. In the
+witness of the Holy Spirit there is for the Christian man the power of
+an endless life, a spring of courage and patience that can never fail.
+
+II. But there are very definite conditions, upon which this assurance
+depends. “When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
+salvation”--there is the outward condition: “when you believed”--there
+is the inward and subjective qualification for the affixing of the seal
+of God to the heart.
+
+How characteristic is this antithesis of _hearing_ and _faith_![54] St
+Paul delights to ring the changes upon these terms. The gospel he
+carried about with him was a message from God to men, the good news
+about Jesus Christ. It needs, on the one hand, to be effectively
+uttered, proclaimed so as to be heard with the understanding; and, on
+the other hand, it must be trustfully received and obeyed. Then the due
+result follows. There is salvation,--conscious, full.
+
+If they are to believe unto salvation, men must be made to _hear_ the
+word of truth. Unless the good news reaches their ears and their heart,
+it is no good news to them. “How shall they believe in Him of whom they
+have not heard? how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. x. 14).
+The light may be true, and the eyes clear and open; but there is no
+vision till both meet, till the illuminating ray falls on the sensitive
+spot and touches the responsive nerve. How many sit in darkness, groping
+and wearying for the light, ready for the message if there were any to
+speak it to them! Great would Paul’s guilt have been, if when Christ
+called him to preach to the heathen, he had refused to go, if he had
+withheld the gospel of salvation from the multitudes waiting to receive
+it at his lips. Great also is our fault and blame, and heavy the
+reproach against the Church to-day, when with means in her hand to make
+Christ known to almost the whole world, she leaves vast numbers of men
+within her reach in ignorance of His message. She is not the proprietor
+of the Christian truth: it is God’s gospel; and she holds it as God’s
+trustee for mankind,--that through her “the message might be fully
+preached, and that all the nations might hear” (2 Tim. iv. 17). She has
+St Paul’s programme in hand still to complete, and loiters over it.
+
+The nature of the message constitutes our duty to proclaim it. It is
+“the word _of truth_.” If there be any doubt upon this, if our certainty
+of the Christian truth is shaken and we can no longer announce it with
+full conviction, our zeal for its propagation naturally declines.
+Scepticism chills and kills missionary fervour, as the breath of the
+frost the young growth of spring. At home and amongst our own people
+evangelistic agencies are supported by many who have no very decided
+personal faith, from secondary motives,--with a view to their social and
+reformatory benefits, out of philanthropic feeling and love to “the
+brother whom we have seen.” The foreign missions of the Church, like the
+work of the Gentile apostle, gauge her real estimate of the gospel she
+believes and the Master she serves.
+
+But if we have no sure word of prophecy to speak, we had better be
+silent. Men are not saved by illusion or speculation. Christianity did
+not begin by offering to mankind a legend for a gospel, or win the ear
+of the world for a beautiful romance. When the apostles preached Jesus
+and the resurrection, they declared what they knew. To have spoken
+otherwise, to have uttered cunningly devised fables or pious phantasies
+or conjectures of their own, would have been, in their view, to bear
+false witness against God. Before the hostile scrutiny of their
+fellow-men, and in prospect of the awful judgement of God, they
+testified the facts about Jesus Christ, the things that they had “heard,
+and seen with their eyes, and which their hands had handled concerning
+the word of life.” They were as sure of these things as of their own
+being. Standing upon this ground and with this weapon of truth alone in
+their hands, they denounced “the wiles of error” and the “craftiness of
+men who lie in wait to deceive” (iv. 14).
+
+And they could always speak of this word of truth, addressing whatsoever
+circle of hearers or of readers, as “the good news of _your salvation_.”
+The pronoun, as we have seen, is emphatic. The glory of Paul’s apostolic
+mission was its universalism. His message was to every man he met. His
+latest writings glow with delight in the world-wide destination of his
+gospel.[55] It was his consolation that the Gentiles in multitudes
+received the Divine message to which his countrymen closed their ears.
+And he rejoiced in this the more, because he foresaw that ultimately the
+gospel would return to its native home, and at last amid “the fulness of
+the Gentiles all Israel would be saved” (Rom. xi. 13-32). At present
+Israel was not prepared to seek, while the Gentiles were seeking
+righteousness by the way of faith (Rom. ix. 30-33).
+
+For it is upon this question of _faith_ that the whole issue turns.
+Hearing is much, when one hears the word of truth and news of salvation.
+But faith is the point at which salvation becomes ours--no longer a
+possibility, an opportunity, but a fact: “in whom indeed, _when you
+believed_, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit.” So characteristic is
+this act of the new life to which it admits, that St Paul is in the
+habit of calling Christians, without further qualification, simply
+_believers_ (“those who believe,” or “who believed”). Faith and the gift
+of the Holy Spirit are associated in his thoughts, as closely as Faith
+and Justification. “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
+was the question he put to the Baptist’s disciples whom he found at
+Ephesus on first arriving there (Acts xix. 2). This was the test of the
+adequacy of their faith. He reminds the Galatians that they “received
+the Spirit from the hearing of faith,” and tells them that in this way
+the blessing and the promise of Abraham were theirs already (Gal. iii.
+2, 7, 14). Faith in the word of Christ admits the Spirit of Christ, who
+is in the word waiting to enter. Faith is the trustful surrender and
+expectancy of the soul towards God; it sets the heart’s door open for
+Christ’s incoming through the Spirit This was the order of things from
+the beginning of the new dispensation. “God gave to them,” says St Peter
+of the first baptized Gentiles, “the like gift as He did also unto us,
+when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost fell on them,
+as on us at the beginning” (Acts xi. 15-18). Upon our faith in Jesus
+Christ, the Holy Spirit enters the soul and announces Himself by His
+message of adoption, crying in us to God, _Abba, Father_ (Gal. iv. 6,
+7).
+
+In the chamber of our spirit, while we abide in faith, the Spirit of the
+Father and the Son dwells with us, witnessing to us of the love of God
+and leading us into all truth and duty and divine joy, instilling a deep
+and restful peace, breathing an energy that is a fire and fountain of
+life within the breast, which pours out itself in prayer and labour for
+the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is no mere gift to receive, or
+comfort to enjoy; He is an almighty Force in the believing soul and the
+faithful Church.
+
+III. The end for which the seal of God was affixed to Paul’s Gentile
+readers, along with their Jewish brethren in Christ, appears in the
+last verse, with which the Act of Praise terminates: “sealed,” he says,
+“with the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest of our inheritance, _until
+the redemption of the possession_.”
+
+The last of these words is the equivalent of the Old Testament phrase
+rendered in Exodus xix. 5, and elsewhere, “_a peculiar treasure_ unto
+me”; in Deuteronomy vii. 6, etc., “a _peculiar_ people” (_i.e._, people
+of _possession_). The same Greek term is employed by the Septuagint
+translators in Malachi iii. 17, where our Revisers have substituted “a
+peculiar treasure” for the familiar, but misleading “jewels” of the
+older Version. St Peter in his first epistle (ii. 9, 10) transfers the
+title from the Jewish people to the new Israel of God, who are “an elect
+race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people _for God’s own
+possession_.” In that passage, as in this, the Revisers have inserted
+the word _God’s_ in order to signify whose possession the term signifies
+in Biblical use. In the other places in the New Testament where the same
+Greek noun occurs,[56] it retains its primary active force, and denotes
+“_obtaining_ of the glory,” etc., “_saving_ of the soul.” The word
+signifies not the possessing so much as the _acquiring_ or _securing_ of
+its object. The Latin Vulgate suitably renders this phrase, _in
+redemptionem acquisitions_,--“till the redemption of the acquisition.”
+
+God has “redeemed unto Himself a people”; He has “bought us with a
+price.” His rights in us are both natural and _acquired_; they are
+redemptional rights, the recovered rights of the infinite love which in
+Jesus Christ saved mankind by extreme sacrifice from the doom of death
+eternal. This redemption “we have, in the remission of our trespasses”
+(ver. 7). But this is only the beginning. Those whose sin is cancelled
+and on whom God now looks with favour in Christ, are thereby redeemed
+and saved (ii. 5, 8).[57] They are within the kingdom of grace; they
+have passed out of death into life. They have but to persist in the
+grace into which they have entered, and all will be well. “Now,” says
+the apostle to the Romans, “you are made free from sin and made servants
+to God; you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life.”
+
+Our salvation is come; but, after all, it is still to come. We find the
+apostle using the words “save” and “redeem” in this twofold sense,
+applying them both to the commencement and the consummation of the new
+life.[58] The last act, in Romans viii. 23, he calls “the redemption of
+the body.” This will reinstate the man in the integrity of his twofold
+being as a son of God. Hence our bodily redemption is there called an
+_adoption_. For as Jesus Christ by His resurrection was “marked out
+[_or_ instated] as Son of God in power” (Rom. i. 4), not otherwise will
+it be with His many brethren. Their reappearance in the new “body of
+glory” will be a “revelation” to the universe “of the sons of God.”
+
+But this last redemption--or rather this last act of the one
+redemption--like the first, is through the blood of the cross. Christ
+has borne for us in His death the entire penalty of sin; the remission
+of that penalty comes to us in two distinct stages. The shadow of death
+is lifted off from our spirits now, in the moment of forgiveness. But
+for reasons of discipline it remains resting upon our bodily frame.
+Death is a usurper and trespasser in the bounds of God’s heritage.
+Virtually and in principle, he is abolished; but not in effect. “I will
+ransom them from the power of the grave,”[59] the Lord said of His
+Israel, with a meaning deeper than His prophet knew. When that is done,
+then God will have redeemed, in point of fact, those possessions in
+humanity which He so much prizes, that for their recovery He spared not
+His Son.
+
+So long as mortality afflicts us, God cannot be satisfied on our
+account. His children are suffering and tortured; His people mourn under
+the oppression of the enemy. They sigh, and creation with them, under
+the burdensome and infirm tabernacle of the flesh, this body of our
+humiliation for which the hungry grave clamours. God’s new estate in us
+is still encumbered with the liabilities in which the sin of the race
+involved us, with the “ills that flesh is heir to.” But this
+mortgage--that we call, with a touching euphemism, _the debt of
+nature_--will at last be discharged. Soon shall we be free for ever from
+the law of sin and death. “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and
+come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their
+heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall
+flee away.”
+
+To God, as He looks down upon men, the seal of His Spirit upon their
+hearts anticipates this full emancipation. He sees already in the
+redeemed spirit of His children what will be manifest in their glorious
+heavenly form. The same token is to ourselves as believing men the
+“earnest of our inheritance.” Note that at this point the apostle drops
+the “you” by which he has for several sentences distinguished between
+Jewish and Gentile brethren. He identifies them with himself and speaks
+of “_our_ inheritance.” This sudden resumption of the first person, the
+self-assertion of the filial consciousness in the writer breaking
+through the grammatical order, is a fine trait of the Pauline
+manner.[60]
+
+_Arrhabon_, the _earnest_ (_fastening penny_), is a Phœnician word of
+the market, which passed into Greek and Latin,--a monument of the daring
+pioneers of Mediterranean commerce. It denotes the part of the price
+given by a purchaser in making a bargain, or of the wages given by the
+hirer concluding a contract of service, by way of assurance that the
+stipulated sum will be forthcoming. Such pledge of future payment is at
+the same time a bond between those concerned, engaging each to his part
+in the transaction.
+
+The earnest is the seal, and something more. It is an instalment, a
+_token in kind_, a foretaste of the feast to come. In the parallel
+passage, Romans viii. 23, the same earnest is called “the firstfruit of
+the Spirit.” What the earliest sheaf is to the harvest, that the
+entrance of the Spirit of God into a human soul is to the glory of its
+ultimate salvation. The sanctity, the joy, the sense of recovered life
+is the same in kind then and now, differing only in degree and
+expression.
+
+Of the “earnest of the Spirit” St Paul has spoken twice already, in 2
+Corinthians i. 22 and v. 5, where he cites this inner witness to assure
+us, in the first instance, that God will fulfil to us His promises, “how
+many soever they be”; and in the second, that our mortal nature shall be
+“swallowed up of life”--assimilated to the living spirit to which it
+belongs--and that “God has wrought us for this very thing.” These
+earlier sayings explain the apostle’s meaning here. God has made us His
+sons, in accordance with His purpose formed in the depths of eternity
+(ver. 5). As sons, we are His heirs in fellowship with Christ, and
+already have received rich blessings out of this heritage (ver. 11). But
+the richest part of it, including that which concerns the bodily form of
+our life, is still unredeemed, notwithstanding that the price of its
+redemption is paid.
+
+For this we wait till the time appointed of the Father,--the time when
+He will reclaim His heritage in us, and give us full possession of our
+heritage in Christ. We do not wait, as did the saints of former ages,
+ignorant of the Father’s purpose for our future lot. “Life and
+immortality are brought to light through the gospel.” We see beyond the
+chasm of death. We enjoy in the testimony of the Holy Spirit the
+foretaste of an eternal and glorious life for all the children of
+God--nay, the pledge that the reign of evil and death shall end
+throughout the universe.
+
+With this hope swelling their hearts, the apostle’s readers once more
+triumphantly join in the refrain: TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORY.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] Exod. xix. 3-6; Deut. iv. 20, 21; 1 Kings viii. 51, 53; Ps.
+lxxviii. 71, etc. With the above comp. Gen. xv. 8; Numb. xviii. 20; Jos.
+xiii. 33; Ps. xvi. 5.
+
+[48] Ch. iv. 30. The “seal” of 2 Tim. ii. 19 has both the first and
+third of these meanings.
+
+[49] Rom. iv. 11; 1 Cor. ix. 2; John iii. 33, vi. 27.
+
+[50] Matt. xxvii. 66; Rev. v. 1, etc.
+
+[51] Ch. ii. 11; comp. Rom. i. 28, 29; Gal. v, 5, 6; Phil. iii. 2, 3.
+
+[52] Comp. Rom. viii. 9-11; 2 Cor. v. 1-5.
+
+[53] Acts i. 4, ii. 33, 39, xiii. 32, xxvi. 6; Rom. iv. 13-20; Gal. iii.
+14-29.
+
+[54] See Rom. x. 14-18; Gal. iii. 2, 5; Col. i. 6, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 13;
+2 Tim. i. 13.
+
+[55] 1 Tim. ii. 1-7, iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11.
+
+[56] 1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. ii. 14; Heb. x. 39.
+
+[57] Comp. Chapter VIII.
+
+[58] For the former usage see, along with ver. 7 and ch. ii. 5, 8; Rom.
+iii, 24, x. 9; Titus iii. 5; 2 Tim. i. 9; Col. i. 14; Heb. ix. 15; for
+the latter, ch. iv. 30; Luke xxi. 28; Rom. v. 9, 10, viii. 23; Phil. ii.
+12; 1 Thess. v. 8, 9; 2 Tim. ii. 10, iv. 18. It may be doubted whether
+St Paul ever uses these terms to denote present salvation or redemption
+without the final issue being also in his thoughts. Perhaps he would
+have called the redemption of ver. 7, in contrast with that of Rom.
+viii. 23, “the redemption of the spirit.”
+
+[59] Hosea xiii. 14; Isa. xxv. 8.
+
+[60] The same incoherence occurs in Gal. iv. 5-7: “that _we_ might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because _ye_ are sons, God sent forth
+the Spirit of His Son into _our_ hearts.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART._
+
+    “For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
+    which is among you, and which _ye shew_ toward all the saints, cease
+    not to give thanks for you, making mention _of you_ in my prayers:
+
+    “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
+    give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
+    Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know
+    what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His
+    inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His
+    power toward us who believe, according to that working of the might
+    of His strength, which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him
+    from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly
+    _places_.”--EPH. i. 15-20.
+
+
+_Because of this_: because you have heard the glad tidings, and
+believing it have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (vv. 13, 14). _I
+too_: I your apostle, with so great an interest in your salvation, in
+return give thanks for you. Thus St Paul, having extolled to the
+uttermost God’s counsel of redemption unfolded through the ages, claims
+to offer especial thanksgiving for the faith of those who belong to his
+Gentile province and are, directly or indirectly, the fruit of his own
+ministry (iii. 1-13).
+
+The intermediate clause of verse 15, describing the readers’ faith, is
+obscure. This form of expression occurs nowhere else in St Paul; but the
+construction is used by St Luke,--_e.g._, in Acts xxi. 21: “All the
+Jews _which are among_ the Gentiles,” where it implies diffusion over a
+wide area. This being a circular letter, addressed to a number of
+Churches scattered through the province of Asia, of whose faith in many
+cases St Paul knew only by report, we can understand how he writes:
+“having heard of the faith that is [spread] amongst you.”--_The love_,
+completing _faith_ in the ordinary text (as in Col. i. 4), is relegated
+by the Revisers to the margin, upon evidence that seems conclusive.[61]
+The commentators, however, feel so strongly the harshness of this
+ellipsis that, in spite of the ancient witnesses, they read, almost with
+one consent,[62] “_your love_ toward all the saints.” The variation of
+the former clause prepares us, however, for something peculiar in this.
+In verse 13 we found St Paul’s thought fixed on the decisive fact of his
+readers’ _faith_. On this he still dwells lingeringly. The grammatical
+link needed between “faith” and “unto all the saints” is supplied in the
+Revised Version by _ye show_, after the analogy of Philemon 5. Perhaps
+it might be supplied as grammatically, and in a sense better suiting the
+situation, by _is come_. Then the co-ordinate prepositional phrases
+qualifying “faith” have both alike a local reference, and we paraphrase
+the clause thus: “since I heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is
+spread amongst you, and whose report has reached all the saints.”
+
+We are reminded of the thanksgiving for the Roman Church, “that your
+faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world.”[63] The success of the
+gospel in Asia gave encouragement to believers in Christ everywhere. St
+Paul loves in this way to link Church to Church, to knit the bonds of
+faith between land and land: in this letter most of all; for it is his
+catholic epistle, the epistle of the Church œcumenical.
+
+In verse 16 we pass from praise to prayer. God is invoked by a double
+title peculiar to this passage, as “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+the Father of glory.” The former expression is in no way difficult. The
+apostle often speaks, as in verse 3, of “the God and Father of our Lord
+Jesus Christ”: intending to qualify the Divine Fatherhood by another
+epithet, he writes for once simply of “_the God_ of our Lord Jesus
+Christ.” This reminds us of the dependence of the Lord Jesus upon the
+eternal Father, and accentuates the Divine sovereignty so conspicuous in
+the foregoing Act of Praise. Christ’s constant attitude towards the
+Father was that of His cry of anguish on the cross, “My God, my God!”
+Yet He never speaks to men of _our_ God. To us God is “the God of our
+Lord Jesus Christ,” as He was to the men of old time “the God of Abraham
+and of Isaac and of Jacob.”
+
+The key to the designation _Father of glory_ is in Romans vi. 4: “Christ
+was raised from the dead through _the glory of the Father_.” In the
+light of this august manifestation of God’s power to save His lost sons
+in Christ, we are called to see light (vv. 19, 20). Its glory shines
+already about God’s blessed name of Father, thrice glorified in the
+apostle’s praise (vv. 3-14). The title is the counterpart of “the Father
+of compassions” in 2 Corinthians i. 3.
+
+And now, what has the apostle to ask of the Father of men under these
+glorious appellations? He asks “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
+full-knowledge[64] of Him,--the eyes of your heart enlightened, in order
+that you may know,” etc. This recalls the emphasis with which in verses
+8 and 9 he set “wisdom and intelligence” amongst the first blessings
+bestowed by Divine grace upon the Church. It was the gift which the
+Asian Churches at the present juncture most needed; this is just now the
+burden of the apostle’s prayers for his people.
+
+The _spirit of wisdom and revelation_ desired will proceed from the Holy
+Spirit dwelling in these Gentile believers (ver. 13). But it must belong
+to their own spirit and direct their personal mental activity, the
+spirit of revelation becoming “the spirit of their mind” (iv. 23). When
+St Paul asks for “a spirit of wisdom and _revelation_,” he desires that
+his readers may have amongst themselves a fountain of inspiration and
+share in the prophetic gifts diffused through the Church.[65] And “the
+knowledge--the full, deep knowledge of God” is the sphere “in” which
+this richer inspiration and spiritual wisdom are exercised and
+nourished. “Philosophy, taking man for its centre, says, _Know thyself_:
+only the inspired word, which proceeds from God, has been able to say,
+_Know God_.”[66]
+
+The connexion of the first clause of verse 18 with the last of verse 17
+is not very clear in St Paul’s Greek; there is a characteristic
+incoherence of structure. The continuity of thought is unmistakable. He
+prays that through this inspired wisdom his readers may have their
+reason enlightened to see the grandeur and wealth of their religion.
+This is a vision for “the eyes of the heart.” It is disclosed to the eye
+behind the eye, to the heart which is the true discerner.
+
+                  “The seeing eyes
+    See best by the light in the heart that lies.”
+
+Yonder is an ox grazing in the meadow on a bright summer’s day. Round
+him is spread the fairest landscape,--a broad stretch of herbage
+embroidered with flowers, the river gleaming in and out amongst the
+distant trees, the hills on both sides bounding the quiet valley,
+sunshine and shadows chasing each other as they leap from height to
+height. But of all this what sees the grazing ox? So much lush pasture
+and cool shade and clear water where his feet may plash when he has done
+feeding. In the same meadow there stands a poet musing, or a painter
+busy at his easel; and on the soul of that gifted man there descends,
+through eyes outwardly discerning no more than those of the beast at his
+side, a vision of wonder and beauty which will make all time richer. The
+eyes of the man’s heart are opened, and the spirit of wisdom and
+revelation is given him in the knowledge of God’s work in nature.
+
+Like differences exist amongst men in regard to the things of religion.
+“So foolish was I and ignorant,” says the Psalmist, speaking of his
+former dejection and unbelief, “I was as a beast before Thee!” There
+shall be two men sitting side by side in the same house of prayer, at
+the same gate of heaven. The one sees heaven opened; he hears the
+eternal song; his spirit is a temple filled with the glory of God. The
+other sees the place and the aspect of his fellow-worshippers; he hears
+the music of organ and choir, and the sound of some preacher’s voice.
+But as for anything besides, any influence from another world, it is no
+more to him at that moment than is the music in the poet’s soul or the
+colours on the painter’s canvas to the ox that eateth grass.
+
+It is not the strangeness and distance of Divine things alone that cause
+insensibility; their familiarity has the same effect. We know all this
+gospel so well. We have read it, listened to it, gone over its points of
+doctrine a hundred times. It is trite and easy to us as a worn glove. We
+discuss without a tremor of emotion truths the first whisper and dim
+promise of which once lifted men’s souls into ecstasy, or cast them down
+into depths of shame and bewilderment so that they forgot to eat their
+bread. The awe of things eternal, the mystery of our faith, the Spirit
+of glory and of God rest on us no longer. So there come to be, as one
+hears it said, _gospel-hardened_ hearers--and gospel-hardened preachers!
+The eyes see--and see not; the ears hear--and hear not; the lips speak
+without feeling; _the heart is waxen fat_. This is the nemesis of grace
+abused. It is the result that follows by an inevitable psychological
+law, where outward contact with spiritual truth is not attended with an
+inward apprehension and response. How do we need to pray, in handling
+these dread themes, for a true sense and savour of Divine things,--that
+there may be given, and ever given afresh to us “a spirit of wisdom and
+revelation in the knowledge of God.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three things the apostle desires that his readers may see with the
+heart’s enlightened eyes: the _hope to which God calls them_, the
+_wealth that He possesses in them,_ and the _power which He is prepared
+to exert upon them as believing men_.
+
+I. What, then, is our _hope_ in God? What is the ideal of our faith? For
+what purpose has God called us into the fellowship of His Son? What is
+our religion going to do for us and to make of us?
+
+It will bring us safe home to heaven. It will deliver us from the
+present evil world, and preserve us unto Christ’s heavenly kingdom. God
+forbid that we should make light of “the hope laid up for us in the
+heavens,” or cast it aside. It is an anchor of the soul, both sure and
+steadfast. But is it _the_ hope of our calling? Is this what St Paul
+here chiefly signifies? We are very sure that it is not. But it is the
+one thing which stands for the hope of the gospel in many minds. “We
+trust that our sins are forgiven: we hope that we shall get to heaven!”
+The experience of how many Christian believers begins and ends there. We
+make of our religion a harbour of refuge, a soothing anodyne, an escape
+from the anguish of guilt and the fear of death; not a life-vocation, a
+grand pursuit. The definition we have quoted may suffice for the
+beginning and the end; but we need something to fill out that formula,
+to give body and substance, meaning and movement to the life of faith.
+
+Let the apostle tell us what he regarded, for himself, as the end of
+religion, what was the object of his ambition and pursuit. “One thing I
+do,” he writes to the Philippians, opening to them all his heart,--“One
+thing I do. I press towards the mark for the prize of my high calling of
+God in Christ Jesus.” And what, pray, was that mark?--“that I may gain
+Christ and be found in Him!--that I may know Him, and the power of His
+resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to
+His death, if by any means I may attain unto the final resurrection from
+the dead.” Yes, Paul hopes for heaven; but he hopes for something else
+first, and most. It is through Christ that he sees heaven. To know
+Christ, to love Christ, to serve Christ, to follow Christ, to be like
+Christ, to be with Christ for ever!--that is what St Paul lived for.
+Whatever aim he pursues or affection he cherishes, Christ lies in it and
+reaches beyond it. In doing or in suffering, in his intellect and his
+heart, in his thoughts for himself or for others, Christ is all things
+to him and in all. When life is thus filled with Christ, heaven becomes,
+as one may say, a mere circumstance, and death but an incident upon the
+way,--in the soul’s everlasting pursuit of Christ.
+
+Behold, then, brethren, the hope of our calling. God could not call us
+to any destiny less or lower than this. It would have been unworthy of
+Him,--and may we not say, unworthy of ourselves, if we are in truth His
+sons? From eternity the Father of spirits has predestined you and me to
+be holy and without blemish before Him,--in a word, to be conformed to
+the image of His Son. Every other hope is dross compared to this.
+
+II. Another vision for the heart’s eyes, still more amazing than that we
+have seen: “what is,” St Paul writes, “the riches of the glory of God’s
+inheritance in the saints.”
+
+We saw, in considering the eleventh and fourteenth verses, how the
+apostle, in characteristic fashion, plays upon the double aspect of the
+_inheritance_, regarding it now as the heritage of the saints in God and
+again as His heritage in them. The former side of this relationship was
+indicated in the “hope of the Divine calling,”--which we live and strive
+for as it is promised us by God; and the latter comes out, by way of
+contrast, in this second clause. Verse 18 repeats in another way the
+antithesis of verse 14 between our inheritance and God’s acquisition. We
+must understand that God sets great store by us His human children, and
+counts Himself rich in our affection and our service. How deeply it must
+affect us to know this, and to see the glory that in God’s eyes belongs
+to His possession in believing men.
+
+What presumption is all this, some one says. How preposterous to imagine
+that the Maker of the worlds interests Himself in atoms like
+ourselves,--in the ephemera of this insignificant planet! But moral
+magnitudes are not to be measured by a foot-rule. The mind which can
+traverse the immensities of space and hold them in its grasp, transcends
+the things it counts and weighs. As it is amongst earthly powers, so the
+law may hold betwixt sphere and sphere in the system of worlds, in the
+relations of bodies terrestrial and celestial to each other, that “God
+has chosen the weak things to put to shame the mighty, and the things
+that are not to bring to nought the things that are.” Through the Church
+He is “making known to the potentates in the heavenly places His
+manifold wisdom” (iii, 10). The lowly can sing evermore with Mary in the
+Magnificat: “He that is mighty hath magnified me.” If it be true that
+God spared not His Son for our salvation and has sealed us with the seal
+of His Spirit, if He chose us before the world’s foundation to be His
+saints, He must set upon those saints an infinite value. We may despise
+ourselves; but He thinks great things of us.
+
+And is this, after all, so hard to understand? If the alternative were
+put to some owner of wide lands and houses full of treasure: “Now, you
+must lose that fine estate, or see your own son lost and ruined! You
+must part with a hundred thousand pounds--or with your best friend!”
+there could be no doubt in such a case what the choice would be of a man
+of sense and worth, one who sees with the eyes of the heart. Shall we
+think less nobly of God than of a right-minded man amongst
+ourselves?--Suppose, again, that one of our great cities were so full of
+wealth that the poorest were housed in palaces and fared sumptuously
+every day, though its citizens were profligates and thieves and cowards!
+What would its opulence and luxury be worth? Is it not evident that
+_character_ is the only possession of intrinsic value, and that this
+alone gives worth and weight to other properties? “The saints that are
+in the earth and the excellent” are earth’s riches.
+
+So far as we can judge of His ways, the great God who made us cares
+comparatively little about the upholstery and machinery of the universe;
+but He cares immensely about men, about the character and destiny of
+men. There is nothing in all that physical science discloses for God to
+_love_, nothing kindred to Himself. “Hast thou considered my servant
+Job?” the Hebrew poet pictures Him saying before heaven and hell!--“Hast
+thou considered my servant Job?--a perfect man and upright: there is
+none like him in the earth.” How proud God is of a man like that, in a
+world like this. Who can tell the value that the Father of glory sets
+upon the tried fidelity of His humblest servant here on earth; the
+intensity with which He reciprocates the confidence of one timid,
+trembling human heart, or the simple reverence of one little child that
+lisps His awful name? “He _taketh pleasure_ in them that fear Him, in
+those that hope in His mercy!” Beneath His feet all the worlds lie
+spread in their starry splendour, our sun with its train of planets no
+more than one glimmering spot of light amongst ten thousand. But amidst
+this magnificence, what is the sight that wins His tender fatherly
+regard? “To that man will I look, that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
+and that trembles at my word.” Thus saith the High and Lofty One that
+inhabiteth eternity. The Creator rejoices in His works as at the
+beginning, the Lord of heaven and earth in His dominion. But these are
+not His “inheritance.” That is in the love of His children, in the
+character and number of His saints. _We_ are to be the praise of His
+glory.
+
+Let us learn, then, to respect ourselves. Let us not take the world’s
+tinsel for wealth, and spend our time, like the man in Bunyan’s dream,
+scraping with “the muck-rake” while the crown of life shines above our
+head. The riches of a Church--nay, of any human community--lies not in
+its moneyed resources, but in the men and women that compose it, in
+their godlike attributes of mind and heart, in their knowledge, their
+zeal, their love to God and man, in the purity, the gentleness, the
+truthfulness and courage and fidelity that are found amongst them. These
+are the qualities which give distinction to human life, and are
+beautiful in the eyes of God and holy angels. “Man that is in honour and
+understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.”
+
+III. One thing more we need to understand, or what we have seen already
+will be of little practical avail. We may see glorious visions, we may
+cherish high aspirations; and they may prove to be but the dreams of
+vanity. Nay, it is conceivable that God Himself might have wealth
+invested in our nature, a treasure beyond price, shipwrecked and sunk
+irrecoverably through our sin. What means exist for realizing this
+inheritance? what power is there at work to recover these forfeited
+hopes, and that glory of God of which we have come so miserably short?
+
+The answer lies in the apostle’s words: “That ye may know what is the
+exceeding greatness of His power toward us that believe,”--a power
+measured by “the energy of the might of His strength[67] which He
+wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at
+His right hand in the heavenly places.” This is the power that we have
+to count upon, the force that is yoked to the world’s salvation and is
+at the service of our faith. Its energy has turned the tide and reversed
+the stream of nature--in the person of Jesus Christ and in the course of
+human history. It has changed death to life. Above all, it certifies the
+forgiveness of sin and releases us from its liabilities; it transforms
+the law of sin and death into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus.
+
+We preachers hear it said sometimes: “You live in a speculative world.
+Your doctrines are ideal and visionary,--altogether too high for men as
+they are and the world as we find it. Human nature and experience, the
+coarse realities of life are all against you.”
+
+What would our objectors have said at the grave-side of Jesus? “The
+beautiful dreamer, the sublime idealist! He was too good for a world
+such as ours. It was sure to end like this. His ideas of life were
+utterly impracticable.” So they would have moralized. “And the good
+prophet talked--strangest fanaticism of all--of rising again on the
+third day! One thing at least we know, that the dead are dead and gone
+from us. No, we shall never see Jesus or His like again. Purity cannot
+live in this infected air. The grave ends all hope for men.” But,
+despite human nature and human experience, He has risen again, He lives
+for ever! That is the apostle’s message and testimony to the world. For
+those “who believe” it, all things are possible. A life is within our
+reach that seemed far off as earth from heaven. _You_ may become a
+perfect saint.
+
+From His open grave Christ breathed on His disciples, and through them
+on all mankind, the Holy Spirit. This is the efficient cause of
+Christianity,--the Spirit that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. The
+limit to its efficacy lies in the defects of our faith, in our failure
+to comprehend what God gave us in His Son. Is anything now too hard for
+the Lord? Shall anything be called impossible, in the line of God’s
+promise and man’s spiritual need? Can we put an arrest upon the working
+of this mysterious force, upon the Spirit of the new life, and say to
+it: Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?
+
+Look at Jesus where He was--the poor, tortured, wounded body, slain by
+our sins, lying cold and still in Joseph’s grave: then lift up your eyes
+and see Him _where He is_,--enthroned in the worship and wonder of
+heaven! Measure by that distance, by the sweep and lift of that almighty
+Arm, the strength of the forces engaged to your salvation, the might of
+the powers at work through the ages for the redemption of humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] See Westcott and Hort’s _New Testament in Greek_, vol. ii., pp.
+124, 125.
+
+[62] Dr. Beet abides by the critical text. He solves the difficulty by
+giving πίστις a double sense: “the faith among you in the Lord Jesus,
+and the _faithfulness_ towards all the saints.” See his Commentary on
+_Ephesians, etc._, pp. 284-6.
+
+[63] In 1 Thess. i. 7-9; 2 Thess. i. 4, the same thought enters into
+Paul’s thanksgiving; comp. 2 Cor. ix. 2.
+
+[64] This is the emphatic ἐπιγνῶσις, so frequent in the later epistles.
+See Lightfoot’s _note_ on Col. i. 9; or Cremer’s _Lexicon to N.T.
+Greek_.
+
+[65] See ch. iii. 3-5, iv. 11; and comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 26-40, etc.
+
+[66] Adolphe Monod: _Explication de l’épître de S. Paul aux Éphésiens_.
+A deeply spiritual and suggestive Commentary.
+
+[67] In this amplitude of expression there is no idle heaping up of
+words. The four synonyms for _power_ have each a distinct force in the
+sentence. Δύναμις is _power_ in general, as that which is able to effect
+some purpose; ἐνέργεια is _energy_, power in effective action and
+operation; κράτος is _might_, _mastery_, sovereign power,--in the New
+Testament used chiefly of the power of God; ἰσχύς is _force_,
+_strength_, power resident in some person and belonging to him. This is
+the order in which the words follow each other. Compare vi. 10 in the
+Greek.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTRINE.
+
+CHAPTER i. 20-iii. 13.
+
+    Ὑψηλῶν σφόδρα γέμει τῶν νοημάτων καὶ ὑπερόγκων. Ἃ γὰρ μηδαμοῦ σχέδον
+    ἐφθέγξατο, ταῦτα ἐνταῦθά φησιν.
+
+    JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: _In epistolam ad Ephesios._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST._
+
+    “He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand
+    in the heavenly _places_, far above all rule, and authority, and
+    power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
+    world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in
+    subjection under His feet, and Him He gave--the head over all
+    things--to the Church which is His body,--the fulness of Him that
+    filleth all in all.”--EPH. i. 20-23.
+
+
+The division that we make at verse 20, marking off at this point the
+commencement of the Doctrine of the epistle, may appear somewhat forced.
+The great doxology of the first half of the chapter is intensely
+theological; and the prayer which follows it, like that of the letter to
+the Colossians, melts into doctrine imperceptibly. The apostle teaches
+upon his knees. The things he has to tell his readers, and the things he
+has asked on their behalf from God, are to a great extent the same.
+Still the writer’s attitude in the second chapter is manifestly that of
+teaching; and his doctrine there is so directly based upon the
+concluding sentences of his prayer, that it is necessary for logical
+arrangement to place these verses within the doctrinal section of the
+epistle.
+
+The resurrection of Christ made men sensible that a new force of life
+had come into the world, of incalculable potency. This power was in
+existence before. In prelusive ways, it has wrought in the world from
+its foundation, and since the fall of man. By the incarnation of the Son
+of God it took possession of human flesh; by His sacrificial death it
+won its decisive triumph. But the virtue of these acts of Divine grace
+lay in their hiding of power, in the self-abnegation of the Son of God
+who emptied Himself and took a servant’s form, and became obedient unto
+death.
+
+With what a rebound did the “energy of the might of God’s strength” put
+forth itself in Him, when once this sacrifice was accomplished! Even His
+disciples who had seen Jesus still the tempest and feed the multitude
+from a handful of bread and call back the spirit to its mortal frame,
+had not dreamed of the might of Godhead latent in Him, until they beheld
+Him risen from the dead. He had promised this in words; but they
+understood His words only when they saw the fact, when He actually stood
+before them “alive after His passion.” The scene of Calvary--the cruel
+sufferings of their Master, His helpless ignominy and abandonment by
+God, the malignant triumph of his enemies--gave to this revelation an
+effect beyond measure astonishing and profound in its impression. From
+the stupor of grief and despair they were raised to a boundless hope, as
+Jesus rose from the death of the cross to glorious life and Godhead.
+
+Of the same nature was the effect produced by His manifestation to Paul
+himself. The Nazarene prophet known to Saul by report as an attractive
+teacher and worker of miracles, had made enormous pretensions,
+blasphemous if they were not true. He put Himself forward as the Messiah
+and the very Son of God! But when brought to the test, His power utterly
+failed. God disowned and forsook Him; and He “was crucified of
+weakness.” His followers declared, indeed, that He had returned from the
+grave. But who could believe them, a handful of Galilean enthusiasts,
+desperately clinging to the name of their disgraced leader! If He has
+risen, why does He not show Himself to others? Who can accept a
+crucified Messiah? The new faith is a madness, and an insult to our
+common Judaism! Such were Saul’s former thoughts of the Christ. But when
+his challenge was met and the Risen One confronted him in the way to
+Damascus, when from that Form of insufferable glory there came a voice
+saying, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest!” it was enough. Instantly
+the conviction penetrated his soul, “He liveth by the power of God.”
+Saul’s previous reasonings against the Messiahship of Jesus by the same
+rigorous logic were now turned into arguments for Him.
+
+It is “_the_ Christ,” let us observe, in whom God “wrought raising Him
+from the dead”: the Christ of Jewish hope (ver. 12), the centre and sum
+of the Divine counsel for the world (ver. 10),[68] the Christ whom in
+that moment never to be forgotten the humbled Saul recognized in the
+crucified Nazarene.
+
+The demonstration of the power of Christianity Paul had found in the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ. The power which raised Him from the dead
+is the working energy of our faith. Let us see what this mysterious
+power wrought in the Redeemer Himself; and then we will consider how it
+bears upon us. There are two steps indicated in Christ’s exaltation: He
+was raised _from the death of the cross to new life amongst men_; and
+again from the world of men He was raised _to the throne of God in
+heaven_. In the enthronement of Jesus Christ at the Father’s right
+hand, verses 22, 23 further distinguish two separate acts: there was
+conferred on Him _a universal Lordship_; and He was made specifically
+_Head of the Church_, being given to her for her Lord and Life, He who
+contains the fulness of the Godhead. Such is the line of thought marked
+out for us.
+
+
+I. _God raised the Christ from the dead._
+
+This assertion is the corner-stone of St Paul’s life and doctrine, and
+of the existence of Christendom. Did the event really take place? There
+were Christians at Corinth who affirmed, “There is no resurrection of
+the dead.” And there are followers of Jesus now who with deep sadness
+confess, like the author of _Obermann once more_:
+
+    “Now He is dead! Far hence He lies
+      In the lorn Syrian town;
+    And on His grave, with shining eyes,
+      The Syrian stars look down.”
+
+If we are driven to this surrender, compelled to think that it was an
+apparition, a creation of their own passionate longing and heated fancy
+that the disciples saw and conversed with during those forty days, an
+apparition sprung from his fevered remorse that arrested Saul on the
+Damascus road--if we no longer believe in Jesus and the resurrection, it
+is in vain that we still call ourselves Christians. The foundation of
+the Christian creed is struck away from under our feet. Its spell is
+broken; its energy is gone.
+
+Individual men may and do continue to believe in Christ, with no faith
+in the supernatural, men who are sceptics in regard to His resurrection
+and miracles. They believe in Himself, they say, not in His legendary
+wonders; in His character and teaching, in His beneficent influence--in
+the _spiritual_ Christ, whom no physical marvel can exalt above His
+intrinsic greatness. And such trust in Him, where it is sincere, He
+accepts for all that it is worth, from the believer’s heart. But this is
+not the faith that saved Paul, and built the Church. It is not the faith
+which will save the world. It is the faith of compromise and transition,
+the faith of those whose conscience and heart cling to Christ while
+their reason gives its verdict against Him. Such belief may hold good
+for the individuals who profess it; but it must die with them. No skill
+of reasoning or grace of sentiment will for long conceal its
+inconsistency. The plain, blunt sense of mankind will decide again, as
+it has done already, that Jesus Christ was either a blasphemer, or He
+was the Son of the eternal God; either He rose from the dead in very
+truth, or His religion is a fable. Christianity is not bound up with the
+infallibility of the Church, whether in Pope or Councils, nor with the
+inerrancy of the letter of Scripture: it stands or falls with the
+reality of the facts of the gospel, with the risen life of Christ and
+His presence in the Spirit amongst men.
+
+The fact of Christ’s resurrection is one upon which modern science has
+nothing new to say. The law of death is not a recent discovery. Men were
+as well aware of its universality in the first century as they are in
+the nineteenth, and as little disposed as we are ourselves to believe in
+the return of the dead to bodily life. The stark reality of death makes
+us all sceptics. Nothing is clearer from the narratives than the utter
+surprise of the friends of Jesus at His reappearance, and their complete
+unpreparedness for the event. They were not eager, but “_slow_ of heart
+to believe.” Their very love to the Master, as in the case of Thomas,
+made them fearful of self-deception. It is a shallow and an unjust
+criticism that dismisses the disciples as interested witnesses and
+predisposed to faith in the resurrection of their dead Master. Should we
+be thus credulous in the case of our best-beloved dead? The instinctive
+feeling that meets any thought of the kind, after the fact of death is
+once certain, is rather that of deprecation and aversion, such as Martha
+expressed when Jesus went to call her brother from his grave. In all the
+long record of human imposture and illusion, no resurrection story has
+ever found general credence outside of the Biblical revelation. No
+system of faith except our own has ever been built on the allegation
+that a dead man rose from the grave.
+
+Christ’s was not the only resurrection; but it is the only _final_
+resurrection. Lazarus of Bethany left his tomb at the word of Jesus, a
+living man; but he was still a mortal man, doomed to see corruption. He
+returned from the grave on this side, as he had entered it, “bound hand
+and foot with grave-clothes.” Not so with the Christ. He passed through
+the region of death and issued on the immortal side, escaped from the
+bondage of corruption. Therefore He is called the “firstfruits” and “the
+firstborn _out of_ the dead.”[69] Hence the alteration manifest in the
+risen form of Jesus. He was “changed,” as St Paul conceives those will
+be who await on earth their Lord’s return (1 Cor. xv. 51). The mortal in
+Him was swallowed up of life. The corpse that was laid in Joseph’s tomb
+was there no longer. From it another body has issued, recognized for the
+same person by look and voice and movement, but indescribably
+transfigured. Visible and tangible as the body of the Risen One
+was--“Handle me, and see,” He said--it was superior to material
+limitations; it belonged to a state whose laws transcend the range of
+our experience, in which the body is the pliant instrument of the
+animating spirit. From the Person of the risen Saviour the apostle
+formed his conception of the “spiritual body,” the “house from heaven”
+with which, as he teaches, each of the saints will be clothed--the
+wasted form that we lay down in the grave being transformed into the
+semblance of His “body of glory, according to the mighty working whereby
+He is able to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. iii. 20, 21).
+
+The resurrection of the Christ inaugurated a new order of things. It was
+like the appearance of the first living organism amidst dead matter, or
+of the first rational consciousness in the unconscious world. He “is,”
+says the apostle, the “beginning, first-begotten out of the dead” (Col.
+i. 18). With the harvest filling our granaries, we cease to wonder at
+the firstfruits; and in the new heavens and earth Christ’s resurrection
+will seem an entirely natural thing. Immortality will then be the normal
+condition of human existence.
+
+That resurrection, nevertheless, did homage to the fundamental law of
+science and of reason, that every occurrence, ordinary or extraordinary,
+shall have an adequate cause. The event was not more singular and unique
+than the nature of Him to whom it befell. Looking back over the Divine
+life and deeds of Jesus, St Peter said: “It was not possible that He
+should be holden of death.” How unfitting and repugnant to thought, that
+the common death of all men should come upon Jesus Christ! There was
+that in His Person, in its absolute purity and godlikeness, which
+repelled the touch of corruption. He was “marked out,” writes our
+apostle, “as Son of God, _according to His spirit of holiness_, by His
+resurrection from the dead” (Rom. i. 4). These two signs of Godhead
+agree in Jesus; and the second is no more superhuman than the first. For
+Him the supernatural was natural. There was a mighty working of the
+being of God latent in Him, which transcended and subdued to itself the
+laws of our physical frame, even more completely than they do the laws
+and conditions of the lower realms of nature.
+
+II. The power which raised Jesus our Lord from the dead could not leave
+Him in the world of sin and death. Lifting Him from hades to earth, by
+another step it exalted the risen Saviour above the clouds, and _seated
+Him at God’s right hand in the heavens_.
+
+The forty days were a halt by the way, a condescending pause in the
+operation of the almighty power that raised Him. “I ascend,” He said to
+the first that saw Him,--“I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my
+God and your God.” He must see His own in the world again; He must “show
+Himself alive after His passion by infallible proofs,” that their hearts
+may be comforted and knit together in the assurance of faith, that they
+may be prepared to receive His Spirit and to bear their witness to the
+world. Then He will ascend up where He was before, returning to the
+Father’s bosom. It was impossible that a spiritual body should tarry in
+a mortal dwelling; impossible that the familiar relations of
+discipleship should be resumed. No new follower can now ask of Him,
+“Rabbi, where dwellest Thou,” under what roof amid the homes of men? For
+He dwells with those that love Him always and everywhere, like the
+Father (John xiv. 23). From this time Christ will not be known after the
+flesh, but as the “Lord of the Spirit” (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+“In the heavenlies” now abides the Risen One. This expression, so
+frequent in the epistle as to be characteristic of it,[70] denotes not
+locality so much as condition and sphere. It speaks of the bright and
+deathless world of God and the angels, of which the sky has always been
+to men the symbol. Thither Christ ascended in the eyes of His apostles
+on the fortieth day from His rising. Once before His death its
+brightness for a moment had irradiated His form upon the Mount of
+Transfiguration. Clad in the like celestial splendour He showed Himself
+to His future apostle Paul, as to one born out of due time, to make him
+His minister and witness. Since then, of all the multitudes that have
+loved His appearing, no other has looked upon Him with bodily eyes. He
+dwells with the Father in light unapproachable.
+
+But rest and felicity are not enough for Him. Christ sits at the right
+hand of power, that He may _rule_. In those heavenly places, it seems,
+there are thrones higher and lower, names more or less eminent, but His
+stands clear above them all. In the realms of space, in the epochs of
+eternity there is none to rival our Lord Jesus, no power that does not
+owe Him tribute. God “hath put all things under His feet.” _The Christ_,
+who died on the cross, who rose in human form from the grave, is exalted
+to share the Father’s glory and dominion, is filled with God’s own
+fulness, and made without limitation or exception “Head over all
+things.”
+
+In his enumeration of the angelic orders in verse 21, the apostle
+follows the phraseology current at the time, without giving any precise
+dogmatic sanction to it. The epistle to the Colossians furnishes a
+somewhat different list (ch. i. 16); and in 1 Corinthians xv. 24 we find
+the “principality, dominion, and power” without the “lordship.” As
+Lightfoot says,[71] St Paul “brushes away all these speculations” about
+the ranks and titles of the angels, “without inquiring how much or how
+little truth there may be in them.... His language shows a spirit of
+impatience with this elaborate angelology.” There is, perhaps, a passing
+reproof conveyed by this sentence to the “worshipping of the angels”
+inculcated at the present time in Colossæ, to which other Asian Churches
+may have been drawn. “Paul’s faith saw the Risen and Rising One passing
+through and beyond and above successive ranks of angelic powers, until
+there was in heaven no grandeur which He had not left behind. Then,
+after naming heavenly powers known to him, he uses a universal phrase
+covering ‘not only’ those known by men living on earth ‘in the’ present
+‘age, but also’ those names which will be needed and used to describe
+men and angels throughout the eternal future” (Beet).
+
+The apostle appropriates here two sentences of Messianic prophecy, from
+Psalms cx. and viii. The former was addressed to the Lord’s Anointed,
+the King-Priest enthroned in Zion: “Sit thou on my right hand, until I
+make thine enemies thy footstool!” The latter text describes man in his
+pristine glory, as God formed him after His likeness and set him in
+command over His creation. This saying St Paul applies, with an
+unbounded scope, to the God-man raised from the dead, Founder of the new
+creation: “Thou madest Him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
+Thou hast put all things under His feet.” To the former of these
+passages St Paul repeatedly alludes; indeed, since our Lord quoted it in
+this sense, it became the standing designation of His heavenly
+dignity.[72] The words of Psalm viii. are brought in evidence again in
+Hebrews ii. 5-10, and expounded from a somewhat different standpoint. As
+the writer of the other epistle shows, this coronation belongs to the
+human race, and it falls to the Son of man to win it. St Paul in quoting
+the same Psalm is not insensible of its human reference. It was a
+prophecy for Jesus and His brethren, for Christ and the Church. So it
+forms a natural transition from the thought of Christ’s dominion over
+the universe (ver. 21) to that of His union with the Church (ver.
+22_b_).
+
+III. The second clause of verse 22 begins with an emphasis upon the
+_object_ which the English Version fails to recognize: “and _Him_ He
+gave”--the Christ exalted to universal authority--“_Him_ God gave, Head
+over all things [as He is], to the Church which is His body,--the
+fulness of Him who fills all things in all.”
+
+At the topmost height of His glory, with thrones and princedoms beneath
+His feet, _Christ is given to the Church_! The Head over all things, the
+Lord of the created universe, He--and none less or lower--is the Head of
+redeemed humanity. For the Church “is His body” (this clause is
+interjected by way of explanation): she is the vessel of His Spirit, the
+organic instrument of His Divine-human life. As the spirit belongs to
+its body, by the like fitness the Christ in His surpassing glory is the
+possession of the community of believing men. The body claims its head,
+the wife her husband. No matter where Christ is, however high in heaven,
+He belongs to us. Though the Bride is lowly and of poor estate, He is
+hers! and she knows it, and holds fast His heart. She recks little of
+the people’s ignorance and scorn, if their Master is her affianced Lord,
+and she the best-beloved in His eyes.
+
+How rich is this gift of the Father to the Church in the Son of His
+love, the concluding words of the paragraph declare: “Him He gave ... to
+the Church ... [gave] the fulness of Him that fills all in all.” In the
+risen and enthroned Christ God bestowed on men a gift in which the
+Divine plenitude that fills creation is embraced. For this last clause,
+it is clear to us, does not qualify “the Church which is His body,” and
+expositors have needlessly taxed their ingenuity with the incongruous
+apposition of “body” and “fulness”; it belongs to the grand Object of
+the foregoing description, to “the Christ” whom God raised from the dead
+and invested with His own prerogatives. The two separate designations,
+“Head over all things” and “Fulness of the All-filler,” are parallel,
+and alike point back to _Him_ who stands with a weight of gathered
+emphasis--heaped up from verse 19 onwards--at the front of this last
+sentence (ver. 22_b_). There has been nothing to prepare the reader to
+ascribe the august title of the _pleroma_, the Divine fulness, to the
+Church--enough for her, surely, if she is His body and He God’s gift to
+her--but there has been everything to prepare us to crown the Lord Jesus
+with this glory. To that which God had wrought in Him and bestowed on
+Him, as previously related, verse 23 adds something more and greater
+still; for it shows what God makes the Christ to be, not to the
+creatures, to the angels, to the Church, _but to God Himself_![73]
+
+Our text is in strict agreement with the sayings about “the fulness” in
+Colossians i. 15-20 and ii. 9, 10; as well as with the later references
+of this epistle, in chapter iii. 19, iv. 13; and with John i. 16. This
+title belongs to Christ as God is in Him and communicates to Him all
+Divine powers. It was, in the apostle’s view, a new and distinct act by
+which the Father bestowed on the incarnate Son, raised by His power from
+the dead, the functions of Deity. Of this glory Christ had of His own
+accord “emptied Himself” in becoming man for our salvation (Phil. ii. 6,
+7). Therefore when the sacrifice was effected and the time of
+humiliation past, it “was the Father’s pleasure that all the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him” (Col. i. 19). At no point did Christ
+exalt Himself, or arrogate the glory once renounced. He prayed, when the
+hour was come: “Now, Father, _glorify Thou me_ with Thine own self, with
+the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” It was for the
+Father to say, as He raised and enthroned Him: “Thou art my Son; I
+to-day have begotten Thee!” (Acts xiii. 33).
+
+Again there was poured into the empty, humbled and impoverished form of
+the Son of God the brightness of the Father’s glory and the infinitude
+of the Father’s authority and power. The majesty that He had foregone
+was restored to Him in undiminished measure. But how great a change
+meanwhile in Him who received it! This plenitude devolves not now on the
+eternal Son in His pure Godhead, but on the Christ, the Head and
+Redeemer of mankind. God who fills the universe with His presence, with
+His cherishing love and sustaining power, has conferred the fulness of
+all that He is upon our Christ. He has given Him, so replenished and
+perfected, to the body of His saints, that He may dwell and work in them
+for ever.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[68] See the note upon this definite article on p. 47.
+
+[69] Πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, Col. i. 18: comp. Rom. vi. 13, x. 7, for
+the force of the preposition. Hence the peculiar ἐξανάστασιν τὴν ἐκ
+νεκρῶν of Phil. iii. 10, 11,--the _out-and-out_ resurrection, which will
+utterly remove us from the sphere of death.
+
+[70] Ver. 3, ch. ii. 6, iii. 10, vi. 12; nowhere else in the New
+Testament. Comp., however, 1 Cor. xv. 40, 48; Phil. ii. 10; Heb. viii.
+5, ix. 23, xi. 16, xii. 22, where the adjective has the same kind of
+use.
+
+[71] _Note_ on Col. i. 16.
+
+[72] Matt. xxii. 41-46, also in Mark and Luke; Acts ii. 34, 35; Rom.
+viii. 34; Col. iii. 1; Heb. i. 13; 1 Peter iii. 22, etc.
+
+[73] The reader of the Old Testament, unless otherwise advertized, must
+inevitably have referred the words _who filleth all things in all_ to
+the Supreme God. See Jer. xxiii. 24; Isai. vi. 1, 3; Hag. ii. 7; Ps.
+xxxiii. 5, etc.; Exod. xxxi. 3. “That filleth all in all” is an
+attribute belonging to “the same God, that worketh all in all” (1 Cor.
+xii. 6). Comp. iv. 6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_FROM DEATH TO LIFE._
+
+    “And you _did He quicken_, when ye were dead through your trespasses
+    and sins, wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of
+    this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the
+    spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we
+    also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of
+    the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
+    even as the rest:--but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love
+    wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our
+    trespasses, quickened us together with the Christ (by grace have ye
+    been saved), and raised us up together and made us to sit together
+    in the heavenly _places_ in Christ Jesus.”--EPH. ii. 1-6.
+
+
+We pass by a sudden transition, just as in Colossians i. 21, 22, from
+the thought of that which God wrought in Christ Himself to that which He
+works through Christ in believing men. So God raised, exalted, and
+glorified His Son Jesus Christ (i. 19-23)--_and you_! The finely woven
+threads of the apostle’s thought are frequently severed, and awkward
+chasms made in the highway of his argument by our chapter and verse
+divisions. The words inserted in our Version (_did He quicken_) are
+borrowed by anticipation from verse 5; but they are more than supplied
+already in the foregoing context. “The same almighty Hand that was laid
+upon the body of the dead Christ and lifted Him from Joseph’s grave to
+the highest seat in heaven, is now laid upon your soul. It has raised
+_you_ from the grave and death of sin to share by faith His celestial
+life.”
+
+The apostle, in verse 3, pointedly includes amongst the “dead in
+trespasses and sins” himself and his Jewish fellow-believers as they
+“once lived,” when they obeyed the motions and “volitions of the flesh,”
+and so were “by birth” not children of favour, as Jews presumed, but
+“children of anger, even as the rest.”[74]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This passage gives us a sublime view of the event of our conversion. It
+associates that change in us with the stupendous miracle which took
+place in our Redeemer. The one act is a continuation of the other. There
+is an acting over again in us of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection and
+ascension, when we realize through faith that which was done for mankind
+in Him. At the same time, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus is no
+mere legacy, to be received or declined; it is not something done once
+for all, and left to be appropriated passively by our individual will.
+It is a “_power_ of God unto salvation,” unceasingly operative and
+effective, that works “of faith and _unto faith_” that summons men to
+faith, challenging human confidence wherever its message travels and
+awakening the spiritual possibilities dormant in our nature.
+
+It is a supernatural force, then, which is at work upon us in the word
+of Christ. It is a resurrection-power, that turns death into life. And
+it is a power instinct with love. The love which went out towards the
+slain and buried Jesus when the Father stooped to raise Him from the
+dead, bends over us as we lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts
+itself with a might no less transcendent, that it may raise us from the
+dust of death to sit with Him in the heavenly places (vv. 4-6).
+
+Let us look at the two sides of the change effected in men by the
+gospel--at the death they leave, and the life into which they enter. Let
+us contemplate the task to which this unmatched power has set itself.
+
+I. _You that were dead_, the apostle says.
+
+Jesus Christ came into a dead world--He the one living man, alive in
+body, soul, and spirit--alive to God in the world. He was, like none
+besides, aware of God and of God’s love, breathing in His Spirit,
+“living not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from His
+mouth.” “This,” He said, “is life eternal.” If His definition was
+correct, if it be life to know God, then the world into which Christ
+entered by His human birth, the world of heathendom and Judaism, was
+veritably dying or dead--“dead indeed unto God.”
+
+Its condition was visible to discerning eyes. It was a world rotting in
+its corruption, mouldering in its decay, and which to His pure sense had
+the moral aspect and odour of the charnel-house. We realize very
+imperfectly the distress, the inward nausea, the conflict of disgust and
+pity which the fact of being in such a world as this and belonging to it
+caused in the nature of Jesus Christ, in a soul that was in perfect
+sympathy with God. Never was there loneliness such as His, the solitude
+of life in a region peopled with the dead. The joy which Christ had in
+His little flock, in those whom the Father had given Him out of the
+world, was proportionately great. In them He found companionship,
+teachableness, signs of a heart awakening towards God--men to whom life
+was in some degree what it was to Him. He had come, as the prophet in
+his vision, into “the valley full of dry bones,” and He “prophesied to
+these slain, that they might live.” What a comfort to see, at His first
+words, a shaking in the valley,--to see some who stirred at His voice,
+who stood upon their feet and gathered round Him--not yet a great army,
+but a band of living men! In their breasts, inspired from His, was the
+life of the future. “I am come,” He said, “that they might have life.”
+It was the work of Jesus Christ to breathe His vital spirit into the
+corpse of humanity, to reanimate the world.
+
+When St Paul speaks of his readers in their heathen condition as “dead,”
+it is not a figure of speech. He does not mean that they were like dead
+men, that their state resembled death; “nor only that they were in peril
+of death; but he signifies a real and present death” (Calvin). They
+were, in the inmost sense and truth of things, _dead men_. We are
+twofold creatures, two-lived,--spirits cased in flesh. Our human nature
+is capable, therefore, of strange duplicities. It is possible for us to
+be alive and flourishing upon one side of our being, while we are
+paralyzed or lifeless upon the other. As our bodies live in commerce
+with the light and air, in the environment of house and food and daily
+exercise of the limbs and senses under the economy of material nature,
+so our spirits live by the breath of prayer, by faith and love towards
+God, by reverence and filial submission, by communion with things unseen
+and eternal. “With Thee,” says the Psalmist to his God, “is the fountain
+of life: in Thy light we see light.” We must daily resort to that
+fountain and drink of its pure stream, we must faithfully walk in that
+light, or there is no such life for us. The soul that wants a true faith
+in God, wants the proper spring and principle of its being. It sees not
+the light, it bears not the voices, it breathes not the air of that
+higher world where its origin and its destiny lie.
+
+The man who walks the earth a sinner against God, becomes by the act and
+fact of his transgression a dead man. He has imbibed the fatal poison;
+it runs in his veins. The doom of sin lies on his unforgiven spirit. He
+carries death and judgement about with him. They lie down with him at
+night and wake with him in the morning; they take part in his
+transactions; they sit by his side in the feast of life. His works are
+“dead works”; his joys and hopes are all shadowed and tainted. Within
+his living frame he bears a coffined soul. With the machinery of life,
+with the faculties and possibilities of a spiritual being, the man lies
+crushed under the activity of the senses, wasted and decaying for want
+of the breath of the Spirit of God. In its coldness and
+powerlessness--too often in its visible corruption--his nature shows the
+symptoms of advancing death. It is dead as the tree is dead, cut off
+from its root; as the fire is dead, when the spark is gone out; dead as
+a man is dead, when the heart stops.
+
+As it is with the departed saints sleeping in Christ,--“put to death,
+indeed, in the flesh, but living in the spirit,”--so by a terrible
+inversion with the wicked in this life. They are put to death, indeed,
+in the spirit, while they live in the flesh. They may be and often are
+powerfully alive and active in their relations to the world of sense,
+while on the unseen and Godward side utterly paralyzed. Ask such a man
+about his business or family concerns; touch on affairs of politics or
+trade,--and you deal with a living mind, its powers and susceptibilities
+awake and alert. But let the conversation pass to other themes; sound
+him on questions of the inner life; ask him what he thinks of Christ,
+how he stands towards God, how he fares in the spiritual conflict,--and
+you strike a note to which there is no response. You have taken him out
+of his element. He is a practical man, he tells you; he does not live in
+the clouds, or hunt after shadows; he believes in hard facts, in things
+that he can grasp and handle. “The natural man perceiveth not the things
+of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him.” They are pictures to
+the eye of the blind, heavenly music to the stone-deaf.
+
+And yet that hardened man of the world--starve and ignore his own spirit
+and shut up its mystic chambers as he will--cannot easily destroy
+himself. He has not extirpated his religious nature, nor crushed out,
+though he has suppressed, the craving for God in his breast. And when
+the callous surface of his life is broken through, under some unusual
+stress, some heavy loss or the shock of a great bereavement, one may
+catch a glimpse of the deeper world within of which the man himself was
+so little conscious. And what is to be seen there? Haunting memories of
+past sin, fears of a conscience fretted already by the undying worm,
+forms of weird and ghostly dread flitting amid the gloom and dust of
+death through that closed house of the spirit,--
+
+    “The bat and owl inhabit here:
+      The snake nests on the altar stone:
+    The sacred vessels moulder near:
+      The image of the God is gone!”
+
+In this condition of death the word of life comes to men. It is the
+state not of heathendom alone; but of those also, favoured with the
+light of revelation, who have not opened to it the eyes of the heart, of
+all who are “doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts”--who are
+governed by their own impulses and ideas and serve no will above the
+world of sense.[75] Without distinction of birth or formal religious
+standing, “all” who thus live and walk are dead while they live. Their
+_trespasses and sins_ have killed them. From first to last Scripture
+testifies: “Your sins have separated between you and your God.” We find
+a hundred excuses for our irreligion: there is the cause. There is
+nothing in the universe to separate any one of us from the love and
+fellowship of his Maker but his own unforsaken sin.
+
+It is true, there are other hindrances to faith, intellectual
+difficulties of great weight and seriousness, that press upon many
+minds. For such men Christ has all possible sympathy and patience. There
+is a real, though hidden faith that “lives in honest doubt.” Some men
+have more faith than they suppose, while others certainly have much
+less. One has a name to live, and yet is dead; another, perchance, has a
+name to die, and yet is alive to God through Jesus Christ. There are
+endless complications, self-contradictions, and misunderstandings in
+human nature. “Many are first” in the ranks of religious profession and
+notoriety, “which shall be last, and the last first.” We make the
+largest allowance for this element of uncertainty in the line that
+bounds faith from unfaith; “The Lord knoweth them that are His.” No
+intellectual difficulty, no mere misunderstanding, will ultimately or
+for long separate between God and the soul that He has made.
+
+It is _antipathy_ that separates. “They did not like to retain God in
+their knowledge”; that is Paul’s explanation of the ungodliness and vice
+of the ancient world. And it holds good still in countless instances.
+“Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion in order to
+encourage each other in sin, because they need encouragement. They know
+that they ought to be other than they are; but are glad to avail
+themselves of anything that looks like argument, to overcome their
+consciences withal” (Newman). The fashionable scepticism of the day too
+often conceals an inner revolt against the moral demands of the
+Christian life; it is the pretext of a carnal mind, which is “enmity
+against God, because it is not subject to His law.” Christ’s sentence
+upon unbelief as He knew it was this: “Light is come into the world; and
+men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.” So
+said the keenest and the kindest judge of men. If we are refusing Him
+our faith, let us be very sure that this condemnation does not touch
+ourselves. Is there no passion that bribes and suborns the intellect? no
+desire in the soul that dreads His entrance? no evil deeds that shelter
+themselves from His accusing light?
+
+When the apostle says of his Gentile readers that they “once walked in
+the way of the age, according to the course of this world,[76] according
+to the prince of the power of the air,” the former part of his statement
+is clear enough. The age in which he lived was godless to the last
+degree; the stream of the world’s life ran in turbid course toward moral
+ruin. But the second clause is obscure. The “prince” (or “ruler”) who
+guides the world along its career of rebellion is manifestly Satan, the
+spirit of darkness and hate whom St Paul entitles “the god of this
+world” (2 Cor. iv. 4), and in whom Jesus recognized, under the name of
+“the prince of the world,” His great antagonist (John xiv. 30).
+
+But what has this spirit of evil to do with “the air”? The Jewish rabbis
+supposed that the terrestrial atmosphere was Satan’s abode, that it was
+peopled by demons flitting about invisibly in the encompassing element.
+But this is a notion foreign to Scripture--certainly not contained in
+chapter vi. 12--and, in its bare physical sense, without point or
+relevance to this passage. There follows in immediate apposition to “the
+domain of the air, _the spirit_ that now works in the sons of
+disobedience.” Surely, _the air_ here partakes (if it be only here) of
+the figurative significance of _spirit_ (i.e. _breath_). St Paul refines
+the Jewish idea of evil spirits dwelling in the surrounding atmosphere
+into an ethical conception of _the atmosphere of the world_, as that
+from which the sons of disobedience draw their breath and receive the
+spirit that inspires them. Here lies, in truth, the dominion of Satan.
+In other words, Satan constituted the _Zeitgeist_.
+
+As Beck profoundly remarks upon this text:[77] “The Power of the air is
+a fitting designation for the prevailing spirit of the times, whose
+influence spreads itself like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of
+the world. It manifests itself as a contagious nature-power; and a
+_spiritus rector_ works within it, which takes possession of the world
+of men, alike in individuals and in society, and assumes the direction
+of it. The form of expression here employed is based on the conception
+of evil peculiar to Scripture. In Scripture, evil and the principle of
+evil are not conceived in a purely spiritual way; nor could this be the
+case in a world of fleshly constitution, where the spiritual has the
+sensuous for its basis and its vehicle. Spiritual evil exists as a power
+immanent in cosmical nature.”[78] Concerning great tracts of the earth,
+and large sections even of Christianized communities, we must still
+confess with St John: “The world lieth in the Evil One.” The air is
+impregnated with the infection of sin;[79] its germs float about us
+constantly, and wherever they find lodgement they set up their deadly
+fever. Sin is the malarial poison native to our soil; it is an epidemic
+that runs its course through the entire “age of this world.”
+
+Above this feverous, sin-laden atmosphere the apostle sees God’s anger
+brooding in threatening clouds. For our trespasses and sins are, after
+all, not forced on us by our environment. Those offences by which we
+provoke God, lie in our nature; they are no mere casual acts, they
+belong to our bias and disposition. Sin is a constitutional malady.
+There exists a bad element in our human nature, which corresponds but
+too truly to the course and current of the world around us. This the
+apostle acknowledges for himself and his law-honouring Jewish kindred:
+“We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” So he wrote in
+the sad confession of Romans vii. 14-23: “I see a different law in my
+members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into
+captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”
+
+It is upon this “other law,” the contradiction of His own, upon the
+sinfulness beneath the sin, that God’s displeasure rests. Human law
+notes the overt act: “the Lord looketh upon the heart.” There is
+nothing more bitter and humiliating to a conscientious man than the
+conviction of this penetrating Divine insight, this detection to himself
+of his incurable sin and the hollowness of his righteousness before God.
+How it confounds the proud Pharisee to learn that he _is_ as other men
+are,--and even as this publican!
+
+“The sons of disobedience” must needs be “children of wrath.” All sin,
+whether in nature or practice, is the object of God’s fixed displeasure.
+It cannot be matter of indifference to our Father in heaven that His
+human children are disobedient toward Himself. Children of His favour or
+anger we are each one of us, and at every moment. We “keep His
+commandments, and abide in His love”; or we do not keep them, and are
+excluded. It is His smile or frown that makes the sunshine or the gloom
+of our inner life. How strange that men should argue that God’s love
+forbids His wrath! It is, in truth, the cause of it. I could neither
+love nor fear a God who did not care enough about me to be angry with me
+when I sin. If my child does wilful wrong, if by some act of greed or
+passion he imperils his moral future and destroys the peace and
+well-being of the house, shall I not be grieved with him, with an anger
+proportioned to the love I bear him? How much more shall your heavenly
+Father--how much more justly and wisely and mercifully!
+
+St Paul feels no contradiction between the words of verse 3 and those
+that follow. The same God whose wrath burns against the sons of
+disobedience while they so continue, is “rich in mercy” and “loved us
+even when we were dead in our trespasses!” He pities evil men, and to
+save them spared not His Son from death; but Almighty God, the Father of
+glory, hates and loathes the evil that is in them, and has determined
+that if they will not let it go they shall perish with it.
+
+II. Such was the death in which Paul and his readers once had lain. But
+God in His “great love” has “_made them to live_ along with the Christ.”
+
+How wonderful to have witnessed a resurrection: to see the pale cheek of
+the little maid, Jairus’ daughter, flush again with the tints of life,
+and the still frame begin to stir, and the eyes softly open--and she
+looks upon the face of Jesus! or to watch Lazarus, four days dead,
+coming out of his tomb, slowly, and as one dreaming, with hands and feet
+bound in the grave-clothes. Still more marvellous to have beheld the
+Prince of Life at the dawn of the third day issue from Joseph’s grave,
+bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen glory as one
+refreshed from slumber.
+
+But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for their marvel, that
+take place upon this earth day by day. When a human soul awakes from its
+trespasses and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart that
+was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God breathes into a spirit lying
+powerless and buried in the flesh, there is as true a rising from the
+dead as when Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was of this
+spiritual resurrection that He said: “The hour cometh, and now is, when
+the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
+shall live.” Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily
+resurrection of mankind: “Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in
+which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come
+forth!” The second wonder only matches and consummates the first (John
+v. 24-28).
+
+“This is life eternal, to know God the Father,”--the life, as the
+apostle elsewhere calls it, that is “life indeed.” It came to St Paul by
+a new creation, when, as he describes it, “God who said, Light shall
+shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
+knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ.” We are born
+again--the God-consciousness is born within us: an hour mysterious and
+decisive as that in which our personal consciousness first emerged and
+the soul knew itself. Now it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: “I
+have seen God face to face; and my life is preserved.” God and the soul
+have met in Christ--and are reconciled.
+
+The words the apostle uses--_gave us life_--_raised us up_--_seated us
+in the heavenly places_--embrace the whole range of salvation. “Those
+united with Christ are through grace delivered from their state of
+death, not only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation of
+Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed to them; but by the
+life-giving energy of God they are brought out of their condition of
+death into a new and actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of
+the Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration” (Beck).
+This comprehensive action of the Divine grace upon believing men takes
+place by a constant and constantly deepening union of the soul with
+Christ. This is well expressed by A. Monod: “The entire history of the
+Son of man is reproduced in the man who believes in Him, not by a simple
+moral analogy, but by a spiritual communication which is the true secret
+of our justification as well as of our sanctification, and indeed of our
+whole salvation.”
+
+There is no repetition in the three verbs employed, which are alike
+extended by the Greek preposition _with_ (_syn_). The first sentence
+(raised us up _with the Christ_) virtually includes everything; it shows
+us one with Christ who lives evermore to God. The second sentence
+gathers into its scope all believers--the _you_ of verse 1 and the _we_
+of verse 3: “He raised us up together, and together made us sit in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Nothing is more characteristic of our
+epistle than this turn of thought. To the conception of our _union with
+Christ_ in His celestial life, it adds that of our _union with each
+other in Christ_ as sharers in common of that life. Christ “reconciles
+us in one body unto God” (ver. 16). We sit not alone, but together in
+the heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this completes our
+salvation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[74] For the antithesis of “you” and “we,” comp. vv. 11-18, ch. i, 12,
+13; also Rom. iii. 19, 23 (_For there is no distinction_), Gal. ii. 15.
+
+[75] Ποιοῦντες τὰ θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν (ver. 3).
+
+[76] Perhaps this double rendering may bring out the force of κατὰ τὸν
+αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου.
+
+[77] In the posthumous _Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser_--a
+valuable exposition, marked by Beck’s theological acumen and lucidity.
+
+[78] The φύσει of verse 3 thus corresponds to the ἐξουσία τοῦ ἀέρος of
+verse 2. “Sin entered into _the world_” (κόσμος), Rom. v. 12, which
+signifies more than the nature of individual men.
+
+[79] I John iii. 8; comp. John viii. 41-44.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_SAVED FOR AN END._
+
+    “That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
+    grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye
+    been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, _it is_ the
+    gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His
+    workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
+    prepared that we should walk in them.”--EPH. ii. 7-10.
+
+
+The plan which God has formed for men in Christ is of great dimensions
+every way,--in its length no less than in its breadth and height. He
+“raised us up and seated us together [Gentiles with Jews] in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that _in the ages which are coming on_
+He might show the surpassing riches of His grace.” All the races of
+mankind and all future ages are embraced in the redeeming purpose, and
+are to share in its boundless wealth. Nor are the ages past excluded
+from its operations. God “afore prepared the good works in which” He
+summons us to walk. The highway of the new life has been in building
+since time began.
+
+Thus large and limitless is the range of “the purpose and grace given us
+in Christ Jesus before times eternal” (2 Tim. i. 9). But what strikes us
+most in this passage is the exuberance of the grace itself. Twice over
+the apostle exclaims, “By grace you are saved”: once in verse 5, in an
+eager, almost jealous parenthesis, where he hastens to assure the
+readers of their deliverance from the fearful condition just described
+(vv. 1-3, 5). Again, deliberately and with full definition he states the
+same fact, in verse 8: “For by grace you are saved, through faith; and
+this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It does not come of
+works, to the end that none may boast.”
+
+These words place us on familiar ground. We recognize the Paul of
+Galatians and Romans, the dialect and accent of the apostle of salvation
+by faith. But scarcely anywhere do we find this wonder-working grace so
+affluently described. “God being rich in mercy, for the great love
+wherewith He loved us--the exceeding riches of His grace, shown in
+kindness toward us--the gift of God.” _Mercy_, _love_, _kindness_,
+_grace_, _gift_: what a constellation is here! These terms present the
+character of God in the gospel under the most delightful aspects, and in
+vivid contrast to the picture of our human state outlined in the
+beginning of the chapter.
+
+_Mercy_ denotes the Divine pitifulness towards feeble, suffering men,
+akin to those “compassions of God” to which the apostle repeatedly
+appeals.[80] It is a constant attribute of God in the Old Testament, and
+fills much the same place there that grace does in the New. “Of mercy
+and judgement” do the Psalmists sing--of mercy most. Out of the thunder
+and smoke of Sinai He declared His name: “Jehovah, a God full of
+compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and
+truth, keeping mercy for thousands.” The dread of God’s justice, the
+sense of His dazzling holiness and almightiness threw His mercy into
+bright relief and gave to it an infinite preciousness. It is the
+contrast which brings in “mercy” here, in verse 4, by antithesis to
+“wrath” (ver. 3).[81] These qualities are complementary. The sternest
+and strongest natures are the most compassionate. God is “_rich_ in
+mercy.” The wealth of His Being pours itself out in the exquisite
+tendernesses, the unwearied forbearance and forgivingness of His
+compassion towards men. The Judge of all the earth, whose hate of evil
+is the fire of hell, is gentler than the softest-hearted mother,--rich
+in mercy as He is grand and terrible in wrath.
+
+God’s mercy regards us as we are weak and miserable: His _love_ regards
+us as we are, in spite of trespass and offence, His offspring,--objects
+of “much love” amid much displeasure, “even when we were dead through
+our trespasses.” What does the story of the prodigal son mean but this?
+and what Christ’s great word to Nicodemus (John iii. 16)?--_Grace_ and
+_kindness_ are love’s executive. Grace is love in administration, love
+counteracting sin and seeking our salvation. Christ is the embodiment of
+grace; the cross its supreme expression; the gospel its message to
+mankind; and Paul himself its trophy and witness.[82] The “overpassing
+riches” of grace is that affluence of wealth in which through Christ it
+“superabounded” to the apostolic age and has outdone the magnitude of
+sin (Rom. v. 20), in such measure that St Paul sees future ages gazing
+with wonder at its benefactions to himself and his fellow-believers.
+Shown “in _kindness_ toward us,” he says,--in a condescending
+fatherliness, that forgets its anger and softens its old severity into
+comfort and endearment. God’s kindness is the touch of His hand, the
+accent of His voice, the cherishing breath of His Spirit. Finally, this
+generosity of the Divine grace, this infinite goodwill of God toward
+men, takes expression in _the gift_--the gift of Christ, the gift of
+righteousness (Rom. v. 15-18), the gift of eternal life (Rom. vi. 23);
+or--regarded, as it is here, in the light of experience and
+possession--_the gift of salvation_.
+
+The opposition of _gift_ and _debt_, of gratuitous salvation through
+faith to salvation earned by works of law, belongs to the marrow of St
+Paul’s divinity. The teaching of the great evangelical epistles is
+condensed into the brief words of verses 8 and 9. The reason here
+assigned for God’s dealing with men by way of gift and making them
+absolutely debtors--“lest any one should boast”--was forced upon the
+apostle’s mind by the stubborn pride of legalism; it is stated in terms
+identical with those of the earlier letters. Men will glory in their
+virtues before God; they flaunt the rags of their own righteousness, if
+any such pretext, even the slightest, remains to them. We sinners are a
+proud race, and our pride is oftentimes the worst of our sins. Therefore
+God humbles us by His compassion. He makes to us a free gift of His
+righteousness, and excludes every contribution from our store of merit;
+for if we could supply anything, we should inevitably boast as though
+all were our own. We must be content to receive mercy, love, grace,
+kindness--everything, without deserving the least fraction of the
+immense sum. How it strips our vanity; how it crushes us to the
+dust--“the weight of pardoning love!”
+
+Concerning the office of _faith_ in salvation we have already spoken in
+Chapter IV.[83] It is on the objective fact rather than the subjective
+means of salvation that the apostle lays stress in this passage. His
+readers do not seem to have realized sufficiently what God has given
+them and the greatness of the salvation already accomplished. They
+measured inadequately the power which had touched and changed their
+lives (i. 19). St Paul has shown them the depth to which they were
+formerly sunk, and the height to which they have been raised (vv. 1-6).
+He can therefore assure them, and he does it with redoubled emphasis:
+“You _are saved_; By grace you are saved men!”[84] Not, “You will be
+saved”; nor, “You were saved”; nor, “You are in course of
+salvation,”--for salvation has many moods and tenses,--but, in the
+perfect passive tense, he asserts the glorious accomplished _fact_. With
+the same reassuring emphasis in chapter i. 7 he declared, “We have
+redemption in His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”
+
+Here is St Paul’s doctrine of Assurance. It was laid down by Christ
+Himself when He said: “He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal
+life.” This sublime confidence is the ruling note of St John’s great
+epistle: “We know that we are in Him.... We know that we have passed out
+of death into life.... This is the victory that overcometh the world,
+even our faith.” It was this confidence of present salvation that made
+the Church irresistible. With its foundation secure, the house of life
+can be steadily and calmly built up. Under the shelter of the full
+assurance of faith, in the sunshine of God’s love felt in the heart, all
+spiritual virtues bloom and flourish. But with a faith hesitant,
+distracted, that is sure of no doctrine in the creed and cannot plant a
+firm foot anywhere, nothing prospers in the soul or in the Church. Oh
+for the clear accent, the ringing, joyous note of apostolic assurance!
+We want a faith not loud, but deep; a faith not born of sentiment and
+human sympathy, but that comes from the vision of the living God; a
+faith whose rock and corner-stone is neither the Church nor the Bible,
+but Christ Jesus Himself.
+
+Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul and John, to
+“assure our hearts” before God. With death confronting us, with the
+hideous evil of the world oppressing us; when the air is laden with the
+contagion of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast of
+doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly through the haze of an
+all-encompassing scepticism and a hundred voices say, in mockery or
+grief, Where is now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our faith
+refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless,--then is the time for the
+Christian assurance to recover its first energy and to rise again in
+radiant strength from the heart of the Church, from the depths of its
+mystic life where it is hid with Christ in God.
+
+_You are saved!_ cries the apostle; not forgetting that his readers have
+their battle to fight, and many hazards yet to run (vi. 10-13). But they
+hold the earnest of victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit
+they sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death, temptation,
+persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly history, by these God means to
+perfect that which He has begun in His saints--“if you continue in the
+faith, grounded and firm” (Col. i. 23). That condition is expressed, or
+implied, in all assurance of final salvation. It is a condition which
+excites to watchfulness, but can never cause misgiving to a loyal heart.
+God is for us! He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus
+who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God, and there
+intercedes for us. _Quis separabit?_[85]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the epistle of the Church and of humanity. It dwells on the
+grand, objective aspects of the truth, rather than upon its subjective
+experiences. It does not invite us to rest in the comforts and delights
+of grace, but to lift up our eyes and see whither Christ has translated
+us and what is the kingdom that we possess in Him. God “quickened us
+together with the Christ”: He “raised us up, He made us to sit _in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus_.” Henceforth “our citizenship is in
+heaven” (Phil. iii. 20).
+
+This is the inspiring thought of the third group of St Paul’s epistles;
+we heard it in the first note of his song of praise (i. 3). It supplies
+the principle from which St Paul unfolds the beautiful conception of the
+Christian life contained in the third chapter of the companion letter to
+the Colossians: “Your life is hid with the Christ in God”; therefore
+“seek the things that are above, where He is.” We live in two worlds at
+once. Heaven lies about us in this new mystic childhood of our spirit.
+There our names are written; thither our thoughts and hopes resort. Our
+treasure is there; our heart we have lodged there, with Christ in God.
+_He_ is there, the Lord of the Spirit, from whom we draw each moment
+the life that flows into His members. In the greatness of His love
+conquering sin and death, time and space, He is with us to the world’s
+end. May we not say that we, too, are with Him and shall be with Him
+always? So we reckon in the logic of our faith and at the height of our
+high calling, though the soul creeps and drudges upon the lower levels.
+
+    “With Him we are gone up on high,
+      Since He is ours and we are His;
+    With Him we reign above the sky,
+      We walk upon our subject seas!”
+
+In his lofty flights of thought the apostle always has some practical
+and homely end in view. The earthly and heavenly, the mystical and the
+matter-of-fact were not distant and repugnant, but interfused in his
+mind. From the celestial heights of the life hidden with Christ in God
+(ver. 6), he brings us down in a moment and without any sense of
+discrepancy to the prosaic level of “good works” (ver. 10). The love
+which viewed us from eternity, the counsels of Him who works all things
+in all, enter into the humblest daily duties.
+
+Grace, moreover, sets us great tasks. There should be something to show
+in deed and life for the wealth of kindness spent upon us, some visible
+and commensurate result of the vast preparations of the gospel plan. Of
+this result the apostle saw the earnest in the work of faith wrought by
+his Gentile Churches.
+
+St Paul was the last man in the world to undervalue human effort, or
+disparage good work of any sort. It is, in his view, the end aimed at in
+all that God bestows on His people, in all that He Himself works in
+them. Only let this end be sought in God’s way and order. Man’s doings
+must be the fruit and not the root of his salvation. “Not _of_ works,”
+but “_for_ good works” were believers chosen. “This little word _for_”
+says Monod, “reconciles St Paul and St James better than all the
+commentators.” God has not raised us up to sit idly in the heavenly
+places lost in contemplation, or to be the useless pensioners of grace.
+He sends us forth to “walk in the works, prepared for us,”--equipped to
+fight Christ’s battles, to till His fields, to labour in the service of
+building His Church.
+
+The “workmanship” of our Version suggests an idea foreign to the
+passage. The apostle is not thinking of the Divine art or skill
+displayed in man’s creation; but of the simple fact that “God made man”
+(Gen. i. 27). “We are His _making_, created in Christ Jesus.” The
+“preparation” to which he refers in verse 10 leads us back to that
+primeval election of God’s sons in Christ for which we gave thanks at
+the outset (i. 3). There are not two creations, the second formed upon
+the ruin and failure of the first; but one grand design throughout.
+Redemption is creation re-affirmed. The new creation, as we call it,
+restores and consummates the old. When God raised His Son from the dead,
+He vindicated His original purpose in raising man from the dust a living
+soul. He has not forsaken the work of His hands nor forgone His original
+plan, which took account of all our wilfulness and sin. God in making us
+meant us to do good work in His world. From the world’s foundation down
+to the present moment He who worketh all in all has been working for
+this end--most of all in the revelation of His grace in Jesus Christ.
+
+Far backward in the past, amid the secrets of creation, lay the
+beginnings of God’s grace to mankind. Far onward in the future shines
+its lustre revealed in the first Christian age. The apostle has gained
+some insight into those “times and seasons” which formerly were veiled
+from him. In his earliest letters, to the Thessalonians and Corinthians,
+St Paul echoes our Lord’s warning, never out of season, that we should
+“watch, for the hour is at hand.” _Maran atha_ is his watchword: “Our
+Lord cometh; the time is short.” Nor does that note cease to the end.
+But when in this epistle he writes of “the ages that are coming on,” and
+of “all the generations of the age of the ages” (iii. 21), there is
+manifestly some considerable period of duration before his eyes. He sees
+something of the extent of the world’s coming history, something of the
+magnitude of the field that the future will afford for the unfolding of
+God’s designs.
+
+In those approaching æons he foresees that the apostolic dispensation
+will play a conspicuous part. Unborn ages will be blessed in the
+blessing now descending upon Jews and Gentiles through Christ Jesus. So
+marvellous is the display of God’s kindness toward them, that all the
+future will pay homage to it. The overflowing wealth of blessing poured
+upon St Paul and the first Churches had an end in view that reached
+beyond themselves, an end worthy of the Giver, worthy of the magnitude
+of His plans and of His measureless love. If all this was theirs--this
+fulness of God exceeding the utmost they had asked or thought--it is
+because God means to convey it through them to multitudes besides! There
+is no limit to the grace that God will impart to men and to Churches who
+thus reason, who receive His gifts in this generous and communicative
+spirit. The apostolic Church chants with Mary at the Annunciation:
+“For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!”
+
+Never was any prediction better fulfilled. This spot of history shines
+with a light before which every other shows pale and commonplace. The
+companions of Jesus, the humble fraternities of the first Christian
+century have been the object of reverent interest and intent research on
+the part of all centuries since. Their history is scrutinized from all
+sides with a zeal and industry which the most pressing subjects of the
+day hardly command. For we feel that these men hold the secret of the
+world’s life. The key to the treasures we all long for is in their
+hands. As time goes on and the stress of life deepens, men will turn
+with yet fonder hope to the age of Jesus Christ. “And many nations will
+say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of
+the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways; and we will walk in
+His paths.”
+
+The stream will remember its fountain; the children of God will gather
+to their childhood’s home. The world will hear the gospel in the
+recovered accents of its prophets and apostles.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[80] Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The
+οἰκτιρμοὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ, σπλάγχνα καὶ οἰκτιρμοί, rendered in our Version
+“mercies of God,” denotes something even more affecting,--God’s sense of
+the woefulness of human life,--“the pitying tenderness Divine.”
+
+[81] Comp. Rom. ix. 22, 23.
+
+[82] On _grace_, comp. _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor’s
+Bible), Chapter X.
+
+[83] Compare also, on Faith, _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor’s
+Bible), Chapters X.-XII. and XV.
+
+[84] Ἐστὲ σεσωσμένοι: for the peculiar emphasis of this form of the
+verb, implying a settled fact, an assured state, compare ver. 12, ἢτε
+... ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι; Col. ii. 10; Gal. ii. 11, iv. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 3, etc.
+
+[85] Rom. viii. 31-39; comp. vv. 9-17; also 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2 Thess.
+iii. 3-5; 1 Cor. i. 4-9; Phil. i. 6, iii. 13, 14; 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 18,
+for St Paul’s doctrine of Assurance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_THE FAR AND NEAR._
+
+    “Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh,
+    who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision
+    in the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from
+    Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
+    from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
+    the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off are
+    made nigh in the blood of Christ.”--EPH. ii. 11-13.
+
+
+The apostle’s _Wherefore_ sums up for his readers the record of their
+salvation rehearsed in the previous verses. “You were buried in your
+sins, sunk in their corruption, ruined by their guilt, living under
+God’s displeasure and in the power of Satan. All this has passed away.
+The almighty Hand has raised you with Christ into a heavenly life. God
+has become your Father; His love is in your heart; by the strength of
+His grace you are enabled to walk in the way marked out for you from
+your creation. _Wherefore remember_: think of what you were, and of what
+you are!”
+
+To such recollections we do well to summon ourselves. The children of
+grace love to recall, and on fit occasions recount for God’s glory and
+the help of their fellows, the way in which God led them to the
+knowledge of Himself. In some the great change came suddenly. He “made
+speed” to save us. It was a veritable resurrection, as signal and
+unlooked for as the rising of Christ from the dead. By a swift passage
+we were “translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of the
+Son of His love.” Once living without God in the world, we were arrested
+by a strange providence--through some overthrow of fortune or shock of
+bereavement, or by a trivial incident touching unaccountably a hidden
+spring in the mind--and the whole aspect of life was altered in a
+moment. We saw revealed, as by a lightning flash at night, the emptiness
+of our own life, the misery of our nature, the folly of our unbelief,
+the awful presence of _God_--God whom we had forgotten and despised! We
+sought, and found His mercy. From that hour the old things passed away:
+we lived who had been dead,--made alive to God through Jesus Christ.
+
+This instant conversion, such as Paul experienced, this sharp and abrupt
+transition from darkness to light, was common in the first generation of
+Christians, as it is wherever religious awakening takes place in a
+society that has been largely dead to God. The advent of Christianity in
+the Gentile world was much after this fashion,--like a tropical sunrise,
+in which day leaps on the earth full-born. This experience gives a stamp
+of peculiar decision to the convictions and character of its subjects.
+The change is patent and palpable; no observer can fail to mark it. And
+it burns itself into the memory with an ineffaceable impression. The
+violent throes of such a spiritual birth cannot be forgotten.
+
+But if our entrance into the life of God was gradual, like the dawn of
+our own milder clime, where the light steals by imperceptible advances
+upon the darkness--if the glory of the Lord has thus risen upon us, our
+certainty of its presence may be no less complete, and our remembrance
+of its coming no less grateful and joyous. One leaps into the new life
+by a single eager bound; another reaches it by measured, thoughtful
+steps: but both are _there_, standing side by side on the common ground
+of salvation in Christ. Both walk in the same light of the Lord, that
+floods the sky from east to west. The recollections which the latter has
+to cherish of the leading of God’s kindly light--how He touched our
+childish thought, and checked gently our boyish waywardness, and mingled
+reproof with the first stirrings of passion and self-will, and wakened
+the alarms of conscience and the fears of another world, and the sense
+of the beauty of holiness and the shame of sin,--
+
+    “Shaping to truth the froward will
+        Along His narrow way,”--
+
+such remembrances are a priceless treasure, that grows richer as we grow
+wiser. It awakens a joy not so thrilling nor so prompt in utterance as
+that of the soul snatched like a brand from the burning, but which
+passes understanding. Blessed are the children of the kingdom, those who
+have never roamed far from the fold of Christ and the commonwealth of
+Israel, whom the cross has beckoned onwards from their childhood. But
+however it was--by whatever means, at whatever time it pleased God to
+call you from darkness to His marvellous light, _remember_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But we must return to Paul and his Gentile readers. The old death in
+life was to them a sombre reality, keenly and painfully remembered. In
+that condition of moral night out of which Christ had rescued them,
+Gentile society around them still remained. Let us observe its features
+as they are delineated in contrast with the privileges long bestowed on
+Israel. The Gentile world was _Christless_, _hopeless_, _godless_. It
+had no share in the Divine polity framed for the chosen people; the
+outward mark of its uncircumcision was a true symbol of its irreligion
+and debasement.
+
+Israel had a _God_. Besides, there were only “those who are called
+gods.” This was the first and cardinal distinction. Not their race, not
+their secular calling, their political or intellectual gifts, but their
+faith formed the Jews into a nation. They were “the people of God,” as
+no other people has been--of _the_ God, for theirs was “the true and
+living God”--Jehovah, the I AM, the One, the Alone. The monotheistic
+belief was, no doubt, wavering and imperfect in the mass of the nation
+in early times; but it was held by the ruling minds amongst them, by the
+men who have shaped the destiny of Israel and created its Bible, with
+increasing clearness and intensity of passion. “All the gods of the
+nations are idols--vapours, phantoms, nothings!--but Jehovah made the
+heavens.” It was the ancestral faith that glowed in the breast of Paul
+at Athens, amidst the fairest shrines of Greece, when he “saw the city
+wholly given to idolatry”--man’s highest art and the toil and piety of
+ages lavished on things that were no gods; and in the midst of the
+splendour of a hollow and decaying Paganism he read the confession that
+God was “unknown.”
+
+Ephesus had her famous goddess, worshipped in the most sumptuous pile of
+architecture that the ancient world contained. Behold the proud city,
+“temple-keeper of the great goddess Artemis,” filled with wrath!
+Infuriate Demos flashes fire from his thousand eyes, and his brazen
+throat roars hoarse vengeance against the insulters of “her
+magnificence, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth”! Without
+God--_atheists_, in fact, the apostle calls this devout Asian
+population; and Artemis of Ephesus, and Athené, and Cybelé of Smyrna,
+and Zeus and Asclepius of Pergamum, though all the world worship them,
+are but “creatures of art and man’s device.”
+
+The Pagans retorted this reproach. “Away with _the atheists_!” they
+cried, when Christians were led to execution. Ninety years after this
+time the martyr Polycarp was brought into the arena before the
+magistrates of Asia and the populace gathered in Smyrna at the great
+Ionic festival. The Proconsul, wishing to spare the venerable man, said
+to him: “Swear by the Fortune of Cæsar; and say, Away with the
+atheists!” But Polycarp, as the story continues, “with a grave look
+gazing on the crowd of lawless Gentiles in the stadium and shaking his
+hand against them, then groaning and looking up to heaven, said, _Away
+with the atheists_!” Pagan and Christian were each godless in the eyes
+of the other. If visible temples and images, and the local worship of
+each tribe or city made a god, then Jews and Christians had none: if God
+was a Spirit--One, Holy, Almighty, Omnipresent--then polytheists were in
+truth atheists; their many gods, being many, were no gods; they were
+idols,--_eidola_, illusive shows of the Godhead.
+
+The more thoughtful and pious among the heathen felt this already. When
+the apostle denounced the idols and their pompous worship as “these
+vanities,” his words found an echo in the Gentile conscience. The
+classical Paganism held the multitude by the force of habit and local
+pride, and by its sensuous and artistic charms; but such religious power
+as it once had was gone. In all directions it was undermined by mystic
+Oriental and Egyptian rites, to which men resorted in search of a
+religion and sick of the old fables, ever growing more debased, that had
+pleased their fathers. The majesty of Rome in the person of the Emperor,
+the one visible supreme power, was seized upon by the popular instinct,
+even more than it was imposed by state policy, and made to fill the
+vacuum; and temples to Augustus had already risen in Asia, side by side
+with those of the ancient gods.
+
+In this despair of their ancestral religions many piously disposed
+Gentiles turned to Judaism for spiritual help; and the synagogue was
+surrounded in the Greek cities by a circle of earnest proselytes. From
+their ranks St Paul drew a large proportion of his hearers and converts.
+When he writes, “Remember that you were at that time _without God_,” he
+is within the recollection of his readers; and they will bear him out in
+testifying that their heathen creed was dead and empty to the soul. Nor
+did philosophy construct a creed more satisfying. Its gods were the
+Epicurean deities who dwell aloof and careless of men; or the supreme
+Reason and Necessity of the Stoics, the _anima mundi_, of which human
+souls are fleeting and fragmentary images. “Deism finds God only in
+heaven; Pantheism, only on earth; Christianity alone finds Him both in
+heaven and on earth” (Harless). The Word made flesh reveals _God in the
+world_.
+
+When the apostle says “without God _in the world_,” this qualification
+is both reproachful and sorrowful. To be without God in the world that
+He has made, where His “eternal power and Godhead” have been visible
+from creation, argues a darkened and perverted heart.[86] To be without
+God in the world is to be in the wilderness, without a guide; on a
+stormy ocean, without harbour or pilot; in sickness of spirit, without
+medicine or physician; to be hungry without bread, and weary without
+rest, and dying with no light of life. It is to be an orphaned child,
+wandering in an empty, ruined house.
+
+In these words we have an echo of Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles, and
+an indication of the line of his appeals to the conscience of the
+enlightened pagans of his time. The despair of the age was darker than
+the human mind has known before or since. Matthew Arnold has painted it
+all in one verse of those lines, entitled _Obermann once more_, in which
+he so perfectly expresses the better spirit of modern scepticism.
+
+    “On that hard Pagan world disgust
+      And secret loathing fell;
+    Deep weariness and sated lust
+      Made human life a hell.”
+
+The saying by which St Paul reproved the Corinthians, “Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die,” is the common sentiment of pagan epitaphs
+of the time. Here is an extant specimen of the kind: “Let us drink and
+be merry; for we shall have no more kissing and dancing in the kingdom
+of Proserpine. Soon shall we fall asleep, to wake no more.” Such were
+the thoughts with which men came back from the grave-side. It is
+needless to say how depraving was the effect of this hopelessness. At
+Athens, in the more religious times of Socrates, it was even considered
+a decent and kindly thing to allow a criminal condemned to death to
+spend his last hours in gross sensual indulgence. There is no reason to
+suppose that the extinction of the Christian hope of immortality would
+prove less demoralizing. We are “saved by hope,” said St Paul: we are
+ruined by despair. Pessimism of creed for most men means pessimism of
+conduct.
+
+Our modern speech and literature and our habits of feeling have been for
+so many generations steeped in the influence of Christ’s teaching, and
+it has thrown so many tender and hallowed thoughts around the state of
+our beloved dead, that it is impossible even for those who are
+personally without hope in Christ to realize what its general decay and
+disappearance would mean. To have possessed such a treasure, and then to
+lose it! to have cherished anticipations so exalted and so dear,--and to
+find them turn out a mockery! The age upon which this calamity fell
+would be of all ages the most miserable.
+
+The hope of Israel which Paul preached to the Gentiles was a hope for
+the world and for the nations, as well as for the individual soul. “The
+commonwealth [or _polity_] of Israel” and “the covenants of promise”
+guaranteed the establishment of the Messianic kingdom upon earth. This
+expectation took amongst the mass of the Jews a materialistic and even a
+revengeful shape; but in one form or other it belonged, and still
+belongs to every man of Israel. Those noble lines of Virgil in his
+fourth Eclogue[87]--like the words of Caiaphas, an unintended Christian
+prophecy--which predicted the return of justice and the spread of a
+golden age through the whole world under the rule of the coming heir of
+Cæsar, had been signally belied by the imperial house in the century
+that had elapsed. Never were human prospects darker than when the
+apostle wrote as Nero’s prisoner in Rome. It was an age of crime and
+horror. The political world and the system of pagan society seemed to be
+in the throes of dissolution. Only in “the commonwealth of Israel” was
+there a light of hope and a foundation for the future of mankind; and of
+this in its wisdom the world knew nothing.
+
+The Gentiles were “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,”--that is
+to say, treated as aliens and made such by their exclusion. By the very
+fact of Israel’s election, the rest of mankind were shut out of the
+visible kingdom of God. They became mere _Gentiles_, or _nations_,--a
+herd of men bound together only by natural affinity, with no “covenant
+of promise,” no religious constitution or destiny, no definite
+relationship to God, Israel being alone the acknowledged and organized
+“_people_ of Jehovah.”
+
+These distinctions were summed up in one word, expressing all the pride
+of the Jewish nature, when the Israelites styled themselves “the
+Circumcision.” The rest of the world--Philistines or Egyptians, Greeks,
+Romans, or Barbarians, it mattered not--were “the Uncircumcision.” How
+superficial this distinction was in point of fact, and how false the
+assumption of moral superiority it implied in the existing condition of
+Judaism, St Paul indicates by saying, “those who are _called_
+Uncircumcision by that which is _called_ Circumcision, in flesh, wrought
+by human hands.” In the second and third chapters of his epistle to the
+Romans he exposed the hollowness of Jewish sanctity, and brought his
+fellow-countrymen down to the level of those “sinners of the Gentiles”
+whom they so bitterly despised.
+
+The destitution of the Gentile world is put into a single word, when the
+apostle says: “You were at that time _separate from Christ_”--without a
+Christ, either come or coming. They were deprived of the world’s one
+treasure,--shut out, as it appeared, for ever[88] from any part in Him
+who is to mankind all things and in all.--_Once far off!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“But now in Christ Jesus ye were _made nigh_.” What is it that has
+bridged the distance, that has transported these Gentiles from the
+wilderness of heathenism into the midst of the city of God? It is “the
+blood of Christ.” The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ transformed the
+relations of God to mankind, and of Israel to the Gentiles. In Him God
+reconciled not a nation, but “a world” to Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). The
+death of the Son of man could not have reference to the sons of Abraham
+alone. If sin is universal and death is not a Jewish but a human
+experience, and if one blood flows in the veins of all our race, then
+the death of Jesus Christ was a universal sacrifice; it appeals to every
+man’s conscience and heart, and puts away for each the guilt which comes
+between his soul and God.
+
+When the Greeks in Passion week desired to see Him, He exclaimed: “I, if
+I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all_ unto me.” The cross of
+Jesus was to draw humanity around it, by its infinite love and sorrow,
+by the perfect apprehension there was in it of the world’s guilt and
+need, and the perfect submission to the sentence of God’s law against
+man’s sin. So wherever the gospel was preached by St Paul, it won
+Gentile hearts for Christ. Greek and Jew found themselves weeping
+together at the foot of the cross, sharing one forgiveness and baptized
+into one Spirit.
+
+The union of Caiaphas and Pilate in the condemnation of Jesus and the
+mingling of the Jewish crowd with the Roman soldiers at His execution
+were a tragic symbol of the new age that was coming. Israel and the
+Gentiles were accomplices in the death of the Messiah--the former of the
+two the more guilty partner in the counsel and deed. If this Jesus whom
+they slew and hanged on a tree was indeed the Christ, God’s chosen, then
+what availed their Abrahamic sonship, their covenants and law-keeping,
+their proud religious eminence? They had killed their Christ; they had
+forfeited their calling. His blood was on them and on their children.
+
+Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of Christ were found far
+off,--that both together, the far and the near, might be reconciled and
+brought back to God. “He shut up all unto disobedience, that He might
+have mercy upon all.”
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Rom. i. 19-23; comp. John i. 10: “He [the true Light] was _in the
+world_, and the world knew Him not.”
+
+[87]
+
+    Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
+    Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
+    Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto.
+    Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
+    Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
+    Casta, fave, Lucina.
+
+[88] Observe the perfect participle ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι, which signifies an
+abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in
+ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION._
+
+    “For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle
+    wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, _even_
+    the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances, that He might
+    create in Himself of the twain one new man, _so_ making peace; and
+    might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
+    having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good
+    tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that
+    were nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit
+    unto the Father.”--EPH. ii. 14-18.
+
+
+_Peace, peace--to the far off, and to the near!_ Such was God’s promise
+to His scattered people in the times of the exile (Isai. lvii. 19). St
+Paul sees that peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and
+terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the prophet had
+foreseen. Christ is “our peace”--not for the divided members of Israel
+alone, but for all the tribes of men. He brings about a universal
+pacification.
+
+There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to be overcome by Christ,
+in preaching to the world His good tidings of peace (ver. 17). There was
+the hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its cause and
+principle when Christ “in His flesh” (by His incarnate life and death)
+“abolished the law of commandments in decrees”--_i.e._, the law of Moses
+as it constituted a body of external precepts determining the way of
+righteousness and life. This abolition of the law by the evangelical
+principle “dissolved the middle wall of partition.” The occasion of
+quarrel between Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier
+disappeared that had for so long fenced off the privileged ground of the
+sons of Abraham (vv. 14, 15). But behind this human enmity, underneath
+the feud and rancour existing between the Jews and the nations, there
+lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God. Both enmities centred in the
+law; both were slain by one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross
+(ver. 16).
+
+The Jewish and Gentile peoples formed two distinct types of humanity.
+Politically, the Jews were insignificant and had scarcely counted
+amongst the great powers of the world. Their religion alone gave them
+influence and importance. Bearing his inspired Scriptures and his
+Messianic hope, the wandering Israelite confronted the vast masses of
+heathenism and the splendid and fascinating classical civilization with
+the proudest sense of his superiority. To his God he knew well that one
+day every knee would bow and every tongue confess. The circumstances of
+the time deepened his isolation and aggravated to internecine hate his
+spite against his fellow-men, the _adversus omnes alios hostile odium_
+stigmatized by the incisive pen of Tacitus. Within three years of the
+writing of this letter the Jewish war against Rome broke out, when the
+enmity culminated in the most appalling and fateful overthrow recorded
+in the pages of history. Now, it is this enmity at its height--the most
+inveterate and desperate one can conceive--that the apostle proposes to
+reconcile; nay, that he sees already slain by the sacrifice of the
+cross, and within the brotherhood of the Christian Church. It was slain
+in the heart of Saul of Tarsus, the proudest that beat in Jewish
+breast.
+
+In his earlier writings the apostle has been concerned chiefly to guard
+the position and rights of the two parties within the Church. He has
+abundantly maintained, especially in the epistle to the Galatians, the
+claims of Gentile believers in Christ against Judaic assumptions and
+impositions. He has defended the just prerogative of the Jew and his
+hereditary sentiments from the contempt to which they were sometimes
+exposed on the part of the Gentile majority.[89] But now that this has
+been done, and that Gentile liberties and Jewish dignity have been
+vindicated and safeguarded on both sides, St Paul advances a step
+further: he seeks to amalgamate the Jewish and Gentile section of the
+Church, and to “make of the twain one new man, so making peace.” This,
+he declares, was the end of Christ’s mission; this a chief purpose of
+His atoning death. Only by such union, only through the burying of the
+old enmity slain on the cross, could His Church be built up to its
+completeness. St Paul would have Gentile and Jewish believers everywhere
+forget their differences, efface their party lines, and merge their
+independence in the oneness of the all-embracing and all-perfecting
+Church of Jesus Christ, God’s habitation in the Spirit. Instead of
+saying that a catholic ideal like this belongs to a later and
+post-apostolic age, we maintain, on the contrary, that a catholic mind
+like St Paul’s, under the conditions of his time, could not fail to
+arrive at this conception.
+
+It was his confidence in the victory of the cross over all strife and
+sin that sustained St Paul through these years of captivity. As he
+looks out from his Roman prison, under the shadow of Nero’s palace, the
+future is invested with a radiance of hope that makes the heart of the
+chained apostle exult within him. The world is lost, to all outward
+seeming: he knows it is saved! Jew and Gentile are about to close in
+mortal conflict: he proclaims peace between them, assured of their
+reconcilement, and knowing that in their reunion the salvation of human
+society is assured.
+
+The enmity of Jew and Gentile was representative of all that divides
+mankind. In it were concentrated most of the causes by which society is
+rent asunder. Along with religion, race, habits, tastes and culture,
+moral tendencies, political aspirations, interests of trade, all helped
+to widen the breach. The cleavage ran deep into the foundations of life;
+the enmity was the growth of two thousand years. It was not a case of
+local friction, nor a quarrel arising from temporary causes. The Jew was
+ubiquitous, and everywhere was an alien and an irritant to Gentile
+society. No antipathy was so hard to subdue. The grace that conquers it,
+can and will conquer all enmities.
+
+St Paul’s view embraced, in fact, a world-wide reconcilement. He
+contemplates, as the Hebrew prophets themselves did, the fraternization
+of mankind under the rule of the Christ. After this scale he laid down
+the foundation of the Church, “wise master-builder” that he was. It was
+destined to bear the weight of an edifice in which all the races of men
+should dwell together, and every order of human faculty should find its
+place. His thoughts were not confined within the Judaic antithesis.
+“There is no Jew and Greek,” he says in another place; yes, and “no
+barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, male or female. Ye are all one in
+Christ Jesus.”[90] Birth, rank, office in the Church, culture, even sex
+are minor and subordinate distinctions, merged in the unity of redeemed
+souls in Christ. That which He “creates in Himself of the twain” is _one
+new man_--one incorporate humanity, neither Jew nor Gentile, Englishman
+nor Hindu, priest nor layman, male nor female; but simply _man_, and
+_Christian_.
+
+At the present time we are better able to enter into these views of the
+apostle than at any intervening period of history. In his day almost the
+whole visible world, lying round the Mediterranean shores, was brought
+under the government and laws of Rome. This fact made the establishment
+of one religious polity a thing quite conceivable. The Roman empire did
+not, as it proved, allow Christianity to conquer it soon enough and to
+leaven it sufficiently to save it. That huge construction, the mightiest
+fabric of human polity, fell and covered the earth with its ruins. In
+its fall it reacted disastrously upon the Church, and has bequeathed to
+it the corrupt and despotic unity of Papal Rome. Now, in these last
+days, the whole world is opened to the Church, a world stretching far
+beyond the horizon of the first century. Science and Commerce, those two
+strong-winged angels and giant ministers of God, are swiftly binding the
+continents together in material ties. The peoples are beginning to
+realize their brotherhood, and are feeling their way in many directions
+towards international union; while in the Churches a new, federal
+catholicity is taking shape, that must displace the false catholicism of
+external uniformity and the disastrous absolutism inherited from Rome.
+The spread of European empire and the marvellous expansion of our
+English race are carrying forward the world’s unification with enormous
+strides,--towards some end or other. What end is this to be? Is the
+kingdom of the world about to become the kingdom of our Lord and His
+Christ? and are the nations preparing to be “reconciled in one body unto
+God”?
+
+If Christendom were worthy of her Master and her name, this question
+would be answered with no doubtful affirmative. The Church is well able,
+if she were prepared, to go up and possess the whole earth for her Lord.
+The way is open; the means are in her hand. Nor is she ignorant, nor
+wholly negligent of her opportunity and of the claims that the times
+impose upon her. She is putting forth new strength and striving to
+overtake her work, notwithstanding the weight of ignorance and sloth
+that burdens her. Soon the reconciling cross will be planted on every
+shore, and the praises of the Crucified sung in every human language.
+
+But there are dark as well as bright auguries for the future. The
+advance of commerce and emigration has been a curse and not a blessing
+to many heathen peoples. Who can read without shame and horror the story
+of European conquest in America? And it is a chapter not yet closed.
+Greed and injustice still mark the dealings of the powerful and
+civilized with the weaker races. England set a noble example in the
+abolition of negro slavery; but she has since inflicted, for purposes of
+gain, the opium curse on China, putting poison to the lips of its vast
+population. Under our Christian flags fire-arms are imported, and
+alcohol, amongst tribes of men less able than children to resist their
+evils. Is this “preaching peace to those far off”? It is likely that
+the commercial profits made in the destruction of savage races as yet
+exceed all that our missionary societies have spent in saving them. One
+of these days Almighty God may have a stern reckoning with modern Europe
+about these things. “When He maketh inquisition for blood, He will
+remember.”
+
+And what shall we say of ourselves at home, in our relation to this
+great principle of the apostle? The old “middle wall of partition,” the
+temple-barrier that sundered Jew and Gentile, is “broken down,”--visibly
+levelled by the hand of God when Jerusalem fell, as it had been
+virtually and in its principle destroyed by the work of Christ. But are
+there no other middle walls, no barriers raised within the fold of
+Christ? The rich man’s purse, and the poor man’s penury; aristocratic
+pride, democratic bitterness and jealousy; knowledge and refinement on
+the one hand, ignorance and rudeness on the other--how thick the veil of
+estrangement which these influences weave, how high the party walls
+which they build in our various Church communions!
+
+It is the duty of the Church, as she values her existence, with gentle
+but firm hands to pull down and to keep down all such partitions. She
+cannot abolish the natural distinctions of life. She cannot turn the Jew
+into a Gentile, nor the Gentile into a Jew. She will never make the poor
+man rich in this world, nor the rich man altogether poor. Like her
+Master, she declines to be “judge or divider” of our secular
+inheritance. But she can see to it that these outward distinctions make
+no difference in her treatment of the men as men. She can combine in her
+fellowship all grades and orders, and teach them to understand and
+respect each other. She can soften the asperities and relieve many of
+the hardships which social differences create. She can diffuse a
+healing and purifying influence upon the contentions of society around
+her.
+
+Let us labour unweariedly for this, and let our meeting at the Lord’s
+table be a symbol of the unreserved communion of men of all classes and
+conditions in the brotherhood of the redeemed sons of God. “_He_ is our
+peace”; and if He is in our hearts, we must needs be sons of peace.
+“Behold the secret of all true union! It is not by others coming to us,
+nor by our going over to them; but it is by both them and ourselves
+coming to Christ” that peace is made (Monod).
+
+Thus within and without the Church the work of atonement will advance,
+with Christ ever for its preacher (ver. 17). He speaks through the words
+and the lives of His ten thousand messengers,--men of every order, in
+every age and country of the earth. The leaven of Christ’s peace will
+spread till the lump is leavened. God will accomplish His purpose of the
+ages, whether in our time, or in another worthier of His calling. His
+Church is destined to be the home of the human family, the universal
+liberator and instructor and reconciler of the nations. And Christ shall
+sit enthroned in the loyal worship of the federated peoples of the
+earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the question remains: What is the foundation, what the warrant of
+this grand idealism of the apostle Paul? Many a great thinker, many an
+ardent reformer before and since has dreamed of some such millennium as
+this. And their enthusiastic plans have ended too often in conflict and
+destruction. What surer ground of confidence have we in Paul’s
+undertaking than in those of so many gifted visionaries and
+philosophers? The difference lies here: his expectation rests on the
+word and character of God; his instrument of reform is the cross of
+Jesus Christ.
+
+God is the centre of His own universe. Any reconciliation that is to
+stand, must include Him first of all. Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile
+“both in one body _to God_.” There is the meeting point, the true focus
+of the orbit of human life, that can alone control its movements and
+correct its wild aberrations. Under the shadow of His throne of justice,
+in the arms of His fatherly love, the kindreds of the earth will at last
+find reconciliation and peace. Humanitarian and secularist systems make
+the simple mistake of ignoring the supreme Factor in the scheme of
+things; they leave out the All in all.
+
+“Be ye _reconciled to God_,” cries the apostle. For Almighty God has had
+a great quarrel with this world of ours. The hatred of men towards each
+other is rooted in the “carnal mind which is enmity against God.” The
+“law of commandments contained in ordinances,” in whose possession the
+Jew boasted over the lawless and profane Gentile, in reality branded
+both as culprits.
+
+The secret disquiet and dread lurking in man’s conscience, the pangs
+endured in his body of humiliation, the groaning frame of nature declare
+the world unhinged and out of course. Things have gone amiss, somehow,
+between man and his Creator. The face of the earth and the field of
+human history are scarred with the thunderbolts of His displeasure. God,
+the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King of the ages, is not the
+amiable, almighty Sentimentalist that some pious people would make Him
+out to be. The men of the Bible felt and realized, if we do not, the
+grave and tremendous import of the Lord’s controversy with all flesh. He
+is unceasingly at war with the sins of men. “God is _love_”--oh yes;
+but then He is also “a consuming fire”! There is no anger so crushing as
+the anger of love, for there is none so just; no wrath to be feared like
+“the wrath of the Lamb.” God is not a man, weak and passionate, whom a
+spark of anger might set all on fire, burning out His justice and
+compassion. “In His wrath He remembers mercy.” Within that infinite
+nature there is room for an absolute loathing and resentment towards
+sin, in consistence with an immeasurable pity and yearning towards His
+sinful children. Hence the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+Look at it from what side you will (and it has many sides), propound it
+in what terms you may (and it translates itself anew into the dialect of
+every age), you must not explain the cross of Christ away nor cause its
+offence to cease. “The atonement has always been a scandal and a folly
+to those who did not receive it; it has always contained something which
+to formal logic is false and to individualistic ethics immoral; yet in
+that very element which has been branded as immoral and false, has
+always lain the seal of its power and the secret of its truth.” The Holy
+One of God, the Lamb without spot and blemish, He died by His own
+consent a sinner’s death. That sacrifice, undergone by the Son of God
+and Son of man dying as man for men, in love to His race and in
+obedience to the Divine will and law, gave an infinite satisfaction to
+God in His relation to the world, and there went up to the Divine throne
+from the anguish of Calvary a “savour of sweet smell.” The moral glory
+of the act of Jesus Christ in dying for His guilty brethren outshone its
+horror and disgrace; and it redeemed man’s lost condition, and clothed
+human nature with a new character and aspect in the eyes of God
+Himself. “Now therefore there is no more condemnation to them that are
+in Christ Jesus.” The mercy of God, if we may so say, is set free to act
+in forgiveness and restoration, without any compromise of justice and
+inflexible law. No peace without this: no peace that did not _satisfy
+God_, and satisfy that law, deep as the deepest in God, that binds
+suffering to wrong-doing and death to sin.
+
+Perhaps you say: This is immoral, surely, that the just should suffer
+for the unjust; that one commits the offence, and another bears the
+penalty.--Stay a moment: that is only half the truth. We are more than
+individuals; we are members of a race; and vicarious suffering runs
+through life. Our sufferings and wrong-doings bind the human family
+together in an inextricable web. We are _communists in sin and death_.
+It is the law and lot of our existence. And Christ, the Lord and centre
+of the race, has come within its scope. He bound Himself to our sinking
+fortunes. He became co-partner in our lost estate, and has redeemed it
+to God by His blood. If He was true and perfect man, if He was the
+creative Head and Mediator of the race, the eternal Firstborn of many
+brethren, He could do no other. He who alone had the right and the
+power,--“_One_ died for all.” He took upon His Divine heart the sin and
+curse of the world, He fastened it to His shoulders with the cross; and
+He bore it away from Caiaphas’ hall and Pilate’s judgement-seat, away
+from guilty Jerusalem; He took away the sin of the world, and expiated
+it once for all. He quenched in His blood the fires of wrath and hate it
+kindled. He slew _the enmity_ thereby.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still, we are individuals, as you said, not lost after all in the
+world’s solidarity. Here your personal right and will must come in. What
+Christ has done for you is yours, so far as you accept it. He has died
+your death beforehand, trusting that you would not repudiate His act,
+that you would not let His blood be spilt in vain. But He will never
+force His mediation upon you. He respects your freedom and your manhood.
+Do you now endorse what Jesus Christ did on your behalf? Do you renounce
+the sin, and accept the sacrifice? Then it is yours, from this moment,
+before the tribunal of God and of conscience. By the witness of His
+Spirit you are proclaimed a forgiven and reconciled man. Christ
+crucified is yours--if you will have Him, if you will identify your
+sinful self with the sinless Mediator, if as you see Him lifted up on
+the cross you will let your heart cry out, “Oh my God, He dies for
+_me_!”
+
+Coming “in one Spirit to the Father,” the reconciled children join hands
+again with each other. Social barriers, caste feelings, family feuds,
+personal quarrels, national antipathies, alike go down before the virtue
+of the blood of Jesus.
+
+            “Neither passion nor pride
+              His cross can abide,
+    But melt in the fountain that streams from His side!”
+
+“Beloved,” you will say to the man that hates or has wronged you
+most,--“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
+In these simple words of the apostle John lies the secret of universal
+peace, the hope of the fraternization of mankind. Nations will have to
+say this one day, as well as men.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[89] See to this effect such passages as Rom. i. 16 (_to the Jew
+first_), ix. 4, 5; and especially xi. 13-32.
+
+[90] Gal. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11. Comp. John x. 16, xi. 52. See _The
+Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor’s Bible), Chapter XV.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY._
+
+    “So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are
+    fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being
+    built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus
+    Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building,
+    fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in
+    whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the
+    Spirit.”--EPH. ii. 19-22.
+
+
+Not unfrequently it is the last word or phrase of the paragraph that
+gives us the clue to St Paul’s meaning and discloses the point at which
+he has aimed all along. So in this instance. “For a habitation of God in
+the Spirit”: behold the goal of God’s ways with mankind! For this end
+the Divine grace has wrought through countless ages and has made its
+great sacrifice. For this end Jew and Gentile are being gathered into
+one and compacted into a new humanity.
+
+I. The Church is a house built for an _Occupant_. Its quality and size,
+and the mode of its construction are determined by its destination. It
+is built to suit the great Inhabitant, who says concerning the new Zion
+as He said of the old in figure: “This is my rest for ever! Here will I
+dwell, for I have desired it.” God, who is spirit, cannot be satisfied
+with the fabric of material nature for His temple, nor does “the Most
+High dwell in houses made by men’s hands.” He seeks our spirit for His
+abode, and
+
+                            “Doth prefer
+    Before all temples the upright heart and pure.”
+
+In the collective life and spirit of humanity God claims to reside, that
+He may fill it with His glory and His love. “Know you not,” cries the
+apostle to the once debased Corinthians, “that you are God’s temple, and
+that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
+
+Nothing that is bestowed upon man terminates in himself. The deliverance
+of Jewish and Gentile believers from their personal sins, their
+re-instatement into the broken unity of mankind and the destruction in
+them of their old enmities, of the antipathies generated by their common
+rebellion against God--these great results of Christ’s sacrifice were
+means to a further end. “Hallowed be Thy name” is our first petition to
+the Father in heaven; “Glory to God in the highest” is the key-note of
+the angels’ song, that runs through all the harmonies of “peace on
+earth,” through every strain of the melody of life. Religion is the
+mistress, not the handmaid in human affairs. She will never consent to
+become a mere ethical discipline, an instrument and subordinate stage in
+social evolution, a ladder held for men to climb up into their
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The old temptation of the Garden, “Ye shall be as gods,” has come upon
+our age in a new and fascinating form, “You shall be as gods,” it is
+whispered: “nay, you _are_ God, and there is no other. The supernatural
+is a dream. The Christian story is a fable. There is none to fear or
+adore above yourselves!” Man is to worship his collective self, his own
+humanity. “I am the Lord thy God,” the great idol says, “that brought
+thee up out of animalism and savagery, and me only shalt thou
+serve!--Love and faithful service to one’s kind, a holy passion for the
+welfare of the race, for the relief of human ignorance and poverty and
+pain, this is the true religion; and you need no other. Its obligation
+is instinctive, its benefits immediate and palpable; and it gives a
+consecration to individual life that dignifies and chastens, while it
+calls into exercise all our faculties.”
+
+Yes, we willingly admit, such human service is “religion pure and
+undefiled, _before our God and Father_.” If service is rendered to our
+kind as worship to the Father of men; if we reverence in each man the
+image of God and the shrine of His Spirit; if we are seeking to cleanse
+and adorn in men the temple where the Most High shall dwell, the
+humblest work done for our fellows’ good is done for Him. The best human
+charity is rendered for the love of God. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy
+God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. This,” said Jesus, “is
+the first and great commandment. And the second is _like unto it_: Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
+the law and the prophets.” On these two hangs the welfare of men and
+nations.
+
+But the first commandment must come first. The second law of Jesus never
+has been or will be kept to purpose without the first. Humanitarian
+sentiments, dreams of universal brotherhood, projects of social reform,
+may seem for the moment to gain by their independence of religion a
+certain zest and emphasis; but they are without root and vitality. Their
+energy fails, or spends itself in revolt; their glow declines, their
+purity is stained. The leaders and first enthusiasts trained in the
+school of Christ, whose spirit, in vain repudiated, lives on in them,
+find themselves betrayed and alone. The coarse selfishness and
+materialism of the human heart win an easy triumph over a visionary
+altruism. “Without me,” says Jesus Christ, “ye can do nothing.”
+
+In the light of God’s glory man learns to reverence his nature and
+understand the vocation of his race. The love of God touches the deep
+and enduring springs of human action. The kingdom of Christ and of God
+commands an absolute devotion; its service inspires unfaltering courage
+and invincible patience. There is a grandeur and a certainty, of which
+the noblest secular aims fall short, in the hopes of those who are
+striving together for the faith of the gospel, and who work to build
+human life into a dwelling-place for God.
+
+II. God’s temple in the Church of Jesus Christ, while it is one, is also
+manifold. “In whom _each several building_ [or _every part of the
+building_[91]], while it is compacted together, grows into a holy temple
+in the Lord.”
+
+The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient
+temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points
+over a wide area. The builders work in concert, upon a common plan. The
+several parts of the work are adjusted to each other; and the various
+operations in process are so harmonized, that the entire construction
+preserves the unity of the architect’s design. Such an edifice was the
+apostolic Church--one, but of many parts--in its diverse gifts and
+multiplied activities animated by one Spirit and directed towards one
+Divine purpose.
+
+Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome--what a various scene of
+activity these centres of Christian life presented! The Churches
+founded in these great cities must have differed in many features. Even
+in the communities of his own province the apostle did not, so far as we
+can judge, impose a uniform administration. St Peter and St Paul carried
+out their plans independently, only maintaining a general understanding
+with each other. The apostolic founders, inspired by one and the
+self-same Spirit, could labour at a distance, upon material and by
+methods extremely various, with entire confidence in each other and with
+an assurance of the unity of result which their teaching and
+administration would exhibit. The many buildings rested on the one
+foundation of the apostles. “Whether it were I or they,” says our
+apostle, “so we preach, and so you believed.” Where there is the same
+Spirit and the same Lord, men do not need to be scrupulous about visible
+conformity. Elasticity and individual initiative admit of entire harmony
+of principle. The hand may do its work without irritating and
+obstructing the eye; and the foot run on its errands without mistrusting
+the ear.
+
+Such was the catholicism of the apostolic age. The true reading of verse
+21, as it is restored by the Revisers, is an incidental witness to the
+date of the epistle. A churchman of the second century, writing under
+Paul’s name in the interests of catholic unity as it was then
+understood, would scarcely have penned such a sentence without attaching
+to the subject the definite article: he must have written “all the
+building,” as the copyists from whom the received text proceeds very
+naturally have done. From that time onwards, as the system of the
+ecclesiastical hierarchy was developed, external unity was more and more
+strictly imposed. The original “diversity of operations” became a rigid
+uniformity. The Church swallowed up the Churches. Finally, the spiritual
+bureaucracy of Rome gathered all ecclesiastical power into one centre,
+and placed the direction of Western Christendom in the hands of a single
+priest, whom it declared to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ and endowed
+with the Divine attribute of infallibility.
+
+Had not Jerusalem been overthrown and its Church destroyed, the
+hierarchical movement would probably have made that city, rather than
+Rome, its centre. This was in fact the tendency, if not the express
+purpose of the Judaistic party in the Church. St Paul had vindicated in
+his earlier epistles the freedom of the Gentile Christian communities,
+and their right of non-conformity to Jewish usage. In the words “each
+several building, fitly framed together,” there is an echo of this
+controversy. The Churches of his mission claim a standing side by side
+with those founded by other apostles. For himself and his Gentile
+brethren he seems to say, in the presence of the primitive Church and
+its leaders: “As they are Christ’s, so also are we.”
+
+The co-operation of the different parts of the body of Christ is
+essential to their collective growth. Let all Churches beware of
+crushing dissent. Blows aimed at our Christian neighbours recoil upon
+ourselves. Undermining their foundation, we shake our own. Next to
+positive corruption of doctrine and life, nothing hinders so greatly the
+progress of the kingdom of God as the claim to exclusive legitimacy made
+on behalf of ancient Church organizations. Their representatives would
+have every part of God’s temple framed upon one pattern. They refuse a
+place on the apostolic foundation to all Churches, however numerous,
+however rich in faith and good works, however strong the historical
+justification for their existence, however clear the marks they bear of
+the Spirit’s seal, which do not conform to the rule they themselves have
+received. Their rites and ministry, they assert, are those alone
+approved by Christ and authorized by His apostles, within a given area.
+They refuse the right hand of fellowship to men who are doing Christ’s
+work by their side; they isolate their flocks, as far as possible, from
+intercourse with the Christian communities around them.
+
+This policy on the part of any Christian Church, or Church party, is
+contrary to the mind of Christ and to the example of His apostles. Those
+who hold aloof from the comity of the Churches and prevent the many
+buildings of God’s temple being fitly framed together, must bear their
+judgement, whosoever they be. They prefer conquest to peace, but that
+conquest they will never win; it would be fatal to themselves. Let the
+elder sister frankly allow the birthright of the younger sisters of
+Christ’s house in these lands, and be our example in justice and in
+charity. Great will be her honour; great the glory won for our common
+Lord.
+
+“Every building fitly framed together _groweth into a holy temple_ in
+the Lord.” The subject is distributive; the predicate collective. The
+parts give place to the whole in the writer’s mind. As each several
+piece of the structure, each cell or chapel in the temple, spreads out
+to join its companion buildings and adjusts itself to the parts around
+it, the edifice grows into a richer completeness and becomes more fit
+for its sacred purpose. The separate buildings, distant in place or
+historical character, approximate by extension, as they spread over the
+unoccupied ground between them and as the connecting links are
+multiplied. At last a point is reached at which they will become
+continuous. Growing into each other step by step and forming across the
+diminishing distance a web of mutual attachment constantly thickening,
+they will insensibly, by a natural and vital growth, become one in
+visible communion as they are one in their underlying faith.
+
+When each organ of the body in its own degree is perfect and holds its
+place in keeping with the rest, we think no longer of their individual
+perfection, of the charm of this feature or of that; they are forgotten
+in the beauty of the perfect frame. So it will be in the body of Christ,
+when its several communions, cleansed and filled with His Spirit, each
+honouring the vocation of the others, shall in freedom and in love by a
+spontaneous movement be gathered into one. Their strength will then be
+no longer weakened and their spirit chafed by internal conflict. With
+united forces and irresistible energy, they will assail the kingdom of
+darkness and subjugate the world to Christ.
+
+For this consummation our Saviour prayed in the last hours before His
+death: “that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in
+Thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that Thou
+didst send me” (John xvii. 21). Did He fear that His little flock of the
+Twelve would be parted by dissensions? Or did He not look onward to the
+future, and see the “offences that must come,” the alienations and
+fierce conflicts that would arise amongst His people, and the blood that
+would be shed in His name? Yet beyond these divisions, on the horizon of
+the end of the age, He foresaw the day when the wounds of His Church
+would be healed, when the sword that He had brought on the earth would
+be sheathed, and through the unity of faith and love in His people all
+mankind would at last come to acknowledge Him and the Father who had
+sent Him.
+
+III. To appearance, we are many rather than one who bear the name of
+Christ. But we are one notwithstanding, if below the variety of
+superstructure our faith rests upon the witness of the apostles, and the
+several buildings have Christ Jesus Himself for chief corner-stone. The
+_one foundation_ and the _one Spirit_ constitute the unity of God’s
+temple in the Church.
+
+“The apostles and prophets” are named as a single body, _the prophets_
+being doubtless, in this passage and in chapters iii. 5 and iv. 11, the
+existing prophets of the apostolic Church, whose inspired teaching
+supplemented that of the apostles and helped to lay down the foundation
+of revealed truth. That foundation has been, through the providence of
+God, preserved for later ages in the Scriptures of the New Testament, on
+which the faith of Christians has rested ever since. Such a prophet
+Barnabas was in the first days (Acts xiii. 1), and such was the unknown,
+but deeply inspired writer of the epistle to the Hebrews; such prophets,
+again, were SS. Mark and Luke, the Evangelists. Prophecy was not a
+stated gift of office. Just as there were “teachers” in the early Church
+whose knowledge and eloquence did not entitle them to bear rule, so
+prophecy was frequently exercised by private persons and carried with it
+no such official authority as belonged in the highest degree to the
+apostles.
+
+It is thought surprising that St Paul should write thus, in so general
+and distant a fashion, of the order to which he belonged (comp. iii. 5).
+This, it is said, is the language of a later generation, which looks
+back with reverence to the inspired Founders. But this letter is
+written, as we observed at the outset, from a peculiarly objective and
+impersonal standpoint. It differs in this respect from other epistles of
+St Paul. He is addressing a number of Churches, with some of which his
+personal relations were slight and distant. He is contemplating the
+Church in its most general character. He is not the only founder of
+Churches; he is one of a band of colleagues, working in different
+regions. It is natural that he should use the plural here. He sets his
+successors an example of the recognition due to fellow-labourers whose
+work bears the seal of Christ’s Spirit.
+
+These men have laid _the foundation_--Peter and Paul, John and James,
+Barnabas and Silas, and the rest. They are our spiritual progenitors,
+the fathers of our faith. We see Jesus Christ through their eyes; we
+read His teaching, and catch His Spirit in their words. Their testimony,
+in its essential facts, stands secure in the confidence of mankind. Nor
+was it their word alone, but the men themselves--their character, their
+life and work--laid for the Church its historical foundation. This
+“glorious company of the apostles” formed the first course in the new
+building, on whose firmness and strength the stability of the entire
+structure depends. Their virtues and their sufferings, as well as the
+revelations made through them, have guided the thoughts and shaped the
+life of countless multitudes of men, of the best and wisest men in all
+ages since. They have fixed the standard of Christian doctrine and the
+type of Christian character. At our best, we are but imitators of them
+as they were of Christ.
+
+In regard to the chief part of their teaching, both as to its meaning
+and authority, the great bulk of Christians in all communions are
+agreed. The keen disputes which engage us upon certain points, testify
+to the cardinal importance which is felt on all hands to attach to the
+words of Christ’s chosen apostles. Their living witness is in our midst.
+The self-same Spirit that wrought in them, works amongst men and dwells
+in the communion of saints. He still reveals the things of Christ, and
+guides into truth the willing and obedient.
+
+So “the firm foundation of God standeth”; though men, shaken themselves,
+seem to see it tremble. On that basis we may labour confidently and
+loyally, with those amongst whom the Master has placed us. Some of our
+fellow-workmen disown and would hinder us: that shall not prevent us
+from rejoicing in their good work, and admiring the gold and precious
+stones that they contribute to the fabric. The Lord of the temple will
+know how to use the labour of His many servants. He will forgive and
+compose their strife, who are jealous for His name. He will shape their
+narrow aims to His larger purposes. Out of their discords He will draw a
+finer harmony. As the great house grows to its dimensions, as the
+workmen by the extension of their labours come nearer to each other and
+their sectional plans merge in Christ’s great purpose, reproaches will
+cease and misunderstandings vanish. Over many who followed not with us
+and whom we counted but as “strangers and sojourners,” as men whose
+place within the walls of Zion was doubtful and unauthorized, we shall
+hereafter rejoice with a joy not unmixed with self-upbraiding, to find
+them in the fullest right our fellow-citizens amongst the saints and of
+the household of God.
+
+The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder of the Church, as He is the
+supreme witness to Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words _in the
+Spirit_, closing the verse with solemn emphasis, denote not the mode of
+God’s habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency engaged in
+building this new house of God. With one “chief corner-stone” to rest
+upon and one Spirit to inspire and control them, the apostles and
+prophets laid their foundation and the Church was “builded together” for
+a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But for this sovereign influence
+the primitive founders of Christianity, like later Church leaders, would
+have fallen into fatal discord. Modern critics, reasoning upon natural
+grounds and not understanding the grace of the Holy Spirit, assume that
+they did thus quarrel and contend. Had this been so, no foundation could
+ever have been laid; the Church would have fallen to pieces at the very
+beginning.
+
+In the hands of these faithful and wise stewards of God’s dispensation,
+“the stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner.”
+Their work has been tried by fire and by flood; and it abides. The rock
+of Zion stands unworn by time, unshaken by the conflict of ages,--amidst
+the movements of history and the shifting currents of thought the one
+foundation for the peace and true welfare of mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[91] Πᾶσα οἰκοδομή, according to the well-established critical reading.
+For πᾶς without the article, implying a various whole, compare πάσης
+κτίσεως in Col. i. 15; πᾶσα γραφή, 2 Tim. iii. 16; ἐν πάσῃ ἀναστροφῇ, 1
+Peter i. 15; and Θεὸς πάσης χάριτος, 1 Peter v. 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_THE SECRET OF THE AGES._
+
+    “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of
+    you Gentiles,--if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of
+    that grace of God which was given me toward you; how that by
+    revelation was made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in
+    few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding
+    in the mystery of Christ), which in other generations was not made
+    known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His
+    holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; _to wit_, that the
+    Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and
+    fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
+    whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace
+    of God which was given me according to the working of His power.
+    Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
+    given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
+    Christ; and to bring to light what is the dispensation of the
+    mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all
+    things.”--EPH. iii. 1-9.
+
+
+Verses 2-13 are in form a parenthesis. They interrupt the prayer which
+appears to be commencing in the first verse and is not resumed until
+verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical, however, in
+appearance more than in reality. The matter it contains is so weighty
+and so essential to the argument and structure of the epistle, that it
+is impossible to treat it as a mere _aside_. The writer intends, at the
+pause which occurs after the paragraph just concluded (ii. 22), to
+interpose a few words of prayer before passing on to the next topic.
+But in the act of doing so, this subject of which his mind is
+full--viz., that of his own relation to God’s great purpose for
+mankind--forces itself upon him; and the prayer that was on his lips is
+pent up for a few moments longer, until it flows forth again, in richer
+measure, in verses 14-19.
+
+Like chapter i. 3-14, this passage is an extreme instance of St Paul’s
+amorphous style. His sentences are not composed; they are spun in a
+continuous thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial, and
+relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes like living things, putting
+forth new processes every moment, now in this and now in that direction.
+Within the main parenthesis we soon come upon another parenthesis
+including verses 3_b_ and 4 (“as I wrote afore,” etc.); and at several
+points the grammatical connexion is uncertain. In its general scope,
+this intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of _what God
+has wrought in the apostle_ toward the accomplishment of His great plan.
+It thus completes the exposition given already of that which _God
+wrought in Christ for the Church_, and that which _He has wrought
+through Christ in Gentile believers_ in fulfilment of the same end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 1-9 speak (1) of the mystery itself--God’s gracious intention
+toward the human race, unknown in earlier times; and (2) of the man to
+whom, above others, it was given to make known the secret.
+
+I. _The mystery_ is defined twice over. First, it consists in the fact
+that “in Christ Jesus through the gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and
+co-incorporate and co-partners in the promise” (ver. 6); and secondly,
+it is “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (ver. 8). The latter phrase
+gathers to a point what is diversely expressed in the former.
+
+Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of the mysteries of Divine
+truth, of the whole enigma of existence. In the parallel epistle he
+calls Him “the mystery of God--in whom are all the treasures of wisdom
+and knowledge hidden” (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.). The mystery of God,
+discovered in Christ, was hidden out of the sight and reach of previous
+times. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common
+property of mankind (Col. i. 25-28).
+
+In close connexion with these statements, St Paul speaks there, as he
+does here, of his own heavy sufferings endured on this account and the
+joy they gave him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose worthy of
+God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation waiting to be spoken since the
+world began, that is addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along
+with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate with the
+greatness of the truth given him to announce.
+
+The mystery, as we have said, consists in _Christ_. This we learned from
+chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and
+laid His plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness of the
+times dispenses. The Old Testament, the reservoir of previous
+revelation, had Him for its close-kept secret, “held in silence through
+eternal times” (Rom. xvi. 25-27). The drift of its prophecies, the focus
+of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards which its spiritual
+indications pointed, was “Christ.” He “was the spiritual rock that
+followed” Israel in its wanderings, from whose springs the people
+drank, as it answered to the touch of one and now another of the holy
+men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ gives unity, substance, and
+meaning to the history of Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without
+goal, a problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law and sacrifice;
+the kingly Son of David, and the suffering Servant of Jehovah; the Seed
+of the woman with bruised foot bruising the serpent’s head; the Lord
+whom His people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone hewn from
+the mountains without hands, that grows till it fills the earth--the
+manifold representations of Israel’s ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus
+Christ. The lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of
+prophecy--disconnected as they seemed and without a plan, giving rise to
+a thousand dreams and speculations--are filled out and drawn into shape
+and take life and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of a
+consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment or of that
+belonging to the consummate Person and the comprehensive plan manifest
+in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
+
+But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated wealth of former
+revelation, His fulness is not measured thereby or exhausted. He solves
+the problems of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But He
+creates new and deeper problems, some explained in the continued
+teaching of His Spirit and His providence, others that remain, or emerge
+from time to time to tax the faith and understanding of His Church.
+There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person, with which the Greek
+Church struggled long--His eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation
+to mankind and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial reign
+and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty of God. These depths
+St Paul sounded with his plummet; but he found them unfathomable.
+Theological science has explored and defined them, and illuminated them
+on many sides, but cannot reach to their inmost mystery. Then there is
+the problem of the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching
+the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt, touching the
+adjustment of law and grace, the method of justification, the extent and
+efficacy of Christ’s redeeming work, touching the future destiny and
+eternal state of souls. Another class of questions largely occupies the
+minds of thoughtful men to-day. They are studying the relation of Christ
+and His Church to nature and the outward world, the bearings of
+Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of the Spirit of God
+in communities, and the place of man’s collective life in the progress
+and upbuilding of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to those
+who humbly seek His light. He is given afresh in every age. Out of
+Christ’s unsearchable riches ever-new resources are forthcoming at His
+Church’s need, new treasures lying hidden in the old for him who can
+extract them. But His riches, however far they are investigated, remain
+unsearchable, and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God’s ways
+may be tracked further and further in each generation; they will remain
+to the end, as they were to the mind of Paul at the limit of his bold
+researches, “past finding out.” The inspired apostle confesses himself a
+child in Divine learning: “We know in part,” he says, “we prophesy in
+part.” Oh the depths of “hidden wisdom” unimagined now, that are in
+store for us in Christ, “foreordained before the worlds unto our
+glory!”
+
+The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with which the apostle is
+concerned, is that of His relationship to the Gentile world. “The grace
+of God,” he says in verse 2, “was given me _for you_.” Such is “the
+dispensation” in which God is now engaged. Upon this lavish and
+undreamed-of scale He is dealing forth salvation to men. St Paul
+describes this revelation of God’s goodness to the Gentiles by three
+parallel but distinct terms in verse 6. They “are fellow-heirs”--a word
+that carries us back to chapter i. 11-13, and assures the Gentile
+readers of their final redemption and heavenly glory.[92] They “are of
+the same body”--which sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii.
+11-22. And they “are fellow-partakers of the promise”--receiving upon a
+footing of equal privilege with Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit
+and the blessings promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.
+
+In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St Paul formally
+proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles into the body of Christ,
+their investiture with the franchise of faith. The forgiveness of sins
+is theirs, the light of God’s smile, the breath of His Spirit, the
+worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and honours of His
+service. The incarnation of Christ is theirs; His life, teaching, and
+miracles; His cross is theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His
+second coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom--all made their
+own on the bare condition of a penitent and obedient faith. The past is
+theirs--is ours, along with the present and the future. The God of
+Israel is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons after the
+flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets prophesied of the grace that
+should come unto us. Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile
+peoples in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and praises. In
+their words we find expression for our heart-griefs and joys. At the
+wedding-feast or by the grave-side, amidst “the multitude that keep holy
+day” and in “dry lands” where the soul thirsts for God’s ordinances, we
+carry the Psalmists with us and the teachers of Israel.
+
+What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by Jesus Christ, have
+discovered in the Jewish Bible! When will the Jewish people understand
+that their greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the
+Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept their part in the
+riches of which they have made all the world partakers? The mystery of
+our participation in their Christ has now been “revealed to the sons of
+men” long enough. Is it not time that they themselves should see it,
+that the veil should be lifted from the heart of Israel? The disclosure
+was in the first instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished
+expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was at first rejected.
+But God the King of the ages has been asserting and re-asserting the
+fact in the course of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him!
+how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!
+
+II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,--men of unveiled heart
+to whom the mystery of ages was disclosed. “The secret of Jehovah is
+with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant.” Such is
+the rule of revelation. To the like effect Christ said: “The pure in
+heart shall see God. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the
+doctrine.”
+
+The light of God’s universal love had come into the world; but where it
+fell on cold or impure hearts, it shone in vain. The mystery “was made
+manifest to His _saints_,” writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So in
+this passage: “revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets in the
+Spirit.” The pure eye sees the true light. This was the condition which
+made it possible for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be
+the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere and devoted
+men, willing to be taught of God, willing to surrender every prejudice
+and the preconceptions of flesh and blood, in order to receive and
+convey to the world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than the
+thoughts of men. To such men--true disciples, loyal at all costs to God
+and truth, holy and humble of heart--Jesus Christ gave His great
+commission and bade them “go and make disciples of all the nations.”
+
+The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the
+house of Cornelius “not to call any man common or unclean.” He saw, and
+the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God “gave the like gift”
+to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had “purified their
+hearts by faith.” Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this
+revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors
+in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when
+he speaks of “holy apostles and prophets” in verse 5. His readers would
+naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original
+apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine
+of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance
+to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown
+by the stress which is laid upon it and the prominence given to it in
+the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.
+
+The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never
+claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It
+was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. “Whereof,” he says, in
+verse 7, “I _became minister_”; again, “to me was this grace given, to
+_preach to the Gentiles_ Christ’s unsearchable riches.” The leaders of
+the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for
+all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the
+practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came
+upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to
+it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then “it pleased God
+to reveal His Son” in him, that he might “preach Him among the
+Gentiles.”
+
+The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and
+continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him
+to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative,
+to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds
+itself: “To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace
+given.” That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and
+most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ’s
+riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for
+this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness
+that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that
+this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped
+in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew
+better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the
+house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of
+that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its
+precious things and make them at home within its walls.
+
+To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the
+gospel--a commonplace of our modern rhetoric--had burst upon his mind in
+its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an
+undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are
+opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the
+promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the
+largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of
+the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine
+impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the
+disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.
+
+St Paul’s work, in carrying out the dispensation of this mystery, was
+twofold. It was both external and internal. He was a “herald and
+apostle”; he was also “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth” (1
+Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry the good tidings
+from one end to the other of the Roman empire, to spread it abroad as
+far as his feet could travel and his voice reach, and thus “to fulfil
+the gospel of Christ.” But there was another, mental task, as necessary
+and still more difficult, which likewise fell to his lot. He had to
+_think out_ the gospel. It was his office to unfold and apply it to the
+wants of a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted
+him as evangelist and pastor,--questions that contained the seed and
+beginning of the intellectual difficulties of the Church in future
+times. He had to free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism,
+to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical and legal
+interpretation. On the other hand, he had equally to guard the truth as
+it is in Jesus from the dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and
+theosophy. Fighting his way through fierce and incessant opposition on
+both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind of the Church onwards and
+guides it still in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. These
+noble epistles are the fruit and record of St Paul’s theological work.
+Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience of the world
+than any one man besides, except the Master of truth who was more than
+man.
+
+The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence he now possessed, and
+that must accrue to him in the future from the transcendent interest of
+the doctrines committed to his charge. There is no false modesty about
+this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only to “preach to the
+Gentiles the good news of Christ’s unsearchable riches”; but more than
+that, “to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery that
+has been hidden away from the ages in God who created all things.” The
+great secret was out while Saul of Tarsus was still a persecutor and
+blasphemer. But as to the _management_ and _dispensation_ of the
+mystery, the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in which
+God would convey and apply it to the world at large, and as to the
+bearings and consequences of this momentous truth,--the apostle Paul,
+and no one but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He was, in
+fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.
+
+Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul’s debtors; and are
+included amongst the “all men” of verse 9 (if this reading of the text
+is correct). St John had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the
+mind of Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation; but
+the labours and the logic of St Paul provided the field into which he
+entered in his ripe old age spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and
+assimilated everything that belonged to Christ and found for everything
+its principle and centre in the Master of his youth--“the way, the
+truth, and the life”--passed through the school of Paul. With the rest,
+he learnt through the new apostle to see more perfectly “what is the
+dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this letter in the
+Asian towns, if they have not known it before, will now “perceive” his
+“understanding in the mystery of Christ.” All ages have discerned it
+since. And the ages to come will measure its value better than we can do
+now.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[92] See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14-25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN._
+
+    “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the
+    heavenly _places_ might be made known through the Church the
+    manifold wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages which
+    He formed in the Christ, _even_ Jesus our Lord: in whom we have
+    boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him.
+    Wherefore I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which
+    are your glory.”--EPH. iii. 10-13.
+
+
+_The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God who created all
+things_: so the last paragraph concluded. The added phrase “through
+Jesus Christ” is a comment of the pious reader, that has been
+incorporated in the received text; but it is wanting in the oldest
+copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not concerned with the
+prerogatives of Christ, but with the scope of the Christian economy. He
+is displaying the breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace, the
+infinite range of the Divine plans and operations of which it forms the
+centre. Its secret was cherished in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations
+are laid in the very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now
+being made brings new light and wisdom to the powers of the celestial
+realms.
+
+“There is nothing covered,” said Jesus, “which shall not be revealed,
+and hidden which shall not be known.” The mysteries which God sets
+before His intelligent creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are
+drafts, to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of wisdom hidden
+in Christ. So this great secret of the destiny of the Gentile world was
+“from all ages hidden, in order that now through the Church it might be
+made known,” and by its means God’s wisdom, to these sublime
+intelligences. This intention was a part of the “plan of the ages”
+formed in Christ (ver. 11). God designed by our redemption to bless
+higher races along with our own. The elder sons of God, those “morning
+stars” of creation, are schooled and instructed by what is transpiring
+here upon earth.
+
+To some this will appear to be mere extravagance. They see in such
+expressions the marks of an unrestrained enthusiasm, of theological
+speculation pushed beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge
+of the physical universe. This censure would be plausible and it might
+seem that the apostle had extended the mission of the gospel beyond its
+province, were it not for what he says in verse 11: This “purpose of the
+ages” God “made in _the Christ_, even _Jesus our Lord_.” Jesus Christ
+links together angels and men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of
+heaven. Christ’s coming to this world and identification with it unite
+to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The scenes enacted upon this
+planet and the events of its religious history have sent their shock
+through the universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to human
+life a boundless interest and significance. It is idle to oppose to this
+conviction the fact of the littleness of the terrestrial globe.
+Spiritual and physical magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot
+measure a man’s soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science teaches
+us that the most powerful forces may exist and operate within the
+narrowest space. A microscopic cell may contain the potential life of a
+world. If our earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has
+been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which God spared not to
+give His own Son!
+
+Here, then, lies the centre of the apostle’s thoughts in this paragraph:
+_God’s all-comprehending purpose in Christ_. The magnitude and
+completeness of this plan are indicated by the fact that it embraces in
+its purview _the angelic powers and their enlightenment_. So
+understanding it, our _human faith gains confidence and courage_ (vv.
+12, 13).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. The textual critics restore the definite article which later copyists
+had dropped before the word _Christ_ in verse 11. We have already
+remarked the frequency of “the Christ” in this epistle.[93] Once besides
+this peculiar combination of the names of our Saviour occurs--in
+Colossians ii. 6, where Lightfoot renders it _the Christ, even Jesus the
+Lord_. So it should be rendered in this place. St Paul sets forth the
+purpose of “God who created all things.” He is looking back through “the
+ages” during which the Divine plan was kept secret. God was all the time
+designing His work of mercy, pointing meanwhile the hopes of men by
+token and promise to the Coming One. The Messiah was the burden of those
+prophetic ages. That inscrutable Christ of the Old Testament, the veiled
+mystery of Jewish hope, stands manifested before us and challenges our
+faith in the glorious person of “Jesus our Lord.” This singular turn of
+expression identifies the ideal and the real, the promise and
+fulfilment, the dream of Old Testament prophecy and the fact of New
+Testament history. For Jesus our Lord is the very Christ to whom the
+generations before His coming looked forward out of their twilight with
+wistful expectancy.
+
+Not without meaning is He called “Jesus _our Lord_.” The “principalities
+and powers” of the heavenly places are in our view (ver. 10). These
+potentates some of the Asian Christians were fain to worship. “See ye do
+it not,” Paul seems to say. “Jesus, the Christ of God, is alone our
+Lord; not these. He is our Lord _and theirs_ (i. 21, 22). As our Lord He
+commands their homage, and gives them lessons through His Church in
+God’s deep counsels.” Everything that the apostle says tends to exalt
+our Redeemer and to enhance our confidence in Him. His position is
+central and supreme, in regard alike to the ages of time and the powers
+of the universe. In His hand is the key to all mysteries. He is the
+Alpha and Omega, the beginning, middle, and end of God’s ways. He is the
+centre of Israel, Israel of the world and the human ages; while the
+world of men is bound through Him to the higher spheres of being, over
+which He too presides.
+
+There is a splendid intellectual courage, an incredible boldness and
+reach of thought in St Paul’s conception of the sovereignty of Christ.
+Remember that He of whom these things are said, but thirty years before
+died a felon’s death in the sight of the Jewish people. It is not _our_
+Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is hallowed by the lips of millions and
+glorified by the triumphs of centuries upon centuries past, but the
+Nazarene with the obscurity of His life and the cruel shame of Calvary
+fresh in the recollection of all men. With what immense force had the
+facts of His glorification wrought upon men’s minds--His resurrection
+and ascension, the witness of His Spirit and the virtue of His
+gospel--for it to be possible to speak of Him thus, within a generation
+of His death! While “the foolishness of preaching” such a Christ and the
+weakness in which He was crucified were patent to all eyes, unrelieved
+by the influence of time and the glamour of success, how was it that the
+first believers raised Jesus to this limitless glory and dominion? It
+was through the conviction, certified by outward fact and inward
+experience, that “He liveth by the power of God.” Thus Peter on the day
+of Pentecost: “By the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this
+which ye now see and hear.” The resurrection from the dead, the
+demonstration of the Spirit proved Jesus Christ to be that which He had
+claimed to be, the Saviour of men and the eternal Son of God.
+
+The supremacy here assigned to Christ is a consequence of the exaltation
+described at the close of the first chapter. There we see the height,
+here the breadth and length of His dominion. If He is raised from the
+grave so high that all created powers and names are beneath His feet, we
+cannot wonder that the past ages were employed in preparing His way,
+that the basis of His throne lies in the foundation of the world.
+
+II. The universe is one. There is a solidarity of rational and moral
+interests amongst all intelligences. Granting the existence of such
+beings as the angels of Scripture, we should expect them to be
+profoundly concerned in the redeeming work of Christ. They are the
+“watchers” and “holy ones” spoken of by the later Isaiah and Daniel,
+whom the Lord has “set upon the walls of Jerusalem” and who survey the
+affairs of nations. Such was “the angel who talked” with Zechariah in
+his vision, and whom the prophet overheard pleading for Jerusalem. In
+the Apocalypse, again, we find the angels acting as God’s unseen
+executive. We decline to believe that these superhuman creatures are
+nothing more than apocalyptic machinery, that they are creations of
+fancy employed to give a livelier aspect to spiritual truth. “Cannot I
+pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve
+legions of angels?” So Jesus said, in the most solemn hour of His life.
+And who can forget His tender words concerning the little children,
+whose “angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven”?
+
+The apostle Paul, who denounces “worship of the angels” in the fellow
+epistle to this, earnestly believed in their existence and their
+interest in human affairs. If he did not write the words of Hebrews i.
+14, he certainly held that “they are ministering spirits sent forth to
+do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation.” Most
+clearly is their relationship to the Church affirmed by the words of the
+revealing angel to the apostle John: “I am a fellow-servant with thee
+and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them that keep the words of
+this book.”
+
+Christ’s service is the high school of wisdom for the universe. These
+princes of heaven win by their ministry to Christ and His Church a great
+reward. Their intelligence, however lofty its range, is finite. Their
+keen and burning intuition could not penetrate the mystery of God’s
+intentions toward this world. The revelations of the latter days--the
+incarnation, the cross, the publication of the gospel, the outpouring
+of the Spirit--were full of surprises to the heavenly watchers. They
+sang at Bethlehem; they hid their faces and shrouded heaven in blackness
+at the sight of Calvary. They bent down with eager observation and
+searching thought “desiring to look into” the things made known to men
+(1 Peter i. 12),--close and sympathetic students of the Church’s
+history. The apostle felt that there were other eyes bent upon him than
+those of his fellow-men, and that he was acting in a grander arena than
+the visible world. “We are a spectacle,” he says, “_to angels_ and to
+men.” So he enjoins faithfulness on Timothy, and with Timothy on all who
+bear the charge of the gospel, “before God and Christ Jesus, and the
+elect angels.” What is public opinion, what the applause or derision of
+the crowd, to him who lives and acts in the presence of these august
+spectators?
+
+“Through the Church,” we are told, the angels of God are “now” having
+His “manifold wisdom made known” to them. It is not from the abstract
+scheme of salvation, from the theory or theology of the Church that they
+get this education, but through the living Church herself. The Saviour’s
+mission to earth created a problem for them, the development of which
+they follow with the most intense and sympathetic interest. With what
+solicitude they watch the conflict between good and evil and the varying
+progress of Christ’s kingdom amongst men! Many things, doubtless, that
+engage our attention and fill a large space in our Church records, are
+of little account with them; and much that passes in obscurity, names
+and deeds unchronicled by fame, are written in heaven and pondered in
+other spheres. No brave and true blow is struck in Christ’s battle, but
+it has the admiration of these high spectators. No advance is made in
+character and habit, in Christian intelligence and efficiency and the
+application of the gospel to human need, but they notice and approve.
+When the cause of the Church and the salvation of mankind go forward,
+when righteousness and peace triumph, the morning stars sing together
+and the sons of God shout for joy. The joy that there is in the presence
+of the angels of God over the repenting sinner, is not the joy of
+sympathy or pity only; it is the delight of growing wisdom, of deepening
+insight into the ways of God, into the heart of the Father and the love
+that passes knowledge.
+
+One would suppose from what the apostle hints, that our world presents a
+problem unique in the kingdom of God, one which raises questions more
+complicated and crucial than have elsewhere arisen. The heavenly
+princedoms are learning through the Church “the _manifold_ wisdom of
+God.” His love, in its pure essence, those happy and godlike beings
+know. They have lived for ages in its unclouded light. His power and
+skill they may see displayed in proportions immensely grander than this
+puny globe of ours presents. God’s justice, it may be, and the thunders
+of His law have issued forth in other regions clothed with a splendour
+of which the scenes of Sinai were but a faint emblem. It is in the
+combination of the manifold principles of the Divine government that the
+peculiarity of the human problem appears to lie. The delicate and
+continuous balancing of forces in God’s plan of dealing with this world,
+the reconciliation of seeming incompatibilities, the issue found from
+positions of hopeless contradiction, the accord of goodness with
+severity, of inflexible rectitude and truth with fatherly compassion,
+afford to the greatest minds of heaven a spectacle and a study
+altogether wonderful. So amongst ourselves the child of a noble house,
+reared in cultured ease and shielded from moral peril, in visiting the
+homes of poverty in the crowded city finds a new world opened to him,
+that can teach him Divine lessons if he has the heart to learn. His mind
+is awakened, his sympathies enriched. He hears the world’s true voice,
+“the still, sad music of humanity.” He measures the heights and depths
+of man’s nature. A host of questions are thrust upon him, whose urgency
+he had scarcely guessed; and wide ranges of truth are lighted up for
+him, which before were distant and unreal. The highest have ever to
+learn from the lowest in Christ’s school, the seeming-wise from the
+simple; even the pure and good, from contact with the fallen whom they
+seek to save.
+
+And “the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places” are, it
+seems, willing to learn from those below them. As they traced the course
+of human history in those “eternal times” during which the mystery lay
+wrapped in silence, the angel watchers were too wise to play the
+sceptic, too cautious to criticize an unfinished plan and arraign a
+justice they could not yet understand. With a dignified patience they
+waited the uplifting of the curtain and the unravelling of the entangled
+plot. They looked for the coming of the Promised One. So in due time
+they witnessed and, for their reward, assisted in His manifestation.
+With the same docility these high sharers of our theological inquiries
+still wait to see the end of the Lord and to take their part in the
+dénouement of the time-drama, in the revelation of the sons of God. Let
+us copy their long patience. God has not made us to mock us. “What thou
+knowest not now,” said the great Revealer, the Master of all mysteries,
+to His disciple, “thou shalt know hereafter.”
+
+These wise elder brothers of ours, rich in the lore of eternity, foresee
+the things to come as we cannot do. They are far above the smoke and
+dust of the earthly conflict. The doubts that shake the strongest souls
+amongst us, the cries of the hour which confuse and deceive us, do not
+trouble them. They behold us in our weakness, our fears and our
+divisions; but they also look on Him who “sits expecting till His
+enemies are made His footstool.” They see how calmly He sits, how
+patiently expectant, while the sound of clashing arms and the rage and
+tumult of the peoples go up from the earth. They mark the steadiness
+with which through century after century, in spite of refluent waves,
+the tide of mercy rises, and still rises on the shores of earth.
+Thrones, systems, civilizations have gone down; one after another of the
+powers that strove to crush or to corrupt Christ’s Church has
+disappeared; and still the name of Jesus lives and spreads. It has
+traversed every continent and sea; it stands at the head of the living
+and moving forces of the world. Those who come nearest to the angelic
+point of view, and judge of the progress of things not by the froth upon
+the surface but by the trend of the deeper currents, are the most
+confident for the future of our race. The kingdom of Satan will not fall
+without a struggle--a last struggle, perhaps more furious than any in
+the past--but it is doomed, and waning to its end. So far has the
+kingdom of Christ advanced, so mightily does the word of God grow and
+prevail in the earth, that faith may well assure itself of the promised
+triumph. Soon we shall shout: “Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent
+reigneth!”
+
+III. Suddenly, according to his wont, the apostle drops down from the
+heights of contemplation to the level of ordinary fact. He descends in
+verse 12 from the thought of the eternal purpose and the education of
+the angels to the struggling Church. The assurance of its life in the
+Spirit corresponds to the grandeur of that Divine order to which it
+belongs. “In whom,” he says--in this Christ, the revealed mystery of
+ages past, the Teacher of angels and archangels--“we have our freedom
+and confident access to God through faith in Him.”
+
+If it be “Jesus our Lord” to whom these attributes belong, and He is not
+ashamed of us, well may we draw near with _confidence_ to the Father,
+unashamed in the presence of His holy angels. We have no need to be
+abashed, if we approach the Divine Majesty with a true faith in Christ.
+His name gives the sinner access to the holiest place. The cherubim
+sheathe their swords of flame. The heavenly warders at this passport
+open the golden gates. We “come unto Mount Sion, the city of the living
+God, and to an innumerable company of angels.” Not one of these
+mightinesses and ancient peers of heaven, not Gabriel or Michael
+himself, would wish or dare to bar our entrance.
+
+“We _have_ boldness and access,” says the apostle, as in chapter i. 7:
+“We have redemption in His blood.” He insists upon the conscious fact.
+This freedom of approach to God, this sonship of faith, is no hope or
+dream of what may be; it is a present reality, a filial cry heard in a
+multitude both of Gentile and Jewish hearts (comp. ii. 18).
+
+This sentence exhibits the richness of synonyms characteristic of the
+epistle. There is _boldness_ and _access_, _confidence_ as well as
+_faith_. The three former terms Bengel nicely distinguishes: “libertatem
+_oris_ in orando,” and “admissionem in fiducia _in re_, et
+_corde_”--freedom of _speech_ (in prayer), of _status_, and of
+_feeling_. The second word (as in chapter ii. 18 and Romans v. 2)
+appears to be active rather than passive in its force, denoting
+_admittance_ rather than _access_. So that while the former of the
+parallel terms (_boldness_) describes the liberty with which the
+new-born Church of the redeemed address themselves to God the Father and
+the unchecked freedom of their petitions, the latter (_admittance_)
+takes us back to the act of Christ by which He introduced us to the
+Father’s presence and gave us the place of sons in the house. Being thus
+admitted, we may come with confidence of heart, though we be less than
+the least of saints. Accepted in the Beloved, we are within our right if
+we say to the Father:--
+
+    “Yet in Thy Son divinely great,
+    We claim Thy providential care.
+    Boldly we stand before Thy seat;
+    Our Advocate hath placed us there!”
+
+“Wherefore,” concludes the imprisoned apostle, “I beg you not to lose
+heart at my afflictions for you.” Assuredly Paul did not pray that _he_
+should not lose heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew how
+his friends were fretting and wearying over his long captivity. Hence he
+writes to the Philippians: “I would have you know that the things which
+have happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the
+gospel.” Hence, too, he assures the Colossians earnestly of his joy in
+suffering for their sake (ch. i. 24).
+
+The Church was fearful for Paul’s life and distressed by his prolonged
+sufferings. It missed his cheering presence and the inspiration of his
+voice. But if the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this letter
+show, and grounded in His eternal purposes, then let all friends of
+Christ take courage. The ark freighted with such fortunes cannot sink.
+St Paul is a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom! Every
+stroke that falls upon him, every day added to the months of his
+imprisonment helps to show the worth of the cause he has espoused and
+gives to it increased lustre: “my afflictions for you, which are your
+glory.”
+
+Those that love him should _boast_ rather than grieve over his
+afflictions. “We make our boast in you amongst the Churches of God,” he
+wrote to the distressed Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), “for your patience
+and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions”; so he would have
+the Churches think of him. When good men suffer in a good cause, it is
+not matter for pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[93] See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.
+
+
+
+
+_PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    Τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου μου.--PHIL. iii. 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST._
+
+    “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every
+    family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you,
+    according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened
+    with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may
+    dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted
+    and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the
+    saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.”--EPH.
+    iii. 14-18.
+
+
+In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer
+at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts
+carried him away. The supplication is offered “for this cause” (vv. 1,
+14),--it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of
+all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of
+His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them
+to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His
+Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much
+he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to
+pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into
+this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose
+upon the writer’s mind before his prayer could find expression. He has
+told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the
+interest it excites amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,--thoughts
+full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment
+and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to
+the “For this cause” repeated from verse 1.
+
+The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his
+epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God
+as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow
+the readers in a manner corresponding to _the wealth of His glory_--in
+other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal
+Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed
+Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the
+Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are
+one,--viz., _the inward strength of the Holy Spirit_ (ver. 16), and _the
+permanent indwelling of Christ_ (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his
+readers’ behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings,
+which are also one,--viz., _the power to understand the Divine plan_
+(ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and so _to know the
+love of Christ_ (ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the
+distance a further end for man and the Church: _the reception of the
+entire fulness of God_. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit;
+they grasp at the infinite.
+
+In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle’s prayer to the end
+of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches
+the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all
+believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of
+Christ in which they participate.
+
+Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul’s invocation: “I bow my
+knees to the Father, of whom [not _the whole family_, but] _every
+family_ in heaven and upon earth is named.” The point of St Paul’s
+original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for
+_family_ (_patria_) is based on that for _father_ (_pater_). A
+distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and
+this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the
+title which ennobled the race. So we have “the sons of Israel,” the
+“sons of Aaron” or “of Korah”; and in Greek history, the Atridæ, the
+Alcmæonidæ, who form a family of many kindred households--a _clan_, or
+_gens_, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4)
+is described as “being of the house and family [_patria_] of David”; and
+Jesus is “the Son of David.” Now Scripture speaks also of _sons of God_;
+and these of two chief orders. There are those “in heaven,” who form a
+race distinct from ourselves in origin--divided, it may be, amongst
+themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in
+the heavenly places.
+
+Of these are “the sons of God” whom the Book of Job pictures appearing
+in the Divine court and forming a “family in heaven.” When Christ
+promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will
+be “equal to the angels,” because they are “sons of God,” it is implied
+that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in
+Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as “the festal gathering
+and assembly of _the firstborn_ enrolled in heaven.” We, the sons of
+Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder
+Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and
+permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the
+Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the “family on earth
+named” from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our
+wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike
+God’s offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.
+
+This passage gives to God’s Fatherhood the same extension that chapter
+i. 21 has given to Christ’s Lordship. Every order of creaturely
+intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to
+Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God’s name of Father the entire wealth
+of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured
+worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the
+blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His
+needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are
+barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to
+meet temptation. _Strength_ is their first necessity: “I bow my knees to
+the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according
+to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the
+Spirit into your inward man.” The apostle asked them in verse 13, in
+view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his
+account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour
+into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in
+them. The _strengthening_ of which he speaks is the opposite of the
+_faintness of heart_, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13.
+Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians “Quit themselves
+like men, _be strong_” (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian
+believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger
+without quailing.
+
+The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be
+“strengthened _with_ [or _by_] _power_,”--by “the power” of God “working
+in us” (ver. 20), the very same “power, exceeding great,” that raised
+Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God
+operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: “by power made
+strong,” he says, “_through the Spirit_.” Nothing is more familiar in
+Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the
+source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel
+Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. “Ye shall receive power,” He
+said to His disciples, “after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.”
+Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good
+soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and
+indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for
+righteousness’ sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a
+brave and enterprising man as a _man of spirit_. All high and commanding
+qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are
+inspirations. In the human will, with its _vis vivida_, its elasticity
+and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest
+type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is
+animated and filled with “the Spirit,” the man so possessed is the
+embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and
+constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,--all the
+elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such
+power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under
+their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. “My grace
+is sufficient for thee,” said Christ to His disabled servant; “for
+power is perfected in weakness.” In privation and loneliness, in old age
+and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with
+its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral
+ascendency as at the time when he was “smitten down” and all but
+destroyed by persecution and affliction. “That the excellency of the
+power,” he says, “may be of God, and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. iv.
+7-11).
+
+The apostle points to “the inner man” as the seat of this invigoration,
+thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the
+Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface
+waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a
+spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God.
+Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of
+the prisoner Paul--a mark for the world’s scorn--there lives a strength
+of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Cæsars, a power of
+the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent
+power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of
+his readers may partake.
+
+II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it,
+is the second: “that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in
+your hearts.” Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17.
+Christ’s residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result,
+nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward
+man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a
+varying light.
+
+We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which
+marks the doxology of chapter i., and other leading passages in this
+epistle.[94] The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the
+object of the apostle’s devout supplication.
+
+As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and
+conveys the point of St Paul’s entreaty; he asks that “the Christ may
+_take up His abode_,--may _settle_ in your hearts.” The word signifies
+to _set up one’s house_ or _make one’s home_ in a place, by way of
+contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same
+verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ “_dwells_ all the
+fulness of the Godhead”; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in
+the same tense as here, how it was God’s “pleasure that all the fulness
+should _make its dwelling_ in Him” now raised from the dead, who had
+emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father’s love.
+So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never
+again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and
+disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His
+own. Let Him become the heart’s fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him,
+if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there
+rest in His love. For He promised: “If any man love me, my Father will
+love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
+
+And “_the_ Christ,” not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this?
+There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found
+elsewhere.[95] The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something
+beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true
+Christian,--more even than the permanence and certainty of this
+indwelling indicated by the verb. “The Christ” is Christ in the
+significance of His _name_. It is Christ not only possessed, but
+understood,--Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of
+His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the
+Christ of the Church and the ages--known and accepted for all this--that
+St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile
+disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension
+of the greatness of the Redeemer’s person and offices; he longs to have
+their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.
+
+_The heart_, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional
+nature by itself. The antithesis of “heart and head,” the divorce of
+feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture.
+The heart is our interior, conscious self--thought, feeling, will in
+their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the
+whole heart,--a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of
+the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.
+
+The difference in significance between “Christ” or “Christ Jesus” and
+“the Christ” in such a sentence as this, is not unlike the difference
+between “Queen Victoria” and “the Queen.” The latter phrase brings Her
+Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour of her Queenship. We
+think of her vast dominion, of her line of royal and famous ancestry, of
+her beneficent and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to
+apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the breadth of His
+humanity, in the plenitude of His nature and His powers. And this is the
+object to which the teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches
+at the present time are directed. Understanding in this larger sense the
+indwelling of the Christ for which he prays, we see how naturally his
+supplication expands into the “height and depth” of the ensuing verse.
+
+But however large the mental conception of Christ that St Paul desires
+to impart to us, it is to be grasped “through faith.” All real
+understanding and appropriation of Christ, the simplest and the most
+advanced, come by this channel,--through the faith of the heart in which
+knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one act of trustful
+apprehension of the truth concerning Jesus Christ by which the soul
+commits itself to Him.
+
+How much is contained in this petition of the apostle that we need to
+ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus dwells now as then in the hearts of all
+who love Him. But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how poor a
+Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul’s experience! how slight
+and empty a word is His name to multitudes of those who bear it! If men
+have once attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of their
+interest in His atonement and their right to hope for eternal life
+through Him, their minds are at rest. They have accepted Christ and
+received what He has to give them; they turn their attention to other
+things. They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They have other
+mental interests,--scientific, literary, political or industrial; but
+the knowledge of Christ has no intellectual attraction for them. With St
+Paul’s passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind to “know
+Him,” these complacent believers have no sympathy whatever. This, they
+think, belongs only to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of
+religious genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as a
+subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentable and disastrous
+neglect, leave the study of Christian doctrine to the ministry. The
+Christ cannot take His due place in His people’s heart, He will not
+reveal to them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little and
+care to know so little of Him. How many can be found, outside the ranks
+of the ordained, that make a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to
+meditate on Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man of affairs
+is there who will spare an hour each day from his other gains “for the
+excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”?--“If at the
+present time the religious life of the Church is languid, and if in its
+enterprises there is little of audacity and vehemence, a partial
+explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in
+the contents of the Christian Faith which has characterized the last
+hundred or hundred and fifty years of our history.”[96]
+
+It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the mind without limit.
+St Paul, who knew so much, for that reason felt that all he had attained
+was but in the bud and beginning. “The Christ” is a subject infinite as
+nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged apprehension of
+Him, the heart enlarges in capacity and moral power. Not unfrequently,
+the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men,
+to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an
+intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that
+trained scholars might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship
+with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction are sustained,
+that the apostle first asked from God on behalf of his anxious Gentile
+friends.
+
+III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul were concerned
+only for the individual needs of those to whom he writes and their
+personal advancement in the new life. But it is otherwise. _The Church_
+fills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our
+attention. This is God’s holy temple and the habitation of His Spirit;
+it is the body in which Christ dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The
+Church is the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it the
+angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons of God’s wisdom. Round
+this centre the apostle’s intercession must needs revolve. When he asks
+for his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship with
+Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into
+the Church’s life and to apprehend God’s great designs for mankind.
+
+This object so much absorbs the writer’s thoughts and has been so
+constantly in view from the outset, that it does not occur to him, in
+verse 18, to say precisely _what_ that is whose “breadth and length and
+height and depth” the readers are to measure. The vast building stands
+before us and needs not to be named; we have only not to look away from
+it, not to forget what we have been reading all this time. It is _God’s
+plan for the world in Christ_; it is the purpose of the ages realized in
+the building of His Church. This conception was so impressive to the
+original readers and has held their attention so closely since the
+apostle unfolded it in the course of the second chapter, that they would
+have no difficulty in supplying the ellipsis which has given so much
+trouble to the commentators since.
+
+If we are asked to interpret the four several magnitudes that are
+assigned to this building of God, we may say with Hofmann[97]: “It
+stretches _wide_ over all the world of the nations, east and west. In
+its _length_, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. In
+_depth_, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death
+[comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven’s _height_, where Christ lives.”
+In the like strain Bernardine à Piconio, most genial and spiritual of
+Romanist interpreters: “_Wide_ as the furthest limits of the inhabited
+world, _long_ as the ages of eternity through which God’s love to His
+people will endure, _deep_ as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He
+has raised us, _high_ as the throne of Christ in the heavens where He
+has placed us.” Such is the commonwealth to which we belong, such the
+dimensions of this city of God built on the foundation of the
+apostles,--“that lieth four-square.”
+
+Do we not need to be _strong_--to “gain full strength,” as the apostle
+prays, in order to grasp in its substance and import this immense
+revelation and to handle it with practical effect? Narrowness is
+feebleness. The greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches the
+greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm spiritual faith, a
+far-seeing intelligence, and a charity broad as the love of Christ to
+comprehend this mystery. From many believing eyes it is still hidden.
+Alas for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements! alas for the
+materialism that infects our Church theories, and that limits God’s free
+grace and the sovereign action of His Spirit to visible channels and
+ministrations “wrought by hand.” Those who call themselves Churchmen
+and Catholics contradict the titles they boast when they bar out their
+loyal Christian brethren from the covenant rights of faith, when they
+deny churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ as warm and
+fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure and saving, a discipline at
+least as faithful as their own. Who are we that we dare to forbid those
+who are doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because they follow
+not with us? When we are fain to pull down every building of God that
+does not square with our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend
+“what is the breadth!”
+
+We draw close about us the walls of Christ’s wide house, as if to
+confine Him in our single chamber. We call our particular communion “the
+Church,” and the rest “the sects”; and disfranchise, so far as our word
+and judgement go, a multitude of Christ’s freemen and God’s elect, our
+fellow-citizens in the New Jerusalem--saints, some of them, whose feet
+we well might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church theory that
+leads to such results as these, that condemns Nonconformists to be
+strangers in the House of God, is self-condemned. It will perish of its
+own chillness and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the
+doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist or Presbyterian
+legitimacy, are in feeling and practice more catholic than in their
+creed.
+
+“With _all_ the saints” the Asian Christians are called to enter into St
+Paul’s wider view of God’s work in the world. For this is a collective
+idea, to be shared by many minds and that should sway all Christian
+hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity that St Paul
+wants his readers to understand, its mission to save humanity and to
+reconstruct the world for a temple of God. This is a calling for _all
+the saints_; but only for _saints_,--for men devoted to God and renewed
+by His Spirit. It was “revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets”
+(ver. 5); and it needs men of the same quality for its bearers and
+interpreters.
+
+But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that
+stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an
+emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: “in love being fast
+rooted and grounded.” Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love
+enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which
+our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. _Love_
+is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom
+Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike
+man, loves him and counts him a brother.
+
+When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their
+depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to
+master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the
+courage to adopt Christ’s simple rule of fellowship: “Whosoever shall
+do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
+and mother.”
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[94] See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4-6.
+
+[95] See pp. 47, 83, 169.
+
+[96] _Lectures on Ephesians_, pp. 235-8. No one who has read Dr. R. W.
+Dale’s noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject
+without being deeply in his debt.
+
+[97] _Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser_, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those
+writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often
+differ from him as agree with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+_KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE._
+
+    “[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong
+    to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
+    height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth
+    knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.”--EPH.
+    iii. 17-19.
+
+
+We were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostle’s
+comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its
+connexion. Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of verse 18.
+The catholic love which embraces “all the saints” and “comprehends” in
+its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemer’s kingdom, admits us to a
+deeper knowledge of Christ’s own love. The breadth and length, the
+height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a
+worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. “In the
+Church” at once “and in Christ Jesus” God’s glory is revealed. Our
+Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love.
+Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards
+Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the
+Divine grace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. St Paul prays that we may “_know_ [not _comprehend_] the love of
+Christ”; for it “passes knowledge.” Amongst the Greek words denoting
+mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the
+acquisition rather than possession--_getting to know_. Hence it is
+rightly, and often used of things Divine that “we know in part,” our
+knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to
+it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostle’s wish disappears.
+We know the unknowable, just as we “clearly see the invisible things of
+God” (Rom. i. 20). The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our
+observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches
+apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived
+before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the
+Philippians the aged apostle writes: “I do not reckon myself to have
+apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly
+to the goal. I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for
+it,--that I may _win Christ_!”
+
+In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past
+finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in
+daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all
+the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand
+it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.
+
+Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part
+assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of
+time. The apostle’s doctrine of the Church is not beyond the
+comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though
+we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the
+mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us.
+Our principles of judgement and standards of comparison fail us when
+applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed
+heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and
+tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the
+side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and
+dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers
+the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold
+it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our
+definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through
+history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most
+generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a
+wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. “Never
+man spake like this man,” said one; but verily never man loved like
+Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His
+love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its
+features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels,
+and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the
+cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great
+sight--the love that passeth knowledge.
+
+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
+principalities,--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 ambassador 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 God_. 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 God,” 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 God 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 God.”
+
+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 God.” When we
+have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of
+men is once more a family of God 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 participate. God’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 God’s children. “Ye shall be holy, for I am
+holy” is God’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 God gathers up into one stream of white radiance
+the revelation of His character, “the fulness of God” 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 surpassing all,--these objects of
+the soul’s desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in
+pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal
+Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end; Christ, when He has “put
+down all rule and authority,” will at last “yield it up to His God and
+Father”; and “the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all
+things under Him, that God 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 God 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 God’s purposes,
+it falls short of them. This assurance 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 God’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.
+God’s giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there
+must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. 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 God’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
+debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about
+Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God!
+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 noble” amongst them, some of them before
+their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and
+godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But “with God,” as Jesus
+said, “all things are possible.” _Fæx urbis, lux orbis_: “the scum of
+the city is made the light of the world!” The force at work upon the
+minds of these degraded pagans--slaves, thieves, prostitutes, 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 anticipate 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 surpassed
+the utmost that the Church asked or thought.
+
+St Paul’s reliance is not upon the “ability” alone, upon the abstract
+omnipotence of God. 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 God 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. God
+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 God. 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 God “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 God 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 God’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 God.” 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 God a dimmed and partial glory. “With one accord, with one
+mouth” we are called to “glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
+Christ.” Wherefore the apostle bids us “receive one another, as Christ
+also received us, to the glory of God” (Rom. xv. 6, 7).
+
+The Church, being the creation of God’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 God’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 multitude,
+and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders,
+saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!” Each
+soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up
+the multitudinous harmony of the Church’s praise to God.
+
+Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto
+God. The display of God’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 God 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 God. “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 God 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 God.
+
+The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is
+expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the
+passage 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 God’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 God’s praise may
+resound in the Church “unto _all generations_,” he no longer supposes
+that the mystery of God 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 God, 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: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought,
+Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God 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 God, 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 circumstance 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 God 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 God 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 God” (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?”
+
+(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes _ambition_:
+“Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness,” he continues. Between
+the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man
+_of lowly mind_ habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his
+unworthiness as a sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a
+wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his temper and
+motives.--The _meek_ man thinks as little of his personal claims, as the
+humble man of his personal merits. He is willing to give place to others
+where higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest room
+and to be in men’s eyes of no account. How many seeds of strife and
+roots of bitterness would be destroyed, if this mind were in us all.
+Self-importance, the love of office and power and the craving for
+applause must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the unity of
+the Spirit in the bond of peace.
+
+(3) When St Paul adds “with longsuffering, forbearing one another in
+love,” he is opposing a cause of division quite different from the
+last,--to wit, _impatience and resentfulness_. A high Christian ideal
+and a strict self-judgement will render us more sensitive to wrong-doing
+in the world around us. Unless tempered with abundant charity, they may
+lead to harsh and one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to
+condemn, are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness. Humbleness and
+meekness are choice graces of the Spirit. But they are self-regarding
+virtues at the best, and may be found in a cold nature that has little
+of the patience which bears with men’s infirmities, of the sympathetic
+insight that discovers the good often lying close to their faults.
+“Above all things”--above kindness, meekness, longsuffering,
+forgivingness--“put on love, which is the bond of perfectness” (Col.
+iii. 14). Love is the last word of St Paul’s definition of the Christian
+temper in verse 2; it is the sum and essence of all that makes for
+Christian unity. In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter
+provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse,--offences that
+must needs arise in the purest society composed of infirm and sinful
+men. “Bind thyself to thy brother. Those who are bound together in love,
+bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. Both are
+in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend”
+(Chrysostom).
+
+Verses 1-3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of the Church is to be
+maintained. Verses 4-6 set forth the basis upon which it rests. This
+passage is a brief summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the
+“foundation of the apostles and prophets” asserted in chapter ii.
+20,--the groundwork of “every building” in God’s holy temple, the
+foundation upon which Paul’s Gentile readers, along with the Jewish
+saints, were growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven elements of
+unity St Paul enumerates: one _body_, _Spirit_, _hope_; one _Lord_,
+_faith_ and _baptism_; one _God and Father of all_. They form a chain
+stretching from the Church on earth to the throne and being of the
+universal Father in heaven.
+
+Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves
+into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity--the Spirit, the
+Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by
+two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed
+alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures--by His
+sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: “Who is over
+all, and through all, and in all” (comp. i. 23).
+
+The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to
+some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Paul’s later epistles
+betray the same character;[98] and we know from chapter v. 19 and
+Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody.
+This epistle shows that St Paul was touched with the poetic as well as
+the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no
+reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have
+taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith
+in “hymns and spiritual songs.” These lines, we could fancy, belonged to
+some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical
+creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.
+
+I. _One body_ there is, _and one Spirit_.
+
+The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single
+body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from
+their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now
+existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and
+the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much
+less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those “who
+profess and call themselves Christians” throughout the world. As against
+the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and
+Mohammedan rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics
+and all deniers of the Lord, we are “one body,” and should feel and act
+as one.
+
+In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible
+evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realize their unity;
+they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the
+Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold
+in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force,
+the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our
+contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and
+present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in
+Christ--their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and
+discipline--is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and
+systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is
+there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It
+is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive
+creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different
+Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian
+literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and
+general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the
+increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to
+the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men,
+the more we realize the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and
+innumerable sects of Christendom.
+
+There is “one body and one Spirit”: one body because, and so far as
+there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical
+frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What
+I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more
+than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body’s
+shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward
+presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that
+clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the
+raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it,
+however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however
+diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life
+that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with
+one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand
+delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one
+body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit
+depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ,
+and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the
+Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and
+the furniture that are about it? “If any man have not the Spirit of
+Christ, he is none of His.”
+
+He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The
+Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of
+God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and
+sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct
+of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to
+the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in
+God’s dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which
+it received spiritual life and that travailed for its birth claim it by
+a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced
+without loss and peril.
+
+Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing, formative principle,
+it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit
+of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I
+prefer to walk with God.--God will not walk with men who do not care to
+walk with His people. He “loved the world”; and we must love it, or we
+displease Him. “This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God
+love his brother also.”
+
+The oneness of communion amongst the people of Christ is governed by a
+unity of aim: “Even as also you were called in _one hope_ of your
+calling.” Our fellowship has an object to realize, our calling a prize
+to win. All Christian organization is directed to a practical end. The
+old Pagan world fell to pieces because it was “without hope”; its
+golden age was in the past. No society can endure that lives upon its
+memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its privileges.
+Nothing holds men together like work and hope. This gives energy,
+purpose, progress to the fellowship of Christian believers. In this
+imperfect and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race still in
+bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for any purpose that does
+not bear on human improvement and salvation. The Church of Christ is a
+society for the abolition of sin and death. That this will be
+accomplished, that God’s will shall be done on earth as in heaven, is
+_the hope of our calling_. To this hope we “were called” by the first
+summons of the gospel. “Repent,” it cried, “for the kingdom of heaven is
+at hand!”
+
+For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity holds out a
+splendid crown of life. It promises our complete restoration to the
+image of God, the redemption of the body with the spirit from death, and
+our entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven. This
+hope, shared by us in common and affecting all the interests and
+relationships of daily life, is the ground of our communion. The
+Christian hope supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature in
+her most exalted forms,
+
+    “The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse,
+    The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul
+    Of all their moral being.”
+
+Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master and servants, happy the
+circle of friends who live and work together as “joint-heirs of the
+grace of life.” Well says Calvin here: “If this thought were fixed in
+our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of God may no more
+quarrel than the kingdom of heaven can be divided, how much more careful
+we should be in cultivating brotherly goodwill! What a dread we should
+have of dissensions, if we considered, as we ought to do, that those who
+separate from their brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God.”
+
+But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind,--nay, for the entire
+universe. We labour for the regeneration of humanity. “We look for a new
+heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;” for the actual
+gathering into one in Christ of all things in all worlds, as they are
+already gathered in God’s eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal
+salvation that we had to seek, Christian communion might appear to be an
+optional thing, and the Church no more than a society for mutual
+spiritual benefit. But seen in this larger light, Church membership is
+of the essence of our calling. As children of the household of faith, we
+are heirs to its duties with its possessions. We cannot escape the
+obligations of our spiritual any more than of our natural birth. One
+Spirit dwelling in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all
+our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the fellowship of Christ?
+This hope of our calling it is our calling to breathe into the dead
+world. Its virtue alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age.
+From the fountain of God’s love in Christ springing up in the heart of
+the Church, there shall pour forth
+
+    “One common wave of thought and joy,
+    Lifting mankind again!”
+
+II. The first group of unities leads us to the second. If one Spirit
+dwells within us, it is _one Lord_ who reigns over us. We have one hope
+to work for; it is because we have _one faith_ to live by. A common
+fellowship implies a common creed.
+
+Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth in this list of
+unities, between hope and faith, between the Spirit and the Father. He
+is the centre of centres, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the
+Christ in the midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity
+with God and with our fellow-men. We find in Him the fulcrum of the
+forces that are raising the world, the corner-stone of the temple of
+humanity.
+
+But let us mark that it is the one _Lord_ in whom we find our unity. To
+think of Him as Saviour only is to treat Him as a means to an end. It is
+to make ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret of much of
+the isolation and sectarianism of modern Churches. Individualism is the
+negation of Church life. Men value Christ for what they can get from Him
+for themselves. They do not follow Him and yield themselves up to Him,
+for the sake of what He is. “Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and
+I will give you rest”: they listen willingly so far. But when He goes on
+to say “Take my yoke upon you,” their ears are deaf. There is a subtle
+self-seeking and self-pleasing even in the way of salvation.
+
+From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection for the Church,
+the indifference to all Christian interests beyond the personal and
+local, which is worse than strife; for it is death to the body of
+Christ. The name of the “one Lord” silences party clamours and rebukes
+the voices that cry, “I am of Apollos, I of Cephas.” It recalls
+loiterers and stragglers to the ranks. It bids each of us, in his own
+station of life and his own place in the Church, serve the common cause
+without sloth and without ambition.
+
+Christ’s Lordship over us for life and death is signified by our
+_baptism_ in His name. We have received, most of us in infancy through
+our parents’ reverent care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ.
+The baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from His apostles,
+has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this be in vain? Or do you now, by
+the faith of your heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith of
+your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf? If so, your faith
+saves you. Your obedience is at once accepted by the Lord to whom it is
+tendered; and the sign of God’s redemption of the race which greeted you
+at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance and
+worth. It is the seal upon your brow, now stamped upon your heart, of
+your eternal covenant with Christ.
+
+But it is the seal of a _corporate_ life in Him. Christian baptism is no
+private transaction; it attests no mere secret vow passing between the
+soul and its Saviour. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized _into one
+body_, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made
+to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. xii. 13). Our baptism is the sign of a
+common faith and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His Church.
+
+_One_ baptism there has been through all the ages since the ascending
+Lord said to His disciples: “Go, make disciples of all the nations,
+baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
+Holy Spirit.” The ordinance has been administered in different ways and
+under varying regulations; but with few exceptions, it has been observed
+from the beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment of the
+word of Christ, and in acknowledgement of His dominion. Those who
+insist on the sole validity of this or that mode or channel of
+administration, recognize at least the intention of Churches baptizing
+otherwise than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing His
+name; and so far admit that there is in truth “one baptism.” Wherever
+Christ’s sacraments are observed with a true faith, they serve as
+visible tokens of His rule.
+
+In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for men, and for all
+creatures. Our fellowship in the faith of Christ is deep as the nature
+of God; its blessedness rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal
+as His power.
+
+III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains. Add to our
+fellowship in the one Spirit and confession of the one Lord, our
+adoption by the _one God and Father of all_.
+
+To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was a new and
+marvellous thought. “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians,” they had been
+used to shout; or haply, “Great is Aphrodité of the Pergamenes,” or
+“Bacchus of the Philadelphians.” Great they knew was “Jupiter Best and
+Greatest” of conquering Rome; and great the _numen_ of the Cæsar, to
+which everywhere in this rich and servile province shrines were rising.
+Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering hill had its
+local _genius_ or _daimon_, requiring worship and sacrificial honours.
+Every office and occupation, every function in life--navigation,
+midwifery, even thieving--was under the patronage of its special deity.
+These petty godships by their number and rivalries distracted the pious
+heathen with continual fear lest one or other of them might not have
+received due observance.
+
+With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception of “the one God
+and Father” rose above this vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley
+deities--some gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed
+beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness--which filled
+the imagination of the Græco-Asiatic pagans. What rest there was for the
+mind, what peace and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities
+to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as tribute-payers, and needing
+to be served by human hands. He is the Father of men, pitying us as His
+children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our God is no local
+divinity, to be honoured here but not there, tied to His temple and
+images and priestly mediators; but the “one God and Father of all, who
+is above all, and through all, and in all.” This was the very God whom
+the logic of Greek thought and the practical instincts of Roman law and
+empire blindly sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to the
+people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst the nations to bear His
+light. At last He declared His full name and purpose to the world in
+Jesus Christ. So the gods many and lords many have had their day. By His
+manifestation the idols are utterly abolished. The proclamation of one
+God and Father signifies the gathering of men into one family of God.
+The one religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.
+
+God is _over all_, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of
+His beneficent dominion. He is _through all_, and _in all_: an
+Omnipresence of love, righteousness and wisdom, actuating the powers of
+nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You
+need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His
+temple.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[98] See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii.
+11-13.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+_THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST._
+
+    “But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+    measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith: ‘When He ascended
+    on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.’ Now
+    this, ‘He ascended,’ what is it but that He also descended into the
+    lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that
+    ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
+    And He gave some _to be_ apostles; and some, prophets; and some
+    evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of
+    the saints for work of ministration, for the building up of the body
+    of Christ.”--EPH. iv. 7-12.
+
+
+In verse 7 the apostle passes from the unities of the Church to its
+diversities, from the common foundation of the Christian life to the
+variety presented in its superstructure. “To each single one of us was
+the grace given.” The great gift of God in Christ is manifold in its
+distribution. Its manifestations are as various and fresh as the
+idiosyncrasies of human personality. There is no capacity of our nature,
+no element of human society which the gospel of Christ cannot sanctify
+and turn to good account.
+
+All this the apostle keeps in view and allows for in his doctrine of the
+Church. He does not merge man in humanity, nor sacrifice the individual
+to the community. He claims for each believer direct fellowship with
+Christ and access to God. The earnestness with which in his earlier
+epistles St Paul insisted on the responsibilities of conscience and on
+the personal experience of salvation, leads him now to press the claims
+of the Church with equal vigour. He understands well that the person has
+no existence apart from the community, that our moral nature is
+essentially social and the religious life essentially fraternal. Its
+vital element is “the _communion_ of the Holy Spirit.” Hence, to gather
+the real drift of this passage we must combine the first words of verse
+7 with the last of verse 12: “To each single one of us was the grace
+given--in order to build up the body of Christ.” God’s grace is not
+bestowed upon us to diffuse and lose itself in our separate
+individualities; but that it may minister to one life and work towards
+one end and build up one great body in us all. The diversity subserves a
+higher unity. Through ten thousand channels, in ten thousand varied
+forms of personal influence and action, the stream of the grace of God
+flows on to the accomplishment of the eternal purpose.
+
+Like a wise master in his household and sovereign in his kingdom, the
+Lord of the Church distributes His manifold gifts. His bestowments and
+appointments are made with an eye to the furtherance of the state and
+house that He has in charge. As God dispenses His wisdom, so Christ His
+gifts “according to plan” (iii. 11). The purpose of the ages, God’s
+great plan for mankind, determines “the measure of the gift of Christ.”
+Now, it is to illustrate this _measure_, to set forth the style and
+scale of Christ’s bestowments within His Church, that the apostle brings
+in evidence the words of Psalm lxviii. 18. He interprets this ancient
+verse as he cites it, and weaves it into the texture of his argument.
+In the original it reads thus:
+
+    “Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led Thy captivity captive,
+    Thou hast received gifts among men,--
+    Yea, among the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell with
+        them.” (R.V.)
+
+Let us go back for a moment to the occasion of the old Hebrew song.
+Psalm lxviii, is, as Ewald says, “the greatest, most splendid and
+artistic of the temple-songs of Restored Jerusalem.” It celebrates
+Jehovah’s entry into Zion. This culminating verse records, as the
+crowning event of Israel’s history, the capture of Zion from the rebel
+Jebusites and the Lord’s ascension in the person of His chosen to take
+His seat upon this holy hill. The previous verses, in which fragments of
+earlier songs are embedded, describe the course of the Divine Leader of
+Israel through former ages. In the beat and rhythm of the Hebrew lines
+one hears the footfall of the Conqueror’s march, as He “arises and His
+enemies are scattered” and “kings of armies flee apace,” while nature
+trembles at His step and bends her wild powers to serve His
+congregation. The sojourn in the wilderness, the scenes of Sinai, the
+occupancy of Canaan, the wars of the Judges were so many stages in the
+progress of Jehovah, which had Zion always for its goal. To Zion, the
+new and more glorious sanctuary, Sinai must now give place. Bashan and
+all mountains towering in their pride in vain “look askance at the hill
+which God has desired for His abode,” where “Jehovah will dwell for
+ever.” So the day of the Lord’s desire has come! From the Kidron valley
+David leads Jehovah’s triumph up the steep slopes of Mount Zion. A train
+of captives defiles before the Lord’s anointed, who sits down on the
+throne that God gives him and receives in His name the submission of the
+heathen. The vanquished chiefs cast their spoil at his feet; it is laid
+up in treasure to build the future temple; while, upon this happy day of
+peace, “the rebellious also” share in Jehovah’s grace and become His
+subjects.
+
+In this conquest David “gave to men” rather than “received”--gave even
+to his stubborn enemies (witness his subsequent transaction with Araunah
+the Jebusite for the site of the temple); for that which he took from
+them served to build amongst them God’s habitation: “that,” as the
+Psalmist sings, “the Lord God might dwell with them.” St Paul’s
+adaptation of the verse is both bold and true. If he departs from the
+letter, he unfolds the spirit of the prophetic words. That David’s
+_giving_ signified a higher _receiving_, Jewish interpreters themselves
+seem to have felt, for this paraphrase was current also amongst them.
+
+The author of this Hebrew song has in no way exaggerated the importance
+of David’s victory. The summits of the elect nation’s history shine with
+a supernatural and prophetic light. The spirit of the Christ in the
+unknown singer “testified beforehand of the glory that should follow”
+His warfare and sufferings. From this victorious height, so hardly won,
+the Psalmist’s verse flashes the light of promise across the space of a
+thousand years; and St. Paul has caught the light, and sends it on to us
+shining with a new and more spiritual brightness. David’s “going up on
+high” was, to the apostle’s mind, a picture of the ascent of Christ, his
+Son and Lord. David rose from deep humiliation to a high dominion; his
+exaltation brought blessing and enrichment to his people; and the spoil
+that he won with it went to build God’s house amongst rebellious men.
+All this was true in parable of the dispensation of grace to mankind
+through Jesus Christ; and His ascension disclosed the deeper import of
+the words of the ancient Scripture. “Wherefore God saith” (and St Paul
+takes the liberty of putting in his own words _what_ He
+saith)--“wherefore He saith: He ascended on high; He led captivity
+captive; He gave gifts to men.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three short clauses of the citation supply, in effect, a threefold
+measure of the gifts of Christ to His Church. They are gifts _of the
+ascended Saviour_. They are gifts bestowed _from the fruit of His
+victory_. And they are gifts _to men_. Measure them, first, by the
+height to which He has risen--from what a depth! Measure them, again, by
+the spoils He has already won. Measure them, once more, by the wants of
+mankind, by the need He has undertaken to supply.--As He is, so He
+gives; as He has, so He gives; as He has given, so He will give till we
+are filled unto all the fulness of God.
+
+I. Think first, then, of Him. Think of what, and _where_ He is! Consider
+“what is the height” of His exaltation; and then say, if you can, “what
+is the breadth” of His munificence.
+
+We know well how He gave as a poor and suffering man upon earth--gave,
+with what affluence, pity and delight, bread to the hungry thousands,
+wine to the wedding-feast, health to the sick, sight to the blind,
+pardon to the sinful, sometimes life to the dead! Has His elevation
+altered Him? Too often it is so with vain and weak men like ourselves.
+Their wealth increases, but their hearts contract. The more they have to
+give, the less they love to give. They go up on high as men count it,
+and climb to places of power and eminence; and they forget the friends
+of youth and the ranks from which they sprang--low-minded men. Not so
+with our exalted Friend. “It is not one that went down, and another that
+went up,” says Theodoret. “He that descended, _it is He_ also that
+ascended up far above all the heavens!” (ver. 10). Jesus of Nazareth is
+on the throne of God,--“the same yesterday and to-day!” But now the
+resources of the universe are at His disposal. Out of that treasure He
+can choose the best gifts for you and me.
+
+Mere authority, even Omnipotence, could not suffice to save and bless
+moral beings like ourselves; nor even the best will joined to
+Omnipotence. Christ gained by His humiliation, in some sense, a new
+fulness added to the fulness of the Godhead. This gain of His sufferings
+is implied in what the apostle writes in Colossians i. 19 concerning the
+risen and exalted Redeemer: “It was well-pleasing that _all_ the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him.” His plenitude is that of the Ascended
+One _who had descended_. “If He ascended, what does it mean but that He
+also descended into the under regions of the earth?” (ver. 9). If He
+went up, why then He had been down!--down to the Virgin’s womb and the
+manger cradle, wrapping His Godhead within the frame and the brain of a
+little child; down to the home and the bench of the village carpenter;
+down to the contradiction of sinners and the level of their scorn; down
+to the death of the cross,--to the nether abyss, to that dim populous
+underworld into which we look shuddering over the grave’s edge! And from
+that lower gulf He mounted up again to the solid earth and the light of
+day and the world of breathing men; and up, and up again, through the
+rent clouds and the ranks of shouting angels, and under the lifted heads
+of the everlasting doors, until He took His seat at the right hand of
+the Majesty in the heavens.
+
+Think of the regions He has traversed, the range of being through which
+the Lord Jesus passed in descending and ascending, “that He might fill
+all things.” Heaven, earth, hades--hades, earth, heaven again are His;
+not in mere sovereignty of power, but in experience and communion of
+life. Each He has annexed to His dominion by inhabitation and the right
+of self-devoting love, as from sphere to sphere He “travelled in the
+greatness of His power, mighty to save.” He is Lord of angels; but still
+more of men,--Lord of the living, and of the dead. To them that sleep in
+the dust He has proclaimed His accomplished sacrifice and the right of
+universal judgement given Him by the Father.
+
+Nor did Abraham alone and Moses and Elijah have the joy of “seeing His
+day,” but all the holy men of old, who had embraced its promise and
+“died in faith,” who looked forward through their imperfect sacrifices
+“which could never quite take away sins” to the better thing which God
+provided for us, and for their perfection along with us.[99] On the two
+side-posts of the gate of death our great High Priest sprinkled His
+atoning blood. He turned the abode of corruption into a sweet and quiet
+sleeping chamber for His saints. Then at His touch those cruel doors
+swung back upon their hinges, and He issued forth the Prince of life,
+with the keys of death and hades hanging from His girdle. From the
+depths of the grave to the heaven of heavens His Mastership extends.
+With the perfume of His presence and the rich incense of His sacrifice
+Jesus Christ has “filled all things.” The universe is made for us one
+realm of redeeming grace, the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.
+
+    “So there crowns Him the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown;
+    And His love fills infinitude wholly, nor leaves up nor down
+    One spot for the creature to stand in!”[100]
+
+So “Christ is all things, and in all.” And we are nothing; but we have
+everything in Him.
+
+How, pray, will He give who has thus given Himself,--who has thus
+endured and achieved on our behalf? Let our hearts consider; let our
+faith and our need be bold to ask. One promise from His lips is enough:
+“If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
+
+II. A second estimate of the gifts to be looked for from Christ, we
+derive from _His conquests already won_. David as he entered Zion’s
+gates “led captivity captive,”--led, that is in Hebrew phrase, a great,
+a notable captivity. Out of the gifts thus received he enriched his
+people. The resources that victory placed at his disposal, furnished the
+store from which to build God’s house. In like fashion Christ builds His
+Church, and blesses the human race. With the spoils of His battle He
+adorns His bride. The prey taken from the mighty becomes the strength
+and beauty of His sanctuary. The prisoners of His love He makes the
+servants of mankind.
+
+This “captivity” implies a warfare, even as the ascent of Christ a
+previous descending. The Son of God came not into His earthly kingdom as
+kings are said to have come sometimes disguised amongst their subjects,
+that they might learn better of their state and hear their true mind;
+nor as the Greeks fabled of their gods, who wandered unknown on earth
+seeking adventure and wearied haply of the cloying felicities of heaven,
+suffering contempt and doing to men hard service. He came, the Good
+Shepherd, to seek lost sheep. He came, the Mighty One of God, to destroy
+the works of the devil, to drive out “the strong one armed” who held the
+fortress of man’s soul. He had a war to wage with the usurping prince of
+the world. In the temptations of the wilderness, in the strife with
+disease and demoniac powers, in the debate with Scribes and Pharisees,
+in the anguish of Gethsemane and Calvary that conflict was fought out;
+and by death He abolished him who holds the power of death, by His blood
+He “bought us for God.” But with the spoils of victory, He bears the
+scars of battle,--tokens glorious for Him, humbling indeed to us, which
+will tell for ever how they pierced His hands and feet!
+
+For Him pain and conflict are gone by. It remains to gather in the spoil
+of His victory of love, the harvest sown in His tears and His blood. And
+what are the trophies of the Captain of our salvation? what the fruit of
+His dread passion? For one, there was the dying thief, whom with His
+nailed hands the Lord Jesus snatched from a felon’s doom and bore from
+Calvary to Paradise. There was Mary the Magdalene, out of whom He had
+cast seven demons, the first to greet Him risen. There were the three
+thousand whom on one day, in the might of His Spirit, the ascended Lord
+and Christ took captive in rebel Jerusalem, “lifted from the earth” that
+He might draw all men unto Him. And there was the writer of this letter,
+once His blasphemer and persecutor. By a look, by a word, Jesus
+arrested Saul at the height of his murderous enmity, and changed him
+from a Pharisee into an apostle to the Gentiles, from the destroyer into
+the wise master-builder of His Church.
+
+St Paul’s own case suggested, surely, the application he makes of this
+ancient text of the Psalter and lighted up its Messianic import. In the
+glory of His triumph Jesus Christ had appeared to make him captive, and
+put him at once to service. From that hour Paul was led along
+enthralled, the willing bond-slave of the Lord Jesus and celebrant of
+His victory. “Thanks be unto God,” he cries, “who ever triumphs over us
+in the Christ, and makes manifest through us the savour of His knowledge
+in every place.”[101]
+
+Such, and of such sort are the prisoners of the war of Jesus; such the
+gifts that through sinners pardoned and subdued He bestows upon
+mankind,--“patterns to those who should hereafter believe.” Time would
+fail to follow the train of the captives of the love of Christ, which
+stretches unbroken and ever multiplying through the centuries to this
+day. We, too, in our turn have laid our rebel selves at His feet; and
+all that we surrender to Him, by right of conquest He gives over to the
+service of mankind.
+
+    “His love the conquest more than wins;
+      To all I shall proclaim:
+    Jesus the King, the Conqueror reigns;
+      Bow down to Jesu’s name!”
+
+He gives out of the spoil of His war with evil,--gives what He receives.
+Yet He gives not _as_ He receives. Everything laid in His hands is
+changed by their touch. Publicans and Pharisees become apostles.
+Magdalenes are made queens and mothers in His Israel. From the dregs of
+our streets He raises up a host of sons to Abraham. From the ranks of
+scepticism and anti-Christian hate the Lord Christ wins new champions
+and captains for His cause. He coins earth’s basest metal into heaven’s
+fine gold. He takes weak things of the earth and foolish, to strike the
+mightiest blows of battle.
+
+What may we not expect from Him who has led captive such a captivity!
+What surprises of blessing and miracles of grace there are awaiting us,
+that shall fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with
+singing--gifts and succours coming to the Church from unlooked-for
+quarters and reinforcements from the ranks of the enemy. And what
+discomfitures and captivities are preparing for the haters of the
+Lord,--if, at least, the future is to be as the past; and if we may
+judge from the apostle’s word, and from his example, of the measure of
+the gift of Christ.
+
+III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the last word of verse
+8, and is drawn out in verses 11 and 12. “He gave gifts _to men_--He
+gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and
+teachers, with a view to the full equipment of the saints for work of
+ministration, for building up of the body of Christ.” Yes, and some
+martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and Christian statesmen,
+some poets, some deep thinkers and theologians, some leaders of
+philanthropy and helpers of the poor; all given for the same end--to
+minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with the means for
+carrying on its mission, and to enable every saint to contribute his
+part to the commonwealth of Christ according to the measure of Christ’s
+gift to each.
+
+Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes,
+seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the
+second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The
+“work of ministering” and the “building up of the body of Christ” are
+not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling.
+Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see
+that the laity do their duty, of “the ministry” to make each saint a
+minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership
+of Christ’s body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the
+Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times.
+Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best
+suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances.
+It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in
+58, and at Ephesus in 66 A.D. That is the best Church system, under any
+given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the
+spiritual energy of the body of Christ.
+
+The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds
+closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not
+profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The “deacons” are wanting;
+although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed
+in Pauline Churches. _Pastors_ (shepherds)--a title only employed here
+by the apostle--is a fitting synonym for the “bishops” (_i.e._,
+overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and
+largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were
+spiritual and disciplinary as well as administrative. Addressing the
+Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them
+“shepherd the Church of God.”
+
+In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon
+his “fellow-elders,” that they should “shepherd the flock of God, making
+themselves examples” to it; Christ Himself he has previously called
+“Shepherd and Bishop of souls” (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is
+derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true
+and false shepherd of God’s flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,--words
+familiar and dear to His disciples.
+
+The office of _teaching_, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined with that
+of shepherding. From that passage we infer that the freedom of teaching
+so conspicuous in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was still
+recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made identical, nor inseparable
+functions, any more than in Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently
+associated, and hence are coupled together here.--Of apostolic
+_evangelists_ we have examples in Timothy and the second Philip;[102]
+men outside the rank of the apostles, but who, like them, preached the
+gospel from place to place. The name apostles (equivalent to our
+_missionaries_) served, in its wider sense, to include ministers of this
+class along with those directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus.[103]
+
+The _prophets_,[104] like the apostles and evangelists, belonged to the
+Church at large, rather than to one locality. But their gift of
+inspiration did not carry with it the claim to rule in the Church. This
+was the function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops,
+or elders, locally appointed.
+
+The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) linked Church
+to Church and served the entire body; the last two (pastors and
+teachers) had charge of local and congregational affairs. The apostles
+(the Twelve and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the
+Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the foundation was laid
+and the deposit of revealed truth was complete. The evangelistic and
+pastoral callings remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety of
+Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists, with apostles or
+missionaries, bring new souls to Christ and carry His message into new
+lands. Pastors and teachers follow in their train, tending the
+ingathered sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they shepherd
+and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.
+
+Marvellous were Christ’s “gifts for men” bestowed in the apostolic
+ministry. What a gift to the Christian community, for example, was Paul
+himself! In his natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in his
+training and early experience, in the supernatural mode of his
+conversion, everything wrought together to give to men in the apostle
+Paul a man supremely fitted to be Christ’s ambassador to the Pagan
+world, and for all ages the “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and
+truth.” “A _chosen vessel_ unto me,” said the Lord Jesus, “to bear my
+name.”
+
+Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man of the most powerful
+intellect and will, master of the thought and life of his time. Long an
+alien from the household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle,
+and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the awful crisis of the
+fifth century, when the Roman empire was breaking up and the very
+foundations of life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this
+heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to re-establish
+faith in the Divine order of the world.
+
+Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the captive of justifying
+grace, won from the monastery and the bondage of Rome to set Germany and
+Europe free. What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to
+whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of the Reformation; and
+he blew a blast that waked the sleeping peoples of the North, and made
+the walls of Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift to
+Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul breathed the spirit of
+religion into the life of a nation, and gave it a body and organic form
+in which to dwell and work for centuries.
+
+Such a gift to England was John Wesley. Can we conceive a richer boon
+conferred by the Head of the Church upon the English race than the
+raising up of this great evangelist and pastor and teacher, at such a
+time as that of his appearance? Standing at the distance of a hundred
+years, we are able to measure in some degree the magnitude of this
+bestowment. In none of the leaders and commanders whom Christ has given
+to His people was there more signally manifest that combination of
+faculties, that concurrence of providences and adjustment to
+circumstances, and that transforming and attempering influence of grace
+in all--the “effectual working in the measure of each single part” of
+the man and his history, which marks those special gifts that Christ is
+wont to bestow upon His people in seasons of special emergency and
+need.
+
+We are passing into a new age, such as none of these great men dreamed
+of, an age as exigent and perilous as any that have gone before it. The
+ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement of the
+masses, the universal spread of education, the emancipation of critical
+thought, the gigantic growth of the press, the enormous increase and
+aggregation of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the
+world-wide facilities of intercourse,--these and other causes more
+subtle are rapidly transforming human society. Old barriers have
+disappeared; while new difficulties are being created, of a magnitude to
+overtask the faith of the strongest. The Church is confronted with
+problems larger far in their dimensions than those our fathers knew.
+Demands are being made on her resources such as she has never had to
+meet before. Shall we be equal to the needs of the coming times?--Nay,
+that is not the question; but will _He_?
+
+There is nothing new or surprising to the Lord Jesus in the progress of
+our times and the developments of modern thought, nothing for which He
+is not perfectly prepared. He has taken their measure long ere this, and
+holds them within His grasp. The government is upon His shoulders--“the
+weight of all this unintelligible world”--and He can bear it well. He
+has gifts in store for the twentieth century, when it arrives, as
+adequate as those He bestowed upon the first or fifth, upon the
+sixteenth or the eighteenth of our era. There are Augustines and Wesleys
+yet to come. Hidden in the Almighty’s quiver are shafts as polished and
+as keen as any He has used, which He will launch forth in the war of the
+ages at the appointed hour. The need, the peril, the greatness of the
+time will be the measure of the gift of Christ.
+
+There is a danger, however, in waiting for great leaders and in looking
+for signal displays of Christ’s power amongst men. His “kingdom comes
+not with observation,” so that men should say, Lo here! or Lo there! It
+steals upon us unforeseen; it is amongst us before we know. “We looked,”
+says Rutherford, “that He should take the higher way along the
+mountains; and lo, He came by the lower way of the valleys!” While men
+listen to the earthquake and the wind rending the mountains, a still,
+small voice speaks the message of God to prepared hearts. Rarely can we
+measure at the first the worth of Christ’s best gifts. When the fruit
+appears, after long patience, the world will haply discover when and how
+the seed was sown. But not always then.
+
+    “The sower, passing onward, was not known;
+    And all men reaped the harvest as their own.”
+
+Those who are most ready to appraise their fellows are constantly at
+fault. Our last may prove Christ’s first; our first His last! “Each of
+us shall give account of himself to God”: each must answer for his own
+stewardship, and the grace that was given to each. “Let us not therefore
+judge one another any more.” But let every man see to it that his part
+in the building of God’s temple is well and faithfully done. Soon the
+fire will try every man’s work, of what sort it is.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[99] Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10-14 with xi. 13-16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24;
+also vi. 12.
+
+[100] The words of David in Browning’s _Saul_, turned from the future
+tense into the present.
+
+[101] 2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.
+
+[102] 2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26-40, xxi. 8.
+
+[103] In Acts xiv. 4, 14, _Barnabas and Paul_ are “apostles”; 1 Thess.
+ii. 6, _Paul and Silas and Timothy_. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23,
+xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.
+
+[104] Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association of _prophets_ with
+_apostles_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+_THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    “Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full
+    knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure
+    of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more
+    children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
+    doctrine in the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of
+    error; but dealing truly, in love may grow up in all things into
+    Him, which is the head, _even_ Christ; from whom all the body fitly
+    framed and knit together, through that which every juncture
+    supplieth, according to the working in _due_ measure of each several
+    part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself
+    in love.”--EPH. iv. 13-16.
+
+
+We must spend a few moments in unravelling this knotty paragraph and
+determining the relation of its involved clauses to each other, before
+we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove St Paul’s hand in the
+letter. No writer of equal power was ever so little of a literary
+craftsman. His epistles read, as M. Renan says, like “a rapid
+conversation stenographed.” Sometimes, as in several places in
+Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed clauses, hardly
+more continuous than shorthand notes; often, as in this epistle, they
+pour in a full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and phrase
+heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that bewilders us. In his spoken
+address the interpretation of tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the
+syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul’s written composition.
+
+The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church were bestowed to
+promote its corporate efficiency and to further its general growth (vv.
+11, 12). Now, the purpose of these endowments sets a _limit_ to their
+use. “Christ gave apostles, prophets,” and the rest--“_till we all
+arrive_ at our perfect manhood and reach the stature of His fulness.”
+Such is the connexion of verse 13 with the foregoing context. The aim of
+the Christian ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men
+beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings, apostolates and pastorates,
+the missions of the evangelist and the schools of the teacher will one
+day cease; their work will be done, their end gained, when all believers
+are brought “to the unity of faith, to the full knowledge of the Son of
+God.” The work of Christ’s servants can have no grander aim, no further
+goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not disclose an
+ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed in the previous sentence;
+it restates the same purpose. To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent
+our being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for which apostles,
+prophets, pastors, teachers are called to office. The goal marked out
+for all believers in the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ
+(ver. 13), is set up that it may direct the Church’s course through
+dangers shunned and enemies vanquished (ver. 14) to the attainment of
+her corporate perfection (vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section
+turns upon the idea of “the perfecting of the saints” in verse 12. Verse
+16 looks backward to this; verse 7 looked forward to it.
+
+So much for the general construction of the period. As to its particular
+words and phrases, we must observe:--
+
+(1) The “perfect [full-grown] man” of verse 13 is the _individual_, not
+the generic man, not “the one [collective] new man” of chapter ii. 15.
+The Greek words for _man_ in these two places differ.[105] The apostle
+proposes to the Christian ministry the end that he was himself pursuing,
+viz., to “present _every man_ perfect in Christ.”[106]
+
+(2) “_Sleight_ of men” (A.V. and R.V.) does not seem to us to express
+the precise meaning of the word so translated in verse 14. _Kubeia_
+(from _kubos_, a cube, or die) occurs only here in the New Testament; in
+classical Greek it appears in its literal sense of _dice-play_,
+_gambling_. The interpreters have drawn from this the idea of
+_trickery_, _cheating_--the common accompaniment of gambling. But the
+kindred verb (_to play dice_, _to gamble_) has another well-established
+use in Greek, namely, _to hazard_: this supplies for St Paul’s noun the
+signification of _sport_ or _hazarding_, preferred by Beza among the
+older expositors and by von Soden amongst the newest. _In the sport of
+men_, says von Soden: “conduct wanting in every kind of earnestness and
+clear purpose. These men _play_ with religion, and with the welfare of
+Christian souls.” This metaphor accords admirably with that of the
+restless waves and uncertain winds[107] just preceding it; while it
+leads fittingly to the further qualification “in craftiness,” which is
+almost an idle synonym after “sleight.”
+
+(3) Another rare word is found in this verse, not very precisely
+rendered as “wiles”--a translation suiting it better in chapter vi. 11.
+Here the noun is singular in number: _methodeia_. It signifies
+_methodizing_, _reducing to a plan_; and then, in a bad sense,
+_scheming_, _plotting_. “Error” is thus personified: it “schemes,” just
+as in 2 Thessalonians ii. 7 it “works.” Amid the restless speculations
+and the unscrupulous perversions of the gospel now disturbing the infant
+faith of the Asian Churches, the apostle saw the outline of a great
+system of error shaping itself. There was a method in this madness.
+_Unto the scheme of error_--into the meshes of its net--those were being
+driven who yielded to the prevailing tendencies of speculative thought.
+With all its cross currents and capricious movements, it was bearing
+steadily in one direction. Reckless pilots steered ignorant souls this
+way and that over the wind-swept seas of religious doubt; but they
+brought them at last to the same rocks and quicksands.
+
+(4) As the contrast between manhood and childhood links verses 13 and
+14, so it is by the contrast of error and craftiness with _truth_ that
+we pass from verse 14 to verse 15. “_Speaking_ truth” insufficiently
+renders the opening word of the latter verse. The “_dealing_ truly” of
+the Revised margin is preferable. In Galatians iv. 16 the apostle
+employs the same verb, signifying not truth of speech alone, but of deed
+and life (comp. Eph. v. 9). The expression resembles that of 1 John iii.
+19: “We are _of the truth_, and shall assure our hearts before Him,”
+where truth and love are found in the like union.
+
+(5) The last difficulty of this kind we have to deal with, lies in the
+connexion of the clauses of verse 16. “Through every joint of supply” is
+an incongruous adjunct to the previous clause, “fitly framed and knit
+together,” although the rendering “joint” gives this connexion a
+superficial aptness. The apostle’s word means _juncture_ rather than
+_joint_.[108] The _points of contact_ between the members of Christ’s
+body form the channels of supply through which the entire frame receives
+nourishment. The clause “through every juncture of the supply”--an
+expression somewhat obscure at the best--points forwards, not backwards.
+It describes the means by which the Church of Christ, compacted in its
+general framework by those larger ligatures which its ministry furnishes
+(vv. 11, 12), builds up its inward life,--through a communion wherein
+“each single part” of the body shares, and every tie that binds one
+Christian soul to another serves to nourish the common life of grace. We
+may paraphrase the sentence thus: “Drawing its life from Christ, the
+entire body knit together in a well-compacted frame, makes use of every
+link that unites its members and of each particular member in his place
+to contribute to its sustenance, thus building itself up in love
+evermore.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These difficult verses unfold to us three main conceptions: _The goal of
+the Church’s life_ (ver. 13), _the malady which arrests its development_
+(ver. 14), and _the means and conditions of its growth_ (vv. 15, 16).
+
+I. The mark at which the Church has to arrive is set forth, in harmony
+with the tenor of the epistle, in a twofold way,--in its _collective_
+and its _individual_ aspects. We must all “unitedly attain the oneness
+of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God”; and we must attain,
+each of us, “a perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ.”
+
+The “one faith” of the Church’s foundation (ver. 5) is, at the same
+time, its end and goal. The final unity will be the unfolding of the
+primal unity; the implicit will become explicit; the germ will be
+reproduced in the developed organism. “The faith” is still, in St Paul,
+the _fides qua credimus_, not _quam credimus_; it is the living faith of
+all hearts in the same Christ and gospel.[109] When “we all” believe
+heartily and understandingly in “the word of truth, the gospel of our
+salvation,” the goal will be in sight. All our defects are, at the
+bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the
+fulness of God in Christ. Faith is the essence of the heart’s life: it
+forms the common consciousness of the body of Christ.
+
+While faith is the central organ of the Church’s life, _the Son of God_
+is its central object. The dangers assailing the Church and the
+divisions threatening its unity, touched His Person; and whatever
+touches the Head, vitally affects the health of the body and the
+well-being of every member in it. Many had believed in Jesus as the
+Christ and received blessing from Him, whose knowledge of Him as the Son
+of God was defective. This ignorance exposed their faith to perversion
+by the plausible errors circulating in the Churches of Asia Minor.[110]
+The haze of speculation dimmed His glory and distorted His image.
+Dazzled by the “philosophy and empty deceit” of specious talkers, these
+half-instructed believers formed erroneous or uncertain views of Christ.
+And a divided Christ makes a divided Church. We may hold divergent
+opinions upon many points of doctrine--in regard to Church order and the
+Sacraments, in regard to the nature of the future judgement, in regard
+to the mode and limits of inspiration, in regard to the dialect and
+expression of our spiritual life--and yet retain, notwithstanding, a
+large measure of cordial unity and find ourselves able to co-operate
+with each other for many Christian purposes. But when our difference
+concerns the Person of Christ, it is felt at once to be fundamental.
+There is a gulf between those who worship and those who do not worship
+the Son of God.
+
+“Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in
+him and he in God” (1 John iv. 15). This is the touchstone of catholic
+truth that the apostles have laid down; and by this we must hold fast.
+The kingship of the Lord Jesus is the rallying-point of Christendom. In
+His name we set up our banners. There are a thousand differences we can
+afford to sink and quarrels we may well forget, if our hearts are one
+towards Him. Let me meet a man of any sect or country, who loves and
+worships my Lord Christ with all his mind and strength, he is my
+brother; and who shall forbid us “with one mind and one mouth to glorify
+the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”? It is nothing but our
+ignorance of Him, and of each other, that prevents us doing this
+already. Let us set ourselves again to the study of Christ. Let us
+strive “all of us” to “attain to the full knowledge of the Son of God”;
+it is the way to reunion. As we approach the central revelation, and the
+glory of Christ who is the image of God shines in its original
+brightness upon our hearts, prejudices will melt away; the opinions and
+interests and sentiments that divide us will be lost in the transcendent
+and absorbing vision of the one Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+    “Names and sects and parties fall:
+    Thou, O Christ, art all in all!”
+
+The second and third _unto_ of verse 13 are parallel with the first, and
+with each other. A truer faith and better knowledge of Christ uniting
+believers to each other, at the same time develope in each of them a
+riper character. Jesus Christ was the “perfect man.” In Him our nature
+attained, without the least flaw or failure, its true end,--which is to
+glorify God. In His fulness the plenitude of God is embodied; it is made
+human, and attainable to faith. In Jesus Christ humanity rose to its
+ideal stature; and we see what is the proper level of our nature, the
+dignity and worth to which we have to rise. We are “predestinated to be
+conformed to the image of God’s Son.” All the many brethren of Jesus
+measure themselves against the stature of the Firstborn; and they will
+have to say to the end with St Paul: “Not as though I had attained,
+either were already perfect. I follow after; I press towards the mark.”
+A true heart that has seen perfection, will never rest short of it.
+
+“Till we arrive--till we _all_ arrive” at this, the work of the
+Christian ministry is incomplete. Teachers must still school us, pastors
+shepherd us, evangelists mission us. There is work enough and to spare
+for them all--and will be, to all appearance, for many a generation to
+come. The goal of the regenerate life is never absolutely won; it is hid
+with Christ in God. But there is to be a constant approximation to it,
+both in the individual believer and in the body of Christ’s people. And
+a time is coming when that goal will be practically attained, so far as
+earthly conditions allow. The Church after long strife will be reunited,
+after long trial will be perfected; and Christ will “present her to
+Himself” a bride worthy of her Lord, “without spot or wrinkle or any
+such thing.” Then this world will have had its use, and will give place
+to the new heavens and earth.
+
+II. The goal that the apostle marked out, did not appear to him to be in
+immediate prospect. The childishness of so many Christian believers
+stood in the way of its attainment. In this condition they were exposed
+to the seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by
+the evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long
+as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will
+remain subject to strife and corruption. When he says in verse 14, “that
+we may be _no longer children_ tossed to and fro,” etc., this implies
+that many Christian believers at that time were of this childish sort,
+and were being so distracted and misled. The apostle writes on purpose
+to instruct these “babes” and to raise them to a more manly style of
+Christian thought and life.[111]
+
+It is a grievous thing to a minister of Christ to see those who for the
+time ought to be teachers, fit for the Church’s strong meat and the
+harder tasks of her service, remaining still infantile in their
+condition, needing to be nursed and humoured, narrow in their views of
+truth, petty and personal in their aims, wanting in all generous feeling
+and exalted thought. Some men, like St Paul himself, advance from the
+beginning to a settled faith, to a large intelligence and a full and
+manly consecration to God. Others remain “babes in Christ” to the end.
+Their souls live, but never thrive. They suffer from every change in the
+moral atmosphere, from every new wind of doctrine. These invalids are
+objects full of interest to the moral pathologist; they are marked not
+unfrequently by fine and delicate qualities. But they are a constant
+anxiety to the Church. Till they grow into something more robust they
+must remain to crowd the Church’s nursery, instead of taking part in her
+battle like brave and strenuous men.
+
+The appearance of false doctrine in the Asian Churches made their
+undeveloped condition a matter for peculiar apprehension to the apostle.
+The Colossian heresy, for example, with which he is dealing at this
+present moment, would have no attraction for ripe and settled
+Christians. But such a “scheme of error” was exactly suited to catch men
+with a certain tincture of philosophy and in general sympathy with
+current thought, who had embraced Christianity under some vague sense
+of its satisfaction for their spiritual needs, but without an
+intelligent grasp of its principles or a thorough experience of its
+power.
+
+St Paul speaks of “every wind of _the_ doctrine,” having in his mind a
+more or less definite form of erroneous teaching, a certain “plan of
+error.” Reading this verse in the light of the companion letter to
+Colossæ and the letters addressed to Timothy when at Ephesus a few years
+later, we can understand its significance. We can watch the storm that
+was rising in the Græco-Asiatic Churches. The characteristics of early
+Gnosticism are well defined in the miniature picture of verse 14. We
+note, in the first place, its protean and capricious form, half
+Judaistic, half philosophical--ascetic in one direction, libertine in
+another: “tossed by the waves, and carried about with every wind.” In
+the next place, its intellectual spirit,--that of a loose and reckless
+speculation: “in the hazarding of men,”--not in the abiding truth of
+God. Morally, it was vitiated by “craftiness.” And in its issue and
+result, this new teaching was leading “to the scheme of error” which the
+apostle four years ago had sorrowfully predicted, in bidding farewell to
+the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx.). This scheme was no other than
+the gigantic Gnostic system, which devastated the Eastern Churches and
+inflicted deep and lasting wounds upon them.
+
+The struggle with legalism was now over and past, at least in its
+critical phase. The apostle of the Gentiles had won the battle with
+Judaism and saved the Church in its first great conflict. But another
+strife is impending (comp. vi. 10); a most pernicious error has made its
+appearance within the Church itself. St Paul was not to see more than
+the commencement of the new movement, which took two generations to
+gather its full force; but he had a true prophetic insight, and he saw
+that the strength of the Church in the coming day of trial lay in the
+depth and reality of her knowledge of the Son of God.
+
+At every crisis in human thought there emerges some prevailing method of
+truth, or of error, the resultant of current tendencies, which unites
+the suffrages of a large body of thinkers and claims to embody the
+spirit of the age. Such a method of error our own age has produced as
+the outcome of the anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the
+doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or
+Agnosticism. While the Gnosticism of the early ages asserted the
+infinite distance of God from the world and the intrinsic evil of
+matter, modern Agnosticism removes God still further from us, beyond the
+reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature as the one positive
+and accessible reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and
+knowledge of the Son of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. The
+supernatural, it tells us, is an illusion; and we must resign ourselves
+to be once more without God in the world and without hope beyond death.
+
+This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the
+century. It is the living antagonist of Divine revelation. It supplies
+the appointed trial of faith for educated men of our generation, and the
+test of the intellectual vigour and manhood of the Church.
+
+III. In the midst of the changing perils and long delays of her history,
+the Church is called evermore to press towards the mark of her calling.
+The conditions on which her progress depends are summed up in verses 15
+and 16.
+
+To the craft of false teachers St Paul would have his Churches oppose
+the weapons only of _truth and love_. “Holding the truth in love,” they
+will “grow up in all things into Christ.” Sincere believers, heartily
+devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life
+instinctively repels disease. They “have an anointing from the Holy One”
+which is their protection (1 John ii. 20-29). In all that belongs to
+godliness and a noble manhood, such natures will expand; temptation and
+the assaults of error stimulate rather than arrest their growth. And
+with the growth and ripening in her fellowship of such men of God, the
+whole Church grows.
+
+Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of
+advancement,--viz., the full recognition of _the supremacy and
+sufficiency of Christ_. Christ assumes here two opposite relations to
+the members of His body. He is the Head _into_ (or _unto_) which we grow
+in all things; but at the same time, _from_ whom all the body derives
+its increase (ver. 16). He is the perfect ideal for us each; He is the
+common source of life and progress for us all. In our individual efforts
+after holiness and knowledge, in our personal aspirations and struggles,
+Jesus Christ is our model, our constant aim: we “grow into Him” (ver.
+15). But as we learn to live for others, as we merge our own aims in the
+life of the Church and of humanity we feel, even more deeply than our
+personal needs had made us do, our dependence upon Him. We see that the
+forces which are at work to raise mankind, to stay the strifes and heal
+the wounds of humanity, emanate from the living Christ (ver. 16). He is
+the head of the Church and the heart of the world.
+
+The third, practical condition of Church growth is brought out by the
+closing words of the paragraph. It is _organization_: “all the body
+fitly framed [comp. ii. 21] and knit together.” Each local _ecclesia_,
+or assembly of saints, will have its stated officers, its regulated and
+seemly order in worship and in work. And within this fit frame, there
+must be the warm union of hearts, the frank exchange of thought and
+feeling, the brotherly counsel in all things touching the kingdom of
+God, by which Christian men in each place of their assembling are “knit
+together.” From these local and congregational centres, the Christian
+fellowship spreads out its arms to embrace all that love our Lord Jesus
+Christ.
+
+A building or a machine is _fitted_ together by the adjustment of its
+parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive
+life, a sympathetic force _knitting_ it together: “knit together in
+love,” the apostle says in Colossians ii. 2; and so it is “in love” that
+this “body builds up itself.” The tense of the participles in the first
+part of verse 16 is present (continuous); we see a body in process of
+incorporation, whose several organs, imperfectly developed and
+imperfectly co-operant, are increasingly drawn to each other and bound
+more firmly in one as each becomes more complete in itself. The perfect
+Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them
+requires the other for its due realization.
+
+The rest of the sentence, following the comma that we place at “knit
+together,” has its parallel in Colossians ii. 19: “All the body, through
+its junctures and bands being supplied and knit together, increaseth
+with the increase of God.” According to St Paul’s physiology, the
+“bands” knit the body together, but the “junctures” are its means of
+supply. Each point of contact is a means of nourishment to the frame.
+In touch with each other, Christians communicate the life flowing from
+the common Head. The apostle would make _Christian intercourse a
+universal means of grace_. No two Christian men should meet anywhere,
+upon any business, without themselves and the whole Church being the
+better for it.
+
+“Wherever two or three are met together in my name,” said Jesus, “there
+am I in the midst.” In the multitude of these obscure and humble
+meetings of brethren who love each other for Christ’s sake, is the grace
+supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the Church lives and
+thrives. The vitality of the Church of Christ does not depend so much
+upon the large and visible features of its construction--upon Synods and
+Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the like, influential and
+venerable as these authorities may be; but upon the spiritual
+intercourse that goes on amongst the body of its people. “Each several
+part” of Christ’s great body, “according to the measure” of its
+capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the common grace.
+
+However defective in other points of organization, the society in which
+this takes place fulfils the office of an ecclesiastical body. It will
+grow into the fulness of Christ; it “builds up itself in love.” The
+primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be
+an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through
+the tissues and substance of the entire frame.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[105] Εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον (_homo_), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv. 22,
+24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Here εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον (_vir_);
+comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Church ἀνήρ would be
+highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor. xi. 2.
+
+[106] Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.
+
+[107] For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare: _Julius
+Cæsar_, Act V., Scene 1:--
+
+    “Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!
+    The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!”
+
+[108] Vulgate: _per omnem juncturam ministrationis_. St Paul’s word here
+is διὰ πάσης ἁφῆς, _through every touching_. See Lightfoot’s valuable
+note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek authors,
+in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).
+
+[109] Comp. ch. i. 13: “in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews]
+found hope”; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, “my true child according
+to _a common faith_.”
+
+[110] See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8-10, 18, 19.
+
+[111] Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1-3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19;
+Heb. v. 11-14.
+
+
+
+
+    ON CHRISTIAN MORALS.
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 17--v. 21.
+
+    Ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν.--ROM. vi. 4.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+_THE WALK OF THE GENTILES._
+
+    “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer
+    walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being
+    darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God
+    because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening
+    of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to
+    lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”--EPH. iv.
+    17-19.
+
+
+Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new
+world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order
+of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have
+therefore to walk in quite another way--“no longer as the Gentiles.” St
+Paul does not say “as the other Gentiles” (A.V.); for his readers,
+though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and
+the city of God. They hold the franchise of the “commonwealth of
+Israel.” As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a
+born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of “the Jews”
+as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from
+“the Gentiles” who were their natural kindred.
+
+When he “testifies,” with a pointed emphasis, “that _you_ no longer walk
+as do indeed the Gentiles,” and when in verse 20 he exclaims, “But
+_you_ did not thus learn the Christ,” it appears that there were those
+bearing Christ’s name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus
+walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians
+(ch. iii. 18, 19): “Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now
+tell you even weeping,--the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is
+their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things.”
+We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in
+verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose
+seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor,
+tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples,
+and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of
+life.[112]
+
+The connexion between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on
+which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the
+Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old
+world of Gentile society had formed the “old man” as he then existed,
+the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world
+is abolished, and a “new man” is born. The world in which the Asian
+Christians once lived as “Gentiles in the flesh,” is dead to them.[113]
+They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus
+Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the
+following paragraphs. His ideal “new man” is no mere ego, devoted to
+his personal perfection; he is part and parcel of the redeemed society
+of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and
+commonwealth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us
+is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid
+picture of Romans i. 18-32. While this delineation is comparatively
+brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than
+does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the
+description, as they bring into view in turn the _mental_, _spiritual_,
+and _moral_ characteristics of the existing Paganism. Man’s intellect
+was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and
+shameless.
+
+I. “The Gentiles walk,” the apostle says, “in _vanity of their
+mind_”--with reason frustrate and impotent; “being _darkened in their
+understanding_”--with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of
+life. Similarly, he wrote in Romans i. 21: “They were frustrated in
+their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened.” But here he
+seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the “reasonings” to
+the “reason” (_nous_) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its
+foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has
+forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects
+so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable
+and ruinous.
+
+The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from popular beliefs,
+for the most part confessed that their philosophies were speculative and
+futile, that certainty in the greatest and most serious matters was
+unattainable. Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”--no jesting question
+surely--passed from lip to lip and from one school of thought to
+another, without an answer. Five centuries before this time the human
+intellect had a marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of Greece
+sprang into their glorious life, like Athené born from the head of Zeus,
+full-grown and in shining armour. With such leaders as Pericles and
+Phidias, as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing was
+impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius of our race had
+blossomed; rich and golden fruit would surely follow, to be gathered
+from the tree of life. But the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as
+rottenness. Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry was
+little more than a trick of words; philosophy, a wrangling of the
+schools. Rome towered in the majesty of her arms and laws above the
+faded glory of Greece. She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a
+rule of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty. But this dream
+vanished, like the other. The age of the Cæsars was an age of
+disillusion. Scepticism and cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of
+the future possessed men’s minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old and new
+Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans disputed the palm of wisdom in
+mere strife of words. Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their
+own systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned was “to hear some
+new thing,” for of the old things all thinking men were weary. Only
+rhetoric and scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest
+constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again. “On the whole,
+this last period of Greek philosophy, extending into the Christian era,
+bore the marks of intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of
+despair in the solution of its high problem” (Döllinger). The world
+itself admitted the apostle’s reproach that “by wisdom it knew not God.”
+It knew nothing, therefore, to sure purpose, nothing that availed to
+satisfy or save it.
+
+Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic method unknown to
+the ancient world. The old metaphysical systems failed; but we have
+relaid the foundations of life and thought upon the solid ground of
+nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis of positive and demonstrated
+knowledge, whose value is independent of religious belief. Scientific
+discovery has put us in command of material forces that secure the race
+against any such relapse as that which took place in the overthrow of
+the Græco-Roman civilization. _Pessimism_ answers these pretensions made
+for physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the nemesis of
+irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow palsy over the highest and
+ablest minds that reject the Christian hope. What avails it to yoke
+steam to our chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to wing
+our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts are no happier or
+worthier than before?
+
+“Civilization contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude.
+Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave” (F.
+W. Robertson). Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of lavish
+wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what science grimly calls the
+_proletariate_, a barbarism more vicious and dangerous than the old,
+that is generated by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing
+regime of industrial science.
+
+Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity for evil or good;
+culture makes him more sensitive; refinement more delicate in his
+virtues or his vices. But there is no tendency in these forces as we
+see them now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline, to
+make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge supplies nothing to bind
+society together, no force to tame the selfish passions, to guard the
+moral interests of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to the
+forces acting on civilized men; it cannot change or elevate their
+character. It puts new and potent instruments into our hands; but
+whether those instruments shall be tools to build the city of God or
+weapons for its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the
+wielders. In the midst of his splendid machinery, master of the planet’s
+wealth and lord of nature’s forces, the civilized man at the end of this
+boastful century stands with a dull and empty heart--without God. Poor
+creature, he wants to know whether “life is worth living”! He has gained
+the world, but lost his soul.
+
+In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men stumble onwards to the
+end of life, to the end of time. The world’s wisdom and the lessons of
+its history give no hope of any real advance from darkness to light
+until, as Plato said, “We are able more safely and securely to make our
+journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine word.”[114] Such a
+vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching. The
+moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its guidance. And that
+moral progress has created the conditions and given the stimulus to
+which our material and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives
+permanence and value to all man’s acquisitions. Both of this world and
+of that to come “godliness holds the promise.” We are only beginning to
+learn how much was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as “the
+light of the world.” He brought into the world a light which was to
+shine through all the realms of human life.
+
+II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked, resulted in a
+settled state of _estrangement from God_. They were “alienated from the
+life of God.”
+
+“Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” St Paul said in chapter ii.
+12,[115] using, as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which
+denotes an abiding fact. These two alienations generally coincide.
+Outside the religious community, we are outside the religious life. This
+expression gathers to a point what was said in verses 11, 12 of chapter
+ii., and further back in verses 1-3; it discloses the spring of the
+soul’s malady and decay in its separation from the living God. When
+shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may exist without God,
+as a tree cast out in the desert, or a body wasting in the grave; but
+that is not _life_.
+
+Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who seemed to him
+dead--joyless, empty-hearted, weary of an idle learning or lost in
+sullen ignorance, caring only to eat and drink till they should die like
+the beasts. Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in which
+the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to believe. The ancient
+natural pieties--not wholly untouched by the Spirit of God, despite
+their idolatry--that peopled with fair fancies the Grecian shores and
+skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his manfulness and hallowed his love
+of home and city, were all but extinguished. Death was at the heart of
+Pagan religion; corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who
+believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power behind the veil
+of sense. The Roman augurs laughed at their own auspices; the priests
+made a traffic of their temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was
+rife, as rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the day were
+the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported from Egypt and Syria. A
+hundred years before, the Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his
+burning indignation, the disposition of earnest and high-minded men
+towards the creeds of the later classic times:--
+
+    “Humana ante oculos fœde cum vita jaceret,
+    In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,
+    Quæ caput e cœli regionibus ostendebat
+    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
+    Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
+    Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra.”[116]
+
+    _De Rerum Natura_: Bk. I., 62-67.
+
+How alienated from the life of God were those who conceived such
+sentiments, and those whose creed excited this repugnance. And when
+amongst ourselves, as it occurs in some unhappy instances, a similar
+bitterness is cherished, it is matter of double sorrow,--of grief at
+once for the alienation prompting thoughts so dark and unjust towards
+our God and Father, and for the misshapen guise in which our holy
+religion has been presented to make this aversion possible.
+
+The phrase “alienated from the life of God” denotes an objective
+position rather than a subjective disposition, the state and place of
+the man who is far from God and and his true life. God exiles sinners
+from His presence. By a necessary law, their sin acts as a sentence of
+deprivation. Under its ban they go forth, like Cain, from the presence
+of the Lord. They can no longer partake of the light of life which
+streams forth evermore from God and fills the souls that abide in His
+love.
+
+And this banishment was due to the cause already described,--to the
+radical perversion of the Gentile mind, which is re-affirmed in the
+double prepositional clause of verse 18: “because of the ignorance that
+is in them, because of the hardening of their heart.” The repeated
+preposition (_because of_) attaches the two parallel clauses to the same
+predicate. Together they serve to explain this sad estrangement from the
+Divine life; the second _because_ supplements the first. It is the
+ingrained “ignorance” of men that excludes them from the life of God;
+and this ignorance is no misfortune or unavoidable fate, it is due to a
+positive “hardening of the heart.”
+
+Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of indevotion. If men knew
+God, they would certainly love and serve Him. St Paul agreed with
+Socrates and Plato in holding that virtue is knowledge. The debasement
+of the heathen world, he declares again and again, was due to the fact
+that it “knew not God.”[117] The Corinthian Church was corrupted and its
+Christian life imperilled by the presence in it of some who “had not the
+knowledge of God” (1 Cor. xv. 33, 34). At Athens, the centre of heathen
+wisdom, he spoke of the Pagan ages as “the times of ignorance” (Acts
+xvii. 30); and found in this want of knowledge a measure of excuse. But
+the ignorance he censures is not of the understanding alone; nor is it
+curable by philosophy and science. It has an intrinsic
+ground,--“existing _in_ them.”
+
+Since the world’s creation, the apostle says, God’s unseen presence has
+been clearly visible (Rom. i. 20). Yet multitudes of men have always
+held false and corrupting views of the Divine nature. At this present
+time, in the full light of Christianity, men of high intellect and wide
+knowledge of nature are found proclaiming in the most positive terms
+that God, if He exists, is unknowable. This ignorance it is not for us
+to censure; every man must give account of himself to God. There may be
+in individual cases, amongst the enlightened deniers of God in our own
+days, causes of misunderstanding beyond the will, obstructing and
+darkening circumstances, on the ground of which in His merciful and wise
+judgement God may “overlook” that ignorance, even as He did the
+ignorance of earlier ages. But it is manifest that while this veil
+remains, those on whose heart it lies cannot partake in the life of God.
+Living in unbelief, they walk in darkness to the end, knowing not
+whither they go.
+
+The Gentile ignorance of God was attended, as St Paul saw it, with an
+_induration of heart_, of which it was at once the cause and the effect.
+There is a wilful stupidity, a studied misconstruction of God’s will,
+which has played a large part in the history of unbelief. The
+Israelitish people presented at this time a terrible example of such
+guilty callousness (Rom. xi. 7-10, 25). They professed a mighty zeal for
+God; but it was a passion for the deity of their partial and corrupt
+imagination, which turned to hatred of the true God and Father of men
+when He appeared in the person of His Son. Behind their pride of
+knowledge lay the ignorance of a hard and impenitent heart.
+
+In the case of the heathen, hardness of heart and religious ignorance
+plainly went together. The knowledge of God was not altogether wanting
+amongst them; He “left Himself not without witness,” as the apostle told
+them (Acts xiv. 17). Where there is, amid whatever darkness, a mind
+seeking after truth and right, some ray of light is given, some gleam of
+a better hope by which the soul may draw nigh to God,--coming whence or
+how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of Christ finds in every new land
+souls waiting for God’s salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in
+hearts touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its first
+messengers discovered everywhere,--a remnant in Israel and a great
+multitude amongst the heathen.
+
+But the Jewish nation as a whole, and the mass of the pagans, remained
+at present obstinately disbelieving. They had no perception of the life
+of God, and felt no need of it; and when offered, they thrust it from
+them. Theirs was another god, “the god of this world,” who “blinds the
+minds of the unbelieving” (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). And their “ungodliness and
+unrighteousness” were not to be pitied more than blamed. They might have
+known better; they were “holding down the truth in unrighteousness,”
+putting out the light that was in them and contradicting their better
+instincts. The wickedness of that generation was the outcome of a
+hardening of heart and blinding of conscience that had been going on for
+generations past.
+
+III. By two conspicuous features the decaying Paganism of the Christian
+era was distinguished,--its unbelief and its _licentiousness_. In his
+letter to the Romans St Paul declares that the second of these
+deplorable characteristics was the consequence of the former, and a
+punishment for it inflicted by God. Here he points to it as a
+manifestation of the hardening of heart which caused their ignorance of
+God: “Having lost all feeling, they gave themselves up to
+lasciviousness, so as to commit every kind of uncleanness in
+greediness.”
+
+Upon that brilliant classic civilization there lies a shocking stain of
+impurity. St Paul stamps upon it the burning word _Aselgeia
+(lasciviousness)_, like a brand on the harlot’s brow. The habits of
+daily life, the literature and art of the Greek world, the atmosphere of
+society in the great cities was laden with corruption. Sexual vice was
+no longer counted vice. It was provided for by public law; it was
+incorporated into the worship of the gods. It was cultivated in every
+luxurious and monstrous excess. It was eating out the manhood of the
+Greek and Latin races. From the imperial Cæsar down to the horde of
+slaves, it seemed as though every class of society had abandoned itself
+to the horrid practices of lust.
+
+The “greediness” with which debauchery was then pursued, is at the
+bottom self-idolatry, self-deification; it is the absorption of the
+God-given passion and will of man’s nature in the gratification of his
+appetites. Here lies the reservoir and spring of sin, the burning deep
+within the soul of him who knows no God but his own will, no law above
+his own desire. He plunges into sensual indulgence, or he grasps
+covetously at wealth or office; he wrecks the purity, or tramples on the
+rights of others; he robs the weak, he corrupts the innocent, he
+deceives and mocks the simple--to feed the gluttonous idol of self that
+sits upon God’s seat within him. The military hero wading to a throne
+through seas of blood, the politician who wins power and office by the
+sleights of a supple tongue, the dealer on the exchange who supplants
+every competitor by his shrewd foresight and unscrupulous daring, and
+absorbs the fruit of the labour of thousands of his fellow-men, the
+sensualist devising some new and more voluptuous refinement of
+vice,--these are all the miserable slaves of their own lust, driven on
+by the insatiate craving of the false god that they carry within their
+breast.
+
+For the light-hearted Greeks, lovers of beauty and of laughter, self was
+deified as Aphrodité, goddess of fleshly desire, who was turned by their
+worship into _Aselgeia_,--she of whom of old it was said, “Her house is
+the way to Sheol.” Not such as the chaste wife and house-keeping mother
+of Hebrew praise, but Laïs with her venal charms was the subject of
+Greek song and art. Pure ideals of womanhood the classic nations had
+once known--or never would those nations have become great and famous--a
+Greek Alcestis and Antigoné, Roman Cornelias and Lucretias, noble maids
+and matrons. But these, in the dissolution of manners, had given place
+to other models. The wives and daughters of the Greek citizens were shut
+up to contempt and ignorance, while the priestesses of vice--_hetæræ_
+they were called, or _companions_ of men--queened it in their voluptuous
+beauty, until their bloom faded and poison or madness ended their fatal
+days.
+
+Amongst the Jews whom our Lord addressed, the choice lay between “God
+and Mammon”; in Corinth and Ephesus, it was “Christ or Belial.” These
+ancient gods of the world--“mud-gods,” as Thomas Carlyle called
+them--are set up in the high places of our populous cities. To the
+slavery of business and the pride of wealth men sacrifice health and
+leisure, improvement of mind, religion, charity, love of country, family
+affection. How many of the evils of English society come from this root
+of all evil!
+
+Hard by the temple of Mammon stands that of Belial. Their votaries
+mingle in the crowded amusements of the day and rub shoulders with each
+other. Aselgeia flaunts herself, wise observers tell us, with increasing
+boldness in the European capitals. Theatre and picture-gallery and novel
+pander to the desire of the eye and the lust of the flesh. The daily
+newspapers retail cases of divorce and hideous criminal trials with
+greater exactness than the debates of Parliament; and the appetite for
+this garbage grows by what it feeds upon. It is plain to see whereunto
+the decay of public decency and the revival of the animalism of pagan
+art and manners will grow, if it be not checked by a deepened Christian
+faith and feeling.
+
+_Past feeling_ says the apostle of the brazen impudicity of his time.
+The loss of the religious sense blunted all moral sensibility. The
+Greeks, by an early instinct of their language, had one word for
+_modesty_ and _reverence_, for self-respect and awe before the Divine.
+There is nothing more terrible than the loss of shame. When immodesty is
+no longer felt as an affront, when there fails to rise in the blood and
+burn upon the cheek the hot resentment of a wholesome nature against
+things that are foul, when we grow tolerant and familiar with their
+presence, we are far down the slopes of hell. It needs only the kindling
+of passion, or the removal of the checks of circumstance, to complete
+the descent. The pain that the sight of evil gives is a divine shield
+against it. Wearing this shield, the sinless Christ fought our battle,
+and bore the anguish of our sin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[112] “The persons here denounced,” says Lightfoot on Phil. iii. 18,
+“are not the Judaizing teachers, but the antinomian reactionists.... The
+stress of Paul’s grief lies in the fact that they degraded the true
+doctrine of liberty, so as to minister to their profligate and worldly
+living.” Comp. 1 Peter iv. 3, 4; 2 Peter ii. 18-22.
+
+[113] Comp. Col. ii. 20-iii. 4; Gal. vi. 14, 15.
+
+[114] _Phæao_: § xxxv.
+
+[115] See p. 129.
+
+[116] “When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed
+down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters
+of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece
+ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to
+withstand her to her face” (Munro).
+
+[117] 1 Thess. iv. 5; 2 Thess. i. 8; Gal. iv. 8, 9.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+_THE TWO HUMAN TYPES._
+
+    “But ye did not so learn the Christ; if so be that ye heard Him, and
+    were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as
+    concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth
+    corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the
+    spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath
+    been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”--EPH. iv.
+    20-24.
+
+
+_But as for you!_--The apostle points us from heathendom to Christendom.
+From the men of blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the
+cleansed and instructed. “Not thus did _you_ learn the Christ”--not to
+remain in the darkness and filth of your Gentile state.
+
+The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in this letter so exuberant
+in expression, yet on occasion is as concise as in Galatians. One is
+tempted, as Beza suggested[118] and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at
+this point and to read: “But with you it is not so:[119] you learned the
+Christ!” In spite of its abruptness, this construction would be
+necessary, if it were only “the Gentiles” of verse 17 with whose “walk”
+St Paul means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we have seen, he
+has before his eye a third class of men, unprincipled Christian teachers
+(ver. 14), men who had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in
+Gentile ways and were leading others back to them.[120] Verse 20, after
+all, forms a coherent clause. It points an antithesis of solemn import.
+There are genuine, and there are supposed conversions; there are true
+and false ways of learning Christ.
+
+Strictly speaking, it is not _Christ_, but _the Christ_ whom St Paul
+presumes his readers to have duly learnt.[121] The words imply a
+comprehending faith, that knows who and what Christ is and what
+believing in Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To such a
+faith, which views Christ in the scope and breadth of His redemption,
+this epistle throughout appeals; for its impartation and increase St
+Paul prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter. When he writes
+not simply, “You have believed in Christ,” but “You have _learned the
+Christ_,” he puts their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of
+approved disciples in Christ’s school. For such men the “philosophy and
+vain deceit” of Colossæ and the plausibilities of the new “scheme of
+error” will have no charm. They have found the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge that are hidden in Christ.
+
+The apostle’s confidence in the Christian knowledge of his readers is,
+however, qualified in verse 21 in a somewhat remarkable way: “If verily
+it is He whom you heard, and in Him that you were taught, as truth is in
+Jesus.” We noted at the outset the bearing of this sentence on the
+destination of the letter. It would never occur to St Paul to question
+whether the _Ephesian_ Christians were taught Christ’s true doctrine.
+If there were any believers in the world who, beyond a doubt, had heard
+the truth as in Jesus in its certainty and fulness, it was those amongst
+whom the apostle had “taught publicly and from house to house,” “not
+shunning to declare all the counsel of God” and “for three years night
+and day unceasingly with tears admonishing each single one” (Acts xx.
+18-35). To suppose these words written in irony, or in a modest
+affectation, is to credit St Paul with something like an ineptitude.
+Doubt was really possible as to whether all his readers had heard of
+Christ aright, and understood the obligations of their faith. Supposing,
+as we have done, that the epistle was designed for the Christians of the
+province of Asia generally, this qualification is natural and
+intelligible.
+
+There are several considerations which help to account for it. When St
+Paul first arrived at Ephesus, eight years before this time, he “found
+certain disciples” there who had been “baptized into John’s baptism,”
+but had not “received the Holy Spirit” nor even heard of such a thing
+(Acts xix. 1-7). Apollos formerly belonged to this company, having
+preached and “taught carefully the things about Jesus,” while he “knew
+only the baptism of John” (Acts xviii. 25). One very much desires to
+know more about this Church of the Baptist’s disciples in Asia Minor.
+Its existence so far away from Palestine testifies to the power of
+John’s ministry and the deep impression that his witness to the
+Messiahship of Jesus made on his disciples. The ready reception of
+Paul’s fuller gospel by this little circle indicates that their
+knowledge of Jesus Christ erred only by defect; they had received it
+from Judæa by a source dating earlier than the day of Pentecost. The
+partial knowledge of Jesus current for so long at Ephesus, may have
+extended to other parts of the province, where St Paul had not been able
+to correct it as he had done in the metropolis.
+
+Judaistic Christians, such as those who at Rome “preached Christ of envy
+and strife,” were also disseminating an imperfect Christian doctrine.
+They limited the rights of uncircumcised believers; they misrepresented
+the Gentile apostle and undermined his influence. A third and still more
+lamentable cause of uncertainty in regard to the Christian belief of
+Asian Churches, was introduced by the rise of Gnosticizing error in this
+quarter. Some who read the epistle had, it might be, received their
+first knowledge of Christ through channels tainted with error similar to
+that which was propagated at Colossæ. With the seed of the kingdom the
+enemy was mingling vicious tares. The apostle has reason to fear that
+there were those within the wide circle to which his letter is
+addressed, who had in one form or other heard a different gospel and a
+Christ other than the true Christ of apostolic teaching.
+
+Where does he find the test and touchstone of the true Christian
+doctrine?--In the historical Jesus: “as there is truth _in Jesus_.” Not
+often, nor without distinct meaning, does St Paul use the birth-name of
+the Saviour by itself. Where he does, it is most significant. He has in
+mind the facts of the gospel history; he speaks of “the Jesus”[122] of
+Nazareth and Calvary. The Christ whom St Paul feared that some of his
+readers might have heard of was not the veritable _Jesus_ Christ, but a
+shadowy and notional Christ, lost amongst the crowd of angels, such as
+was now being taught to the Colossians. This Christ was neither the
+image of God, nor the true Son of man. He supplied no sufficient
+redemption from sin, no ideal of character, no sure guidance and
+authority to direct the daily walk. Those who followed such a Christ
+would fall back unchecked into Gentile vice. Instead of the light of
+life shining in the character and words of Jesus, they must resort to
+“the doctrines and commandments of men” (Col. ii. 8-23).
+
+Amongst the Gnostics of the second century there was held a distinction
+between the human (fleshly and imperfect) _Jesus_ and the Divine
+_Christ_, who were regarded as distinct beings, united to each other
+from the time of the baptism of Jesus to His death. The critics who
+assert the late and non-Pauline authorship of the epistle, assert that
+this peculiar doctrine is aimed at in the words before us, and that the
+identification of Christ with Jesus has a polemical reference to this
+advanced Gnostic error. The verses that follow show that the writer has
+a different and entirely practical aim. The apostle points us to our
+true ideal, to “the Christ” of all revelation manifest in “the Jesus” of
+the gospel. Here we see “the new man created after God,” whose nature we
+must embody in ourselves. The counteractive of a false spiritualism is
+found in the incarnate life of the Son of God. The dualism which
+separated God from the world and man’s spirit from his flesh, had its
+refutation in “the Jesus” of Paul’s preaching, whom we see in the Four
+Gospels. Those who persisted in the attempt to graft the dualistic
+theosophy upon the Christian faith, were in the end compelled to divide
+and destroy the Christ Himself. They broke up into _Jesus and Christ_
+the unity of His incarnate Person.
+
+It is an entire mistake to suppose that the apostle Paul was indifferent
+to the historical tradition of Jesus; that the Christ he taught was a
+product of his personal inspiration, of his inward experience and
+theological reflection. This preaching of an abstract Christ, distinct
+from the actual Jesus, is the very thing that he condemns. Although his
+explicit references in the epistles to the teaching of Jesus and the
+events of His earthly life are not numerous, they are such as to prove
+that the Churches St Paul taught were well instructed in that history.
+From the beginning the apostle made himself well acquainted with the
+facts concerning Jesus, and had become possessor of all that the earlier
+witnesses could relate. His conception of the Lord Jesus Christ is
+living and realistic in the highest degree. Its germ was in the visible
+appearance of the glorified Jesus to himself on the Damascus road; but
+that expanding germ struck down its roots into the rich soil of the
+Church’s recollections of the incarnate Redeemer as He lived and taught
+and laboured, as He died and rose again amongst men. Paul’s Christ was
+the Jesus of Peter and of John and of our own Evangelists; there was no
+other. He warns the Church against all unhistorical, subjective Christs,
+the product of human speculation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Asian Christians who held a true faith, had received Jesus as the
+Christ. So accepting Him, they accepted a fixed standard and ideal of
+life for themselves. With Jesus Christ evidently set forth before their
+eyes, let them look back upon their past life; let them contrast what
+they had been with what they are to be. Let them consider what things
+they must “put off” and what “put on,” so that they may “be found in
+Him.”
+
+Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan world; keenly its
+light smote on that gross darkness. There stood the Word made
+flesh--purity immaculate, love in its very self--shaped forth in no
+dream of fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man Christ Jesus,
+born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate,--truth expressed
+
+            “In loveliness of perfect deeds,
+    More strong than all poetic thought.”
+
+And this life of Jesus, living in those who loved Him (2 Cor. iv. 11),
+ended not when He passed from earth; it passed from land to land,
+speaking many tongues, raising up new witnesses at every step as it
+moved along. It was not a new system, a new creed, but _new men_ that it
+gave the world in Christ’s disciples, men redeemed from all iniquity,
+noble and pure as sons of God. It was the sight of Jesus, and of men
+like Jesus, that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and hardened
+in its sin. In vain she summoned the gates of death to silence the
+witnesses of Jesus. At last
+
+    “She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword,
+      And laid her sceptre down;
+    Her stately purple she abhorred,
+      And her imperial crown.
+    She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,
+      Her artists could not please;
+    She tore her books, she shut her courts,
+      She fled her palaces;
+    Lust of the eye and pride of life--
+      She left it all behind,
+    And hurried, torn with inward strife,
+      The wilderness to find” (_Obermann once more_).
+
+The Galilean conquered! The new man was destined to convict and destroy
+the old. “God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for
+sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. viii. 3). When Jesus lived, died,
+and rose again, an inconceivable revolution in human affairs had been
+effected. The cross was planted on the territory of the god of this
+world; its victory was inevitable. The “grain of wheat” fell into the
+ground to die: there might be still a long, cruel winter; many a storm
+and blight would delay its growth; but the harvest was secure. Jesus
+Christ was the type and the head of a new moral order, destined to
+control the universe.
+
+To see the new and the old man side by side was enough to assure one
+that the future lay with Jesus. Corruption and decrepitude marked every
+feature of Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice,--“wasting away in
+its deceitful lusts.”
+
+St Paul had before his eyes, as he wrote, a conspicuous type of the
+decaying Pagan order. He had appealed as a citizen of the empire to
+_Cæsar_ as his judge. He was in durance as _Nero’s_ prisoner, and was
+acquainted with the life of the palace (Phil. i. 13). Never, perhaps,
+has any line of rulers dominated mankind so absolutely or held in their
+single hand so completely the resources of the world as did the Cæsars
+of St Paul’s time. Their name has ever since served to mark the summit
+of autocratic power. It was, surely, the vision of Tiberius sitting at
+Rome that Jesus saw in the wilderness, when “the devil showed Him all
+the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and said, All this hath been
+delivered to me, and to whomsoever I will I give it.” The Emperor was
+the topstone of the splendid edifice of Pagan civilization, that had
+been rearing for so many ages. And Nero was the final product and
+paragon of the Cæsarean house!
+
+At this epoch, writes M. Renan,[123] “_Nero and Jesus_, Christ and
+Antichrist, stand opposed, confronting each other, if I may dare to say
+so, like heaven and hell.... In face of Jesus there presents itself a
+monster, who is the ideal of evil as Jesus of goodness.... Nero’s was an
+evil nature, hypocritical, vain, frivolous, prodigiously given to
+declamation and display; a blending of false intellect, profound
+wickedness, cruel and artful egotism carried to an incredible degree of
+refinement and subtlety.... He is a monster who has no second in
+history, and whose equal we can only find in the pathological annals of
+the scaffold.... The school of crime in which he had grown up, the
+execrable influence of his mother, the stroke of parricide forced upon
+him, as one might say, by this abominable woman, by which he had entered
+on the stage of public life, made the world take to his eyes the form of
+a horrible comedy, with himself for the chief actor in it. At the moment
+we have now reached [when St Paul entered Rome], Nero had detached
+himself completely from the philosophers who had been his tutors. He had
+killed nearly all his relations. He had made the most shameful follies
+the common fashion. A large part of Roman society, following his
+example, had descended to the lowest level of debasement. The cruelty of
+the ancient world had reached its consummation.... The world had touched
+the bottom of the abyss of evil; it could only reascend.”
+
+Such was the man who occupied at this time the summit of human power and
+glory,--the man who lighted the torch of Christian martyrdom and at
+whose sentence St Paul’s head was destined to fall, the Wild Beast of
+John’s awful vision. Nero of Rome, the son of Agrippina, embodied the
+triumph of Satan as the god of this world. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
+Mary, reigned only in a few loving and pure hearts. Future history, as
+the scroll of the Apocalypse unfolded it, was to be the battle-field of
+these confronting powers, the war of Christ with Antichrist.
+
+Could it be doubtful, to any one who had measured the rival forces, on
+which side victory must fall? St Paul pronounces the fate of the whole
+kingdom of evil in this world, when he declares that “the old man” is
+“perishing, according to the lusts of deceit.” It is an application of
+the maxim he gave us in Galatians vi. 8: “He that soweth to his own
+flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption.” In its mad sensuality and
+prodigal lusts, the vile Roman world he saw around him was speeding to
+its ruin. That ruin was delayed; there were moral forces left in the
+fabric of the Roman State, which in the following generations
+re-asserted themselves and held back for a time the tide of disaster;
+but in the end Rome fell, as the ancient world-empires of the East had
+fallen, through her own corruption, and by “the wrath” which is
+“revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
+men.” For the solitary man, for the household, for the body politic and
+the family of nations the rule is the same. “Sin, when it is finished,
+bringeth forth death.”
+
+The passions which carry men and nations to their ruin are “lusts _of
+deceit_.” The tempter is the liar. Sin is an enormous fraud. “You shall
+not die,” said the serpent in the garden; “Your eyes will be opened, and
+you will be as God!” So forbidden desire was born, and “the woman _being
+deceived_ fell into transgression.”
+
+    “So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud
+    Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree
+    Of prohibition, root of all our woe.”
+
+By its baits of sensuous pleasure, and still more by its show of freedom
+and power to stir our pride, sin cheats us of our manhood; it sows life
+with misery, and makes us self-despising slaves. It knows how to use
+God’s law as an incitement to transgression, turning the very
+prohibition into a challenge to our bold desires. “Sin taking occasion
+by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me.” Over the pit of
+destruction play the same dancing lights that have lured countless
+generations,--the glitter of gold; the purple robe and jewelled coronet;
+the wine moving in the cup; fair, soft faces lit with laughter. The
+straying foot and hot desires give chase, till the inevitable moment
+comes when the treacherous soil yields, and the pursuer plunges beyond
+escape into sin’s reeking gulfs. Then the illusion is over. The gay
+faces grow foul; the glittering prize proves dust; the sweet fruit turns
+to ashes; the cup of pleasure burns with the fire of hell. And the
+sinner knows at last that his greed has cheated him, that he is as
+foolish as he is wicked.
+
+Let us remember that there is but one way of escape from the
+all-encompassing deceit of sin. It is in “learning Christ.” Not in
+learning _about_ Christ, but in learning _Him_. It is a common artifice
+of the great deceit to “wash the outside of cup and platter.” The old
+man is improved and civilized; he is baptized in infancy and called a
+Christian. He puts off many of his old ways, he dresses himself in a
+decorous garb and style; and so deceives himself into thinking that he
+is new, while his heart is unchanged. He may turn ascetic, and deny this
+or that _to_ himself; and yet never deny _himself_. He observes
+religious forms and makes charitable benefactions, as though he would
+compound with God for his unforsaken sin. But all this is only a
+plausible and hateful manifestation of the lusts of deceit. To learn the
+Christ, is to learn the way of the cross. “Take my yoke upon you, and
+learn of me,” He bids us; “for I am meek and lowly in heart.” Till we
+have done this, we are not even at the beginning of our lesson.
+
+From the perishing old man the apostle turns, in verses 23, 24, to the
+new. These two clauses differ in their form of expression more than the
+English rendering indicates.[124] When he writes, “that ye be renewed in
+the spirit of your mind,” it is a _continual rejuvenation_ that he
+describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that
+of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the “new man” to be
+“put on” (ver. 24) is of a _new kind and order_; and in this instance
+the verb is of the aorist tense signifying an event, not a continuous
+act. The new man is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted,
+when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. We
+“put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. xiii. 14), who covers and absorbs
+the old self, even as those who await in the flesh His second advent
+will “put on the house from heaven,” when “the mortal” in them will be
+“swallowed up of life” (2 Cor. v. 2-4). Thus two distinct conceptions of
+the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one
+hand, of a quickening, constantly renewed, in the springs of our
+individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption
+of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the Divine character
+and form of its being.
+
+Borne on the stream of his evil passions, we saw “the old man” in his
+“former manner of life,” hastening to the gulf of ruin. For the man
+renewed in Christ the stream of life flows steadily in the opposite
+direction, and with a swelling tide moves upward to God. His knowledge
+and love are always growing in depth, in refinement, in energy and joy.
+Thus it was with the apostle in his advancing age. The fresh impulses of
+the Holy Spirit, the unfolding to his spirit of the mystery of God, the
+fellowship of Christian brethren and the interests of the work of the
+Church renewed Paul’s youth like the eagle’s. If in years and toil he is
+old, his soul is full of ardour, his intellect keen and eager; the
+“outward man decays, but the inward man is renewed day by day.”
+
+This new nature had a new birth. The soul reanimating itself perpetually
+from the fresh springs that are in God, had in God the beginning of its
+renovated life. We have not to create or fashion for ourselves the
+perfect life, but to _adopt_ it,--to realize the Christian ideal (ver.
+24). We are called to put on the new type of manhood as completely as we
+renounce the old (ver. 22). The new man is there before our eyes,
+manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom we live henceforth.
+When we “learn the Christ,” when we have become His true disciples, we
+“put on” His nature and “walk in Him.” The inward reception of His
+Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our
+calling amongst men.
+
+Now, the character of Jesus is human nature as God first formed it. It
+existed in His thoughts from eternity. If it be asked whether St Paul
+refers, in verse 24, to the creation of Adam in God’s likeness, or to
+the image of God appearing in Jesus Christ, or to the Christian nature
+formed in the regenerate, we should say that, to the apostle’s mind, the
+first and last of these creations are merged in the second. The Son of
+God’s love is His primeval image. The race of Adam was created in Christ
+(Col. i. 15, 16). The first model of that image, in the natural father
+of mankind, was marred by sin and has become “the old man” corrupt and
+perishing. The new pattern replacing this broken type is the original
+ideal, displayed “in the likeness of sinful flesh”--wearing no longer
+the charm of childish innocence, but the glory of sin vanquished and
+sacrifice endured--in the Son of God made perfect through suffering.
+Through all there has been only one image of God, one ideal humanity.
+The Adam of Paradise was, within his limits, what the Image of God had
+been in perfectness from eternity. And Jesus in His human personality
+represented, under the changed circumstances brought about by sin, what
+Adam might have grown to be as a complete and disciplined man.
+
+The qualities which the apostle insists upon in the new man are two:
+“_righteousness_ and _holiness_ [or _piety_] of the truth.” This is the
+Old Testament conception of a perfect life, whose realization the devout
+Zacharias anticipates when he sings how God has “shown mercy to our
+fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, ... that we being
+delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in
+holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.”
+Enchanting vision, still to be fulfilled! “Righteousness” is the sum of
+all that should be in a man’s relations towards God’s law; “holiness” is
+a right disposition and bearing towards God Himself. This is not St
+Paul’s ordinary word for holiness (_sanctification_, _sanctity_), which
+he puts so often at the head of his letters, addressing his readers as
+“saints” in Christ Jesus. That other term designates Christian believers
+as devoted persons, claimed by God for His own;[125] it signifies
+holiness as a calling. The word of our text denotes specifically the
+holiness of temper and behaviour--“that becometh saints.” The two words
+differ very much as _devotedness_ from _devoutness_.[126]
+
+A religious temper, a reverent mind marks the true child of grace. His
+soul is full of the loving fear of God. In the new humanity, in the type
+of man that will prevail in the latter days when the truth as in Jesus
+has been learnt by mankind, justice and piety will hold a balanced sway.
+The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic: he will
+be devout. He will not be narrow and self-seeking; he will not be
+pharisaic and pretentious, practising the world’s ethics with the
+Christian’s creed: he will be upright and generous, manly and godlike.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[118] Quid si post οὕτως distinctionem ascribas? _Vos autem non ita_
+(subaudi _facere convenit_), _qui didicistis_, etc.
+
+[119] Comp. Numb. xii. 7; Ps. i. 4; Luke xxii. 26, for this Hebraistic
+turn of expression.
+
+[120] Comp. Phil. iii. 2, 18; Titus i. 16.
+
+[121] See pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[122] Ἐστὶν ἀληθεία ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ. The article with the proper name is
+most significant. It points to the definite image of Jesus, in His
+actual person, that was made familiar by the preaching of Paul and the
+other apostles.
+
+[123] _L’Antéchrist_, pp. i. ii. 1, 2. This is a powerful and impressive
+work, of whose value those who know only the _Vie de Jésus_ can have
+little conception. Renan’s faults are many and deplorable; but he is a
+writer of genius and of candour. His rationalism teems with precious
+inconsistencies. One hears in him always the Church bells ringing under
+the sea, the witness of a faith buried in the heart and never silenced,
+to which he confesses touchingly in the Preface to his _Souvenirs_.
+
+[124] ἀνανεοῦσθαι δὲ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς ὑμῶν, καὶ ἐνδυσασθαι τὸν
+καίνον ἄνθρωπον, τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα.
+
+[125] Comp. pp. 29, 30.
+
+[126] It is important to distinguish the Greek adjectives ἅγιος and
+ὅσιος, with their derivatives. See Cremer’s _N. T. Lexicon_ on these
+words, and Trench’s _N. T. Synonyms_, § lxxxviii. Of the latter word, 1
+Thess. ii. 10; 1 Tim. i. 9, ii. 8; 2 Tim. iii. 3; Tit. i. 8 are the only
+examples in St Paul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+_DISCARDED VICES._
+
+    “Wherefore, having put away falsehood, ‘speak ye truth each one with
+    his neighbour’: for we are members one of another.
+
+    “‘Be ye angry, and sin not’: let not the sun go down upon your
+    provocation: neither give place to the devil.
+
+    “Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour,
+    working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have
+    whereof to give to him that hath need.
+
+    “Let no worthless speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is
+    good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them
+    that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were
+    sealed unto the day of redemption.
+
+    “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing
+    be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to
+    another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in
+    Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved
+    children; and walk in love, even as the Christ also loved you, and
+    gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an
+    odour of a sweet smell.
+
+    “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not
+    even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor
+    foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not befitting: but rather
+    giving of thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator,
+    nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any
+    inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you
+    with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of
+    God upon the sons of disobedience.”--EPH. iv. 25--v. 6.
+
+
+The transformation described in the last paragraph (vv. 17-24) has now
+to be carried into detail. The vices of the old heathen self must be
+each of them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new man in
+Christ Jesus.
+
+The peculiarity of the instructions given by the apostle for this
+purpose does not lie in the virtues enjoined, but in the light in which
+they are set and the motives by which they are inculcated. The common
+conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness; they were
+denounced with eloquence by heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New
+Testament differed in many respects from the best moral philosophy: in
+its direct appeal to the conscience, in its vigour and decision, in the
+clearness with which it traced our maladies to the heart’s alienation
+from God; but most of all, in the remedy which it applied, the new
+principle of faith in Christ. The surgeon’s knife lays bare the root of
+the disease; and the physician’s hand pours in the healing balm.
+
+Let us observe at the outset that St Paul deals with the actual and
+pressing temptations of his readers. He recalls what they had been, and
+forbids them to be such again. The associations and habits of former
+life, the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile society,
+and added to all this, as we discover from chapter v. 6, the persuasions
+of the sophistical teachers now beginning to infest the Church, tended
+to draw the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break down the
+moral distinctions that separated them from the pagan world.
+
+Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile life, the following
+are here distinguished: _lying_, _theft_, _anger_, _idle speech_,
+_malice_, _impurity_, _greed_. These may be reduced to sins of temper,
+of word, and of act. Let us discuss them in the order in which they are
+brought before us.
+
+1. “The falsehood”[127] of verse 25 is the antithesis of “the truth”
+from which righteousness and holiness spring (ver. 24). In accepting the
+one, Paul’s Gentile readers “had put off” the other. When these heathen
+converts became Christians, they renounced the great lie of idolatry,
+the system of error and deceit on which their lives were built. They
+have passed from the realm of illusion to that of truth. “Now,” the
+apostle says, “let your daily speech accord with this fact: you have
+bidden farewell to falsehood; _speak_ truth each with his neighbour.”
+The true religion breeds truthful men; a sound faith makes an honest
+tongue. Hence there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing more
+shocking than the conduct of those who defend what they call “the truth”
+by disingenuous arts, by tricks of rhetoric and the shifts of an
+unscrupulous partizanship. “Will you speak unrighteously for God, and
+talk deceitfully for Him?” _As Christ’s truth is in me_ cries the
+apostle, when he would give the strongest possible assurance of the fact
+he wishes to assert.[128] The social conventions and make-believes, the
+countless simulations and dissimulations by which the game of life is
+carried on belong to the old man with his lusts of deceit, to the
+universal lie that runs through all ungodliness and unrighteousness,
+which is in the last analysis the denial of God.
+
+St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16, in which the
+prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that
+they should “speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and
+the judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you,” he
+continues, “imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no
+false oath. For all these things do I hate, saith the Lord.” Such is the
+law of the New Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the
+intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command
+and adds the reason, “For we are _members one of another_.” But the word
+_neighbour_, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited
+import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When
+the apostle bids his converts “Follow what is good towards one another,
+and towards all” (1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly
+obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.
+
+Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces
+all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to
+his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should
+conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other.
+Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his
+neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all
+intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect
+truthfulness is scarcely possible. “Self-respect will never destroy
+self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible
+to the temptations of falsehood” (Harless).
+
+2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old
+Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. “_Be ye angry_, and sin
+not”: so the words of Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the
+margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, “Stand in awe, and
+sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.” The
+apostle’s further injunction, that anger should be stayed before
+nightfall, accords with the Psalmist’s words; the calming effect of the
+night’s quiet the apostle anticipates in the approach of evening. As the
+day’s heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should
+die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at
+evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St
+Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: “If at any time
+they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the
+sun set they would take each other’s hands and embracing make up their
+quarrel.” If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be
+delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those many facts of
+Gentile life which “show the work of the law written in their hearts”
+(Rom. ii. 15). The passion which outlives the day, on which the angry
+man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his
+breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.
+
+There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood
+over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a “place given” to the
+tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the
+soul, from which he may shoot his “fire-tipped darts” (vi. 16). Let us
+dismiss with each day the day’s vexations, commending as evening falls
+our cares and griefs to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for
+ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness and a
+better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience
+and charity, to bring into the world’s turmoil a calm and generous
+wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall
+be called sons of God.
+
+Still the apostle says: “_Be angry_, and sin not.” He does not condemn
+anger in itself, nor wholly forbid it a place within the breast of the
+saint. Wrath is a glorious attribute of God,--perilous, indeed, for the
+best of men; but he who cannot be angry has no strength for good. The
+apostle knew this holy passion, the flame of Jehovah that burns
+unceasingly against the false and foul and cruel. But he knew its
+dangers--how easily an ardent soul kindled to exasperation forgets the
+bounds of wisdom and love; how strong and jealous a curb the temper
+needs, lest just indignation turn to sin, and Satan gain over us a
+double advantage, first by the wicked provocation and then by the
+uncontrolled resentment it excites.
+
+3. From anger we pass to _theft_.
+
+The eighth commandment is put here in a form indicating that some of the
+apostle’s readers had been habitual sinners against it. Literally his
+words read: “Let him _that steals_ play the thief no more.” The Greek
+present participle does not, however, necessarily imply a pursuit now
+going on, but an habitual or characteristic pursuit, that by which the
+agent was known and designated: “Let the thief no longer steal!” From
+the lowest dregs of the Greek cities--from its profligate and criminal
+classes--the gospel had drawn its converts (comp. 1 Cor. vi. 9-11). In
+the Ephesian Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity had
+to make of them honest workmen.
+
+The words of verse 28, addressed to a company of thieves, vividly show
+the transforming effect of the gospel of Christ: “Let him toil, working
+with his hands what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him
+that is in need.” The apostle brings the loftiest motives to bear
+instantly upon the basest natures, and is sure of a response. He makes
+no appeal to self-interest, he says nothing of the fear of punishment,
+nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for their fellows, the
+spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity is to set those pilfering and
+violent hands to unaccustomed toil. The appeal was as wise as it was
+bold. Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded. Preach to
+them thrift and self-improvement, show them the pleasures of an ordered
+home and the advantages of respectability, they will still feel that
+their own way of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine
+spark of charity be kindled in their breast--let the man have love and
+pity and not self to work for, and he is a new creature. His indolence
+is conquered; his meanness changed to the noble sense of a common
+manhood. Love never faileth.
+
+4. We have passed from speech to temper, and from temper to act; in the
+warning of verses 29, 30 we come back to speech again.
+
+We doubt whether _corrupt talk_ is here intended. That comes in for
+condemnation in verses 2 and 3 of the next chapter. The Greek adjective
+is the same that is used of the “_worthless_ fruit” of the “_worthless_
+[_good-for-nothing_] tree” in Matthew xii. 33; and again of the “_bad_
+fish” of Matthew xiii. 48, which the fisherman throws away not because
+they are corrupt or offensive, but because they are useless for food. So
+it is against _inane_, inept and useless talk that St Paul sets his
+face. Jesus said that “for _every idle word_ men must give account to
+God” (Matt. xii. 36).
+
+Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of the gift of speech.
+“By thy words,” He said to His disciples, “thou shalt be justified, and
+by thy words condemned.” The possession of a human tongue is an immense
+responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. (With the
+tongue we should include the pen, as being the tongue’s deputy.) Who
+shall say how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the
+irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of spirit, the
+destruction of Christian fellowship that is due to thoughtless speech
+and writing? The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words, he puts
+an embargo on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough to
+say: “My chatter does nobody harm; if there is no good in it, there is
+no evil.” He replies: “If you cannot speak to profit, be silent till you
+can.”
+
+Not that St Paul requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious.
+Many a true word is spoken in jest; and “grace” may be “given to the
+hearers” by words clothed in the grace of a genial fancy and playful
+wit, as well as in the direct enforcement of solemn themes. It is the
+mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous--spoken from the pulpit or the
+easy chair--the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless,
+graceless, unprofitable utterance that St Paul desires to arrest: “let
+it not proceed out of your mouth.” Such speech must not “escape the
+fence of the teeth.” It is an oppression to every serious listener; it
+is an injury to the utterer himself. Above all, it “grieves the Holy
+Spirit.”
+
+The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of God’s possession in
+us;[129] it is the assurance to ourselves that we are His sons in
+Christ and heirs of life eternal. From the day it is affixed to the
+heart, this seal need never be broken nor the witness withheld, “until
+the day of redemption.” Dwelling within the Church as the guard of its
+communion, and loving us with the love of God, the Spirit of grace is
+hurt and grieved by foolish words coming from lips that He has
+sanctified. As Israel in its ancient rebellions “vexed His Holy Spirit”
+(Isai. lxiii. 10), so do those who burden Christian fellowship and who
+enervate their own inward life by speech without worth and purpose. As
+His fire is quenched by distrust (1 Thess. v. 19), so His love is vexed
+by folly. His witness grows faint and silent; the soul loses its joyous
+assurance, its sense of the peace of God. When our inward life thus
+declines, the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless speech. Or
+we have listened willingly and without reproof to “words that may do
+hurt,” words of foolish jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and
+backbiting. The Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated
+temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is purged and the
+wilful tongue bends to the yoke of Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy
+Spirit, that He be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray
+evermore: “Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my
+lips.”
+
+5. In his previous reproofs the apostle has glanced in various ways at
+love as the remedy of our moral disorders and defects. Falsehood, anger,
+theft, misuse of the tongue involve disregard of the welfare of others;
+if they do not spring from positive ill-will, they foster and aggravate
+it. It is now time to deal directly with this evil that assumes so many
+forms, the most various of our sins and companion to every other: “Let
+all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put
+away from you, with all malice.”
+
+The last of these terms is the most typical. _Malice_ is badness of
+disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any
+special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath.
+_Bitterness_ is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the
+exasperating object. _Wrath_ and _anger_ are synonymous, the former
+being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the
+settled indignation of the aggrieved soul: this passion was put under
+restraint already in verses 26, 27. _Clamour_ and _railing_ give audible
+expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud
+self-assertion of the angry man, who will make every one hear his
+grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his
+enemy’s camp, and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult.
+
+These sins of speech were rife in heathen society; and there were some
+amongst Paul’s readers, doubtless, who found it hard to forgo their
+indulgence. Especially difficult was this when Christians suffered all
+manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and former friends; it cost
+a severe struggle to be silent and “keep the mouth as with a bridle”
+under fierce and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and
+railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing,--this was one of the
+lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.
+
+_Kindness_ in act, _tenderheartedness_ of feeling are to take the place
+of malice with its brood of bitter passions. Where injury used to be met
+with reviling and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the new
+life will be found “forgiving one another, even as God in Christ
+forgave” them. Here we touch the spring of Christian virtue, the master
+motive in the apostle’s theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is
+the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology. The sacrifice of
+Calvary, while it is the ground of our salvation, supplies the standard
+and incentive of moral attainment. It makes life _an imitation of God_.
+
+The commencement of the new chapter at this point makes an unfortunate
+division; for its first two verses are in close consecution with the
+last verse of chapter iv. By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by
+readiness to forgive, God’s “beloved children” will “show themselves
+imitators” of their Father. The apostle echoes the saying of his Master,
+in which the law of His kingdom was laid down: “Love your enemies, and
+do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and
+you shall be called children of the Highest: for He is kind to the
+thankless and evil. Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful”
+(Luke vi. 35, 36). Before the cross of Jesus was set up, men could not
+know how much God loved the world and how far He was ready to go in the
+way of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love displayed in
+the Father’s daily providence. He bids us imitate Him who makes His sun
+shine and His rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the
+good. To the insight of Jesus, nature’s impartial bounties in which
+unbelief sees only moral indifference, spoke of God’s compassion; they
+proceed from the same love that gave His Son to taste death for every
+man.
+
+In chapter iv. 32-v. 2 the Father’s love and the Son’s self-sacrifice
+are spoken of in terms precisely parallel. They are altogether one in
+quality. Christ does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father to
+love His children; it is the Divine compassion in Christ that dictates
+and carries into effect the sacrifice. At the same time it was “an
+_offering_ and a _sacrifice_ to God.” God is love; but love is not
+everything in God. Justice is also Divine, and absolute in its own
+realm. Law can no more forgo its rights than love forget its
+compassions. Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to
+mark out its path of obedience, or it remains an effusive, ineffectual
+sentiment, helpless to bless and save. Christ’s feet followed the stern
+and strait path of self-devotion; “He humbled Himself and became
+obedient,” He was “born under law.” And the law of God imposing death as
+the penalty for sin, which shaped Christ’s sacrifice, made it acceptable
+to God. Thus it was “an odour of a sweet smell.”
+
+Hence the love which follows Christ’s example, is love wedded with duty.
+It finds in an ordered devotion to the good of men the means to fulfil
+the all-holy Will and to present in turn its “offering to God.” Such
+love will be above the mere pleasing of men, above sentimentalism and
+indulgence; it will aim higher than secular ideals and temporal
+contentment. It regards men in their kinship to God and obligation to
+His law, and seeks to make them worthy of their calling. All human
+duties, for those who love God, are subordinate to this; all commands
+are summed up in one: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The
+apostle pronounced the first and last word of his teaching when he said:
+_Walk in love, as the Christ also loved us._
+
+6. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile world of that time with
+infamy,--its _uncleanness_.
+
+St Paul has stigmatized this already in the burning words of verse 19.
+There we saw this vice in its intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set
+in the light of Christ’s love on the one hand (ver. 2), and of the final
+judgement on the other (vv. 5, 6). Thus it is banished from the
+Christian fellowship in every form--even in the lightest, where it
+glances from the lips in words of jest: “Fornication and all
+uncleanness, let it not even be named among you.” Along with
+“filthiness, foolish talk and jesting” are to be heard no more. Passing
+from verse 2 to verse 3 by the contrastive _But_, one feels how
+repugnant are these things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the
+sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens our life on earth;
+its grace drives wanton and selfish passions from the heart, and
+destroys the pestilence of evil in the social atmosphere. Lust cannot
+breathe in the sight of the cross.
+
+The “good-for-nothing speech” of chapter iv. 29 comes up once more for
+condemnation in the _foolish speech_ and _jesting_ of this passage. The
+former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both,
+under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness.
+Loose speech easily becomes low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence,
+finds a tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations of
+life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and jests that
+desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid open grossness.
+
+St Paul’s word for “jesting” is one of the singular terms of this
+epistle. By etymology it denotes a _well-turned_ style of expression,
+the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and
+aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the
+polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word
+describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and
+persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated,--the
+wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. “The very profligate old
+man in the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus (iii. I. 42-52), who prides
+himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and
+refinement [_cavillator lepidus_, _facetus_], is exactly the εὐτράπελος.
+And keeping in mind that εὐτραπελία, being only once expressly and by
+name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians, it is not a
+little notable to find him urging that all this was to be expected from
+him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:--
+
+    Post _Ephesi sum natus_; non enim in Apulia, non Animulæ.”[130]
+
+In place of senseless prating and wanton jests--things unbefitting to a
+rational creature, much more to a saint--the Asian Greeks are to find in
+_thanksgiving_ employment for their ready tongue. St Paul’s rule is not
+one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue that disported itself in
+unhallowed and frivolous utterance, may be turned into a precious
+instrument for God’s service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the
+jester’s lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise which once
+poured out dishonour to its Maker and shame to His image in man.
+
+7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning
+(iv. 19), uncleanness is joined with _covetousness_, or _greed_.
+
+This, too, is “not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints.”
+_Money! property!_ these are the words dearest and most familiar in the
+mouths of a large class of men of the world, the only themes on which
+they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from
+the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the
+trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even
+into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation,
+it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is
+becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an “idolater” of
+
+    “Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+    From heaven.”
+
+The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator and the
+unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the
+god of this world exclude themselves from their “inheritance in the
+kingdom of Christ and of God.”
+
+A serious warning this for all who handle the world’s wealth. They have
+a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in
+their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its
+slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,--the passion for
+accumulation, the lust of property? None are found more dead to the
+claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ
+and God, none more “closely wrapped” within their “sensual fleece” than
+rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen
+and won his kingdom. He “receives in his lifetime his good things”;
+afterwards he must look for “torments.”
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[127] Διὸ ἀποθέμενοι τὸ ψεῦδος. Despite the commentators, we must hold
+to it that _the lie_, _the falsehood_ is objective and concrete; not
+_lying_, or _falsehood_ as a subjective act, habit, or quality,--which
+would have been rather ψευδολογία (comp. μωρολογία, v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv.
+2, ψευδολόγων), or τὸ ψευδές. So in Rom. i. 25, τὸ ψεῦδος is “the [one
+great] lie” which runs through all idolatry; and in 2 Thess. ii. 11 it
+denotes “the lie” which Antichrist imposes on those ready to believe
+it,--viz., that he himself is God. Accordingly, we take the participle
+ἀποθέμενοι to signify not what the readers are to do, but what they _had
+done_ in renouncing heathenism. The apostle requires consistency: “Since
+you are now of the truth, be truth-speaking men.”
+
+[128] 2 Cor. i. 18, 19, xi. 10.
+
+[129] See ch. i. 13, 14, and 18 (last clause).
+
+[130] Trench: _N. T. Synonyms_, § xxxiv.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+_DOCTRINE AND ETHICS._
+
+    “We are members one of another....
+
+    “Let the thief labour ... that he may have whereof to give to him
+    that hath need....
+
+    “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the
+    day of redemption....
+
+    “Forgive each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be ye
+    imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as the
+    Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a
+    sacrifice to God....
+
+    “No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an
+    idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
+    God.”--EPH. iv. 25-v. 6.
+
+
+The homily that we have briefly reviewed in the last Chapter demands
+further consideration. It affords a striking and instructive example of
+St Paul’s method as a teacher of morals, and makes an important
+contribution to evangelical ethics. The common vices are here prohibited
+on specifically Christian grounds. The new nature formed in Christ casts
+them off as alien and dead things; they are the sloughed skin of the old
+life, the discarded dress of the old man who was slain by the cross of
+Christ and lies buried in His grave.
+
+The apostle does not condemn these sins as being contrary to God’s law:
+that is taken for granted. But the legal condemnation was ineffectual
+(Rom. viii. 3). The wrath revealed from heaven against man’s
+unrighteousness had left that unrighteousness unchastened and defiant.
+The revelation of law, approved and echoed by conscience, taught man his
+guilt; it could do no more. All this St Paul assumes; he builds on the
+ground of law and its acknowledged findings.
+
+Nor does the apostle make use of the principles of philosophical ethics,
+which in their general form were familiar to him as to all educated men
+of the day. He says nothing of the rule of nature and right reason, of
+the intrinsic fitness, the harmony and beauty of virtue; nothing of
+expediency as the guide of life, of the inward contentment that comes
+from well-doing, of the wise calculation by which happiness is
+determined and the lower is subordinated to the higher good. St Paul
+nowhere discountenances motives and sanctions of this sort; he
+contravenes none of the lines of argument by which reason is brought to
+the aid of duty, and conscience vindicates itself against passion and
+false self-interest. Indeed, there are maxims in his teaching which
+remind us of each of the two great schools of ethics, and that make room
+in the Christian theory of life both for the philosophy of experience
+and that of intuition. The true theory recognizes, indeed, the
+experimental and evolutional as well as the fixed and intrinsic in
+morality, and supplies their synthesis.
+
+But it is not the apostle’s business to adjust his position to that of
+Stoics and Epicureans, or to unfold a new philosophy; but to teach the
+way of the new life. His Gentile disciples had been untruthful,
+passionate in temper, covetous, licentious: the gospel which he preached
+had turned them from these sins to God; from the same gospel he draws
+the motives and convictions which are to shape their future life and to
+give to the new spirit within them its fit expression. St Paul has no
+quarrel with ethical science, much less with the inspired law of his
+fathers; but both had proved ineffectual to keep men from iniquity, or
+to redeem them fallen into it. Above them both, above all theories and
+all external rules he sets the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.
+
+The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does not lie in its
+detailed precepts. There is not one, it may be, even of the noblest
+maxims of Jesus that had not been uttered by some previous moralist.
+With the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible to collect from
+non-Christian sources--from Greek philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud,
+from Egyptian sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius--a moral
+anthology which thus sifted out of the refuse of antiquity, like
+particles of iron drawn by the magnet, may bear comparison with the
+ethics of Christianity. If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we should
+expect Him to gather into one all that is highest in the thoughts and
+aspirations of mankind. Addressing the Athenians on Mars’ Hill, the
+apostle could appeal to “certain of your own poets” in support of his
+doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The noblest minds in all ages witness
+to Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be, in some sort, of His
+kindred.
+
+      “They are but broken lights of Thee;
+    And Thou, O Lord, art more than they!”
+
+It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the soul with Him
+and with the living God through Him, that forms the vital and
+constitutive factor of Christianity. Here is the secret of its moral
+efficacy. The Christ is the centre root and of the race; He is the
+image of God in which we were made. The life-blood of mankind flowed in
+Him as in its heart, and poured forth from Him as from its fountain in
+sacrifice for the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and restored
+the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand fragments; but He did much
+more than this. While He re-created in His personal character our lost
+manhood, by His death and resurrection He has gained for that ideal a
+transcendent power that seizes upon men and regenerates and transforms
+them. “With unveiled face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord,
+we are changed into the same image, [receiving the glory that we see] as
+from the Lord of the Spirit” (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+There is, therefore, an evangelical ethics, a Christian science of life.
+“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” has a system and method
+of its own. It has a rational solution and explanation to render for our
+moral problems. But its solution is given, as St Paul and as his Master
+loved to give it, in practice, not in theory. It teaches the art of
+living to multitudes to whom the names of ethics and moral science are
+unknown. Those who understand the method of Christ best are commonly too
+busy in its practice to theorize about it. They are physicians tending
+the sick and the dying, not professors in some school of medicine. Yet
+professors have their use, as well as practitioners. The task of
+developing a Christian science of life, of exhibiting the truth of
+revelation in its theoretical bearings and its relations to the thought
+of the age, forms a part of the practical duties of the Church and
+touches deeply the welfare of souls. For other times this work has been
+nobly accomplished by Christian thinkers. Shall we not pray the Lord of
+the harvest that He will thrust forth into this field fit labourers;
+that He will raise up men mighty through God to overthrow every high
+thing that exalts itself against His knowledge, and wise to build up to
+the level of the times the great fabric of Christian ethics and
+discipline?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There emerge in this exhortation four distinct principles, which lay at
+the basis of St Paul’s views of life and conduct.
+
+I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of _the Fatherhood of God_,
+“Be imitators of God,” he writes, “as beloved children.” And in chapter
+iv. 24: “Put on the new man, which _was created after God_.”
+
+Man’s life has its law, for it has its source, in the nature of the
+Eternal. Behind our race-instincts and the laws imposed on us in the
+long struggle for existence, behind those imperatives of practical
+reason involved in the structure of our intelligence, is the presence
+and the active will of Almighty God our heavenly Father. His image we
+see in the Son of man.
+
+Here is the fountainhead of truth, from which the two great streams of
+philosophical thought upon morals have diverged. If man is the child of
+a Being absolutely good, then moral goodness belongs to the essence of
+his nature; it is discoverable in the instincts of his reason and will.
+Were not our nature warped by sin, such reasoning must have commanded
+immediate assent and led to consistent and self-evident results. Again,
+if man is the _child_ of God, the finite of the Infinite, his moral
+character must, presumably, have been in the beginning germinal rather
+than complete, needing--even apart from sin and its
+malformations--development and education, the discipline of a fatherly
+providence, inculcating the lessons and forming the habits which belong
+to his ripe manhood and full-grown stature. Intuitional morals bear
+witness to the God of creation; experimental morals to the God of
+providence and history. The Divine Fatherhood is the keystone of the
+arch in which they meet.
+
+The command to “be imitators of God” makes _personality_ the sovereign
+element in life. If consciousness is a finite and passing phenomenon, if
+God be but a name for the sum of the impersonal laws that regulate the
+universe, for the “stream of tendency” in the worlds, _Father_ and
+_love_ are meaningless terms applied to the Supreme and religion
+dissolves into an impalpable mist. Is the universe governed by personal
+will, or by impersonal force? Is reason, or is gravitation the index to
+the nature of the Absolute? This is the vital question of modern
+thought. The latter is the answer given by a large, if not a
+preponderant body of philosophical opinion in our own day,--as it was
+given, virtually, by the natural philosophers of Greece in the dawn of
+science. Man’s triumphs over nature and the splendour of his discoveries
+in the physical realm bewilder his reason. The scientists, like other
+conquerors, have been intoxicated with victory. The universe, it seemed,
+was about to yield to them its last secrets; they were prepared to
+analyze the human soul and resolve the conception of God into its
+material elements. Religion and conscience, however, prove to be
+intractable subjects in the physical laboratory; they are coming out of
+the crucible unchanged and refined. We are able by this time to take a
+more sober measure of the possibilities of the scientific method, and to
+see what inductive logic and natural selection can do for us, and what
+they cannot do. We can walk in the light of the new revelation, without
+being dazzled by it. Things are less altered than we thought. The old
+boundaries reappear. The spirit resumes its place, and rules a wider
+realm than before. Reason refuses to be the victim of its own success,
+and to immolate itself for the deification of material law. “Forasmuch
+as we are God’s offspring,” we ought not to think, and we will not think
+that the Godhead is like to blind forces and reasonless properties of
+matter. Love, thought, will in us raise our being above the realm of the
+impersonal; and these faculties point us upward to Him from whom they
+came, the Father of the spirits of all flesh.
+
+The great tide of joy, the victorious energy which the sense of God’s
+love brings into the life of a Christian, is evidence of its reality.
+The believer is a child walking in the light of his Father’s
+smile--dependent, ignorant, but the object of an Almighty love. A
+thousand tokens speak to him of the Divine care; his tasks and trials
+are sweetened by the confidence that they are appointed for wise ends
+beyond his present knowledge. To another in that same house there is no
+heavenly Father, no unseen hand that guides, no gleam of a brighter and
+purer day lighting up its dull chambers. There are human companions,
+weak, erring and wearying like oneself. There is work to do, with the
+night coming swiftly; and the brave heart girds itself to duty, finding
+in the service of man its motive and employment--but, alas, with how
+poor success and how faint a hope!
+
+It is not the loss of strength for human service, nor the dying out of
+joy which unbelief entails, that is its chief calamity; but the
+unbelief itself. The sun in the soul’s heaven is put out. The personal
+relationship to the Supreme which gave dignity and worth to our
+individual being, which imparted sacredness and enduring power to all
+other ties, is destroyed. The heart is orphaned; the temple of the
+spirit desolate. The mainspring of life is broken.
+
+    “Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth!
+              Hide not Thy face from me,
+      Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit!”
+
+II. _The solidarity of mankind in Christ_ furnishes the apostle with a
+powerful lever for raising the ethical standard of his readers. The
+thought that “we are members one of another” forbids deceit. That he may
+“have whereof to give to the needy” is the purpose that provokes the
+thief to industry. The desire to “give grace” to the hearers and to
+“build them up” in truth and goodness imparts seriousness and elevation
+to social intercourse. The irritations and injuries we inflict on each
+other, with or without purpose, furnish occasion for us to “be kind one
+to another, good-hearted, _forgiving yourselves_”--for this is the
+expression the apostle uses in chapter iv. 32, and in Colossians iii.
+13. Self is so merged in the community, that in dealing censure or
+forgiveness to an offending brother the Christian man feels as though he
+were dealing with himself--as though it were the hand that forgave the
+foot for tripping, or the ear that pardoned some blunder of the eye.
+
+_Showing-grace_ is what the apostle literally says here, speaking both
+of human and Divine forgiveness.[131] In this lies the charm and power
+of true forgiveness. The forgiver after the order of grace does not
+pardon like a judge moved by magnanimity or pity for transgressors, but
+in love to his own kind and desire for their amendment. He identifies
+himself with the wrong-doer, weighs his temptation and all that drew him
+into error. Such forgiveness, while it never ignores the wrong, admits
+every qualifying circumstance and just extenuation. This is the kind of
+pardon that touches the sinner’s heart; for it goes to the heart of the
+sin, isolating it from all other feelings and conditions that are not
+sin; it takes the wrong upon itself in understanding and perception; it
+puts its finger upon the aching, festering spot where the criminality
+lies and applies to that its healing balm.
+
+“Even as God in Christ forgave you.” And how did God forgive? Not by a
+grand imperial decree, as of some monarch too exalted to resent the
+injuries of men or to inquire into their futile proceedings. Had such
+forgiveness been possible to Divine justice, it could have wrought in us
+no real salvation. Our forgiveness is that of God in Christ. The
+Forgiver has sat down by the prisoner’s side, has felt his misery and
+the force of his temptations, and in everything but the actual sin has
+made Himself one with the sinner, even to bearing the extreme penalty of
+his guilt. In the act of making sacrifice, Jesus prayed for those that
+slew Him: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!” This
+intercession breathed the spirit of the new forgiveness. There is a real
+remission of sins, a release granted justly and upon due satisfaction;
+but it is the act of justice charged with love, of a justice as tender
+and considerate as it is strong, and which eagerly takes account of all
+that bespeaks in the offender a possibility of better things. It is a
+forgiveness that does justice to the humanity as well as the criminality
+in the sinner.
+
+To proclaim by word and deed this forgiveness of God to the sinful world
+is the vocation of the Church. And where she does thus declare it, by
+whatever means or ministry, Christ’s promise to her is verified:
+“Whose-soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them.” We may so
+reconcile men to ourselves, as to bring them back to God. Has some one
+done you a wrong? there is your opportunity of saving a soul from death
+and hiding a multitude of sins. Thus Christ used the great wrong we all
+did Him. It is your privilege to show the wrong-doer that you and he are
+made one by the blood of Christ.
+
+“Walk in love,” St Paul says, “as the Christ also loved us and gave up
+Himself for us a sacrifice.” When the apostle writes _the Christ_, he
+points us along the whole line of the revelation of the cross.[132] We
+think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness of such love as
+this. Christ’s was a representative and exemplary love, with its
+forerunners and its followers all walking in one path. “The Christ loved
+_and gave_”; for love that does not give, that prompts to no effort and
+puts itself to no sacrifice, is but a luxury of the heart,--useless and
+even selfish. And He “gave up _Himself_”--the only gift that could
+suffice. The rich who bestow many gifts in furtherance of humanitarian
+and religious work and still do not bestow themselves, their sympathetic
+thought, their presence and personal aid, are withholding the best
+thing, the one thing required to make their bounties efficacious. In
+what we give and forgive, it is the accent of sympathy, the giving of
+the heart with it that adds grace to the act. “Though I dole out all my
+goods, though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it
+profiteth me nothing.” We do a thousand things to serve and benefit our
+fellow-men, and yet evade the real sacrifice,--which is simply to love
+them.
+
+In studying this epistle, we have felt increasingly that the Church is
+the centre of humanity. The love born and nourished in the household of
+faith goes out into the world with a universal mission. The solidarity
+of moral interests that is realized there, embraces all the kindreds of
+the earth. The incarnation of Christ knits all flesh into one redeemed
+family. The continents and races of mankind are members one of another,
+with Jesus Christ for head. We are brothers and sisters of humanity: He
+our elder brother, and God our common Father in heaven,--His Father and
+ours.
+
+Auguste Comte writes in his _System of Positive Polity_: “The promises
+of supernatural religion appealed exclusively to man’s selfish
+instincts.... The sympathetic instincts found no place in the
+theological synthesis.”[133] It would be impossible to affirm anything
+more completely at variance with the truth, anything more absolutely
+opposed to the doctrine of Christ and the theological synthesis of the
+apostles. And yet it was upon this ground that the great French thinker
+renounced Christianity, proposing his new religion of humanity as a
+substitute for a selfish and effete supernaturalism! Why did he not go
+to the New Testament itself to find out what Christianity means? “To
+combine permanently concert with independence,” Comte excellently says,
+“is the capital problem of society, a problem which religion alone can
+solve, by love primarily, then by faith on a basis of love.”[134]
+Precisely so; and this is the solution offered by Jesus Christ. His
+self-sacrificing love is the basis on which our faith rests; and that
+faith works by love in all those who truly possess it. This is the
+evangelical theory. The morale of the Church, it is true, has fallen
+shamefully below its doctrine; but this doctrine is, after all, the one
+fruitful and progressive moral force in the world; and it is certain to
+be carried into effect.
+
+In the darkest hour of Israel’s oppression and of international hate,
+one of her great prophets thus described the triumph of supernatural
+religion: “In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria,
+a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that the LORD of hosts hath
+blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work
+of my hands, and Israel my inheritance” (Isai. xix. 24, 25). This is our
+programme still.
+
+III. Another of St Paul’s ruling ideas lying at the basis of Christian
+ethics, is his conception of _man’s future destiny_. The apostle warns
+his readers that they “grieve not the Holy Spirit, in whom they were
+sealed till the day of redemption.” He tells them that “the impure and
+the covetous have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”
+
+There is thus disclosed a world beyond the world, a life growing out of
+life, an eternal and invisible kingdom of whose possession the Spirit
+that lives in Christian men is the earnest and firstfruits. This kingdom
+is the joint inheritance of the sons of God, brethren with Christ and in
+Christ, who are conformed to His image and found worthy to “stand before
+the Son of man.” Those are excluded from the inheritance, who by their
+moral nature are alien to it: “Without are dogs, sorcerers,
+whoremongers, idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie.”
+This revelation has had a most powerful influence on the progress of
+ethics. It has given a momentous importance to individual conduct, a new
+grandeur to the moral issues of the present life. “Man’s life,” viewed
+in the light of the Christian gospel, “has duties that are alone great,
+that go up to Heaven, and down to Hell.” The tangled skein is at last to
+be unravelled, the mysterious problem of mortal life will have its
+solution at the judgement-seat of Jesus Christ.
+
+It is true that the wicked flourish and spread themselves like green
+trees in the sunshine; and the covetous boast of their hearts’ desire.
+To see this was the trial of ancient faith; and the good man had to
+charge himself constantly that he should not fret because of evil-doers.
+It required an heroic faith to believe in God’s kingdom and
+righteousness, when the visible course of things made all against them,
+and there was no clear light beyond. God’s saints had to learn first
+that God is Himself the sufficient good, and must be trusted to do
+right. But this was the faith of defence rather than of victory,--of
+endurance, not enthusiasm. In the knowledge of Christ’s victory over
+death and entrance on our behalf into the heavenly world, “in hope of
+life eternal which God who cannot lie hath promised,” men have fought
+against their own sins, have struggled for the right and spent
+themselves to save their fellows with a vigour and success never
+witnessed before, and in numbers far exceeding those that all other
+creeds and systems have enlisted in the holy cause of humanity.
+
+Human reason had guessed and hope had dreamed of the soul’s
+immortality. Christianity gives this hope certainty, and adds to it the
+assurance of the resurrection of the body. Man’s entire nature is thus
+redeemed. Chastity takes its due place amongst the virtues, and becomes
+the mark of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan life. “The body is
+not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God
+who raised up the Lord Jesus, will raise us also through His power. Your
+bodies are limbs of Christ, ... a temple of the Holy Spirit which you
+have from God.... Glorify God in your body.” So St Paul exhorts the
+Christians of Corinth (1 Ep. vi.), living in the centre and shrine of
+heathen vice. This doctrine of the sanctity of the body has been the
+salvation of the family. It has saved civilization from perishing
+through sexual corruption, and is still our chief defence against this
+fearful evil.
+
+Our bodily dress, we now learn, is one with the spirit that it infolds.
+We shall lay it aside only to resume it,--transfigured, but with a form
+and impress continuous with its present being. This identical self, the
+same both in its outward and inward personality, will appear before the
+tribunal of Christ, that it may “receive the things done in the body.”
+This announcement gives reasonableness and distinctness to the
+expectation of future judgement. The judgement assumes, with its solemn
+grandeur, a matter-of-fact reality, an immediate bearing on the daily
+conduct of life, which lends a powerful reinforcement to the conscience,
+while it supplies a fitting and glorious conclusion to our course as
+moral beings.
+
+IV. Finally, _the atonement of the cross_ stamps its own character and
+spirit on the entire ethics of Christianity. The Fatherhood of God, the
+unity and solidarity of mankind, the issues of eternal life or death
+awaiting us in the unseen world--all the great factors and fundamentals
+of revealed religion gather about the cross of Christ; they lend to it
+their august significance, and gain from it new import and
+impressiveness.
+
+The fact that Christ “gave Himself up for us an offering and sacrifice
+to God”--gave Himself, as it is put elsewhere, “for our sins”--throws an
+awful light upon the nature of human transgression. The blood spilt in
+the strife with our sin and shed to wash out its stain, reveals its
+foulness and malignity. All that inspired men had taught, that good men
+had believed and felt and penitent men confessed in regard to the evil
+of human sin, is more than verified by the sacrifice which the Holy One
+of God has undergone in order to put it away. It was felt that “the
+blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins,” that the
+sacrifices man could offer for himself, or the creatures on his behalf,
+were ineffectual; the guilt was too real to be expiated in this fashion,
+the wound too deep to be healed by those poor appliances. But who had
+suspected that such a remedy as this was needed, and forthcoming? How
+deep the resentment of eternal Justice against the transgressions of
+men, if the blood of God’s own Son alone could make propitiation! How
+rank the offence against the Divine holiness, if to purge its
+abomination the vessel containing the most sweet fragrance of His
+sinless nature must be broken! What tears of contrition, what cleansing
+fires of hate against our own sins, what scorn of their baseness, what
+stern resolves against them are awakened by the sight of the cross of
+our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+This negative side of the ethical bearing of Christ’s sacrifice is
+implied in the words of the apostle in the second verse, and in the
+contrast indicated between its sweet savour and those unclean things
+whose very names it should banish from our midst (ver. 3). On its
+positive effects--the love and self-devotion it inspires, the conformity
+of our lives to its example--we have dwelt already. Let us add, however,
+that the sacrifice of Christ demands from us, above all, _devotion to
+Christ Himself_. Our first duty as Christians is to love Christ, to
+serve and follow Christ. “He died for all,” says the apostle, “that the
+living should live no longer to themselves, but to Him that died for
+them and rose again.” When Mary of Bethany poured on the Saviour’s head
+her box of precious ointment, the Master accepted the tribute and
+approved the act; and the poor have been gainers by it a thousand times
+the pence which Judas deemed wasted on the head he was watching to
+betray. There is no conflict between the claims of Christ and those of
+philanthropy, between the needs of His worship and the needs of the
+destitute and suffering in our streets. Every new subject won to the
+kingdom of Christ is another helper won for His poor. Every act of love
+rendered to Him deepens the channel of sympathy by which relief and
+blessing come to sorrowful humanity.
+
+Let the gospel of Christ’s kingdom be preached in word and deed to all
+nations, let the love of Christ be brought to bear upon the great masses
+of mankind, and the time of the world’s salvation will be come. Its sin
+will be hated, forsaken, forgiven. Its social evils will be banished;
+its weapons of war turned to ploughshares and pruning hooks. Its
+scattered races and nations will be reunited in the obedience of faith,
+and formed into one Christian confederacy and commonwealth of the
+peoples, a peaceful kingdom of the Son of God’s love.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[131] Χαριζόμενοι ἐαυτοῖς, καθὼς καὶ ὁ Θεὸς ἐν Χριστῷ ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν. So
+in Col. ii. 13, iii. 13; Rom. viii. 32; 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10; Luke vii. 42,
+43.
+
+[132] Comp. pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[133] Vol. iv., pp. 22, 41 (Eng. Trans.).
+
+[134] Comte, vol. iv., p. 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+_THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT._
+
+    “Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness,
+    but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the
+    fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
+    proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship
+    with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them.
+    For the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even
+    to speak of; but all things when they are reproved are made manifest
+    by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light.
+    Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    ‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;
+      And the Christ shall shine upon thee.’”
+
+    EPH. v. 7-14.
+
+
+The contrast between the Christian and heathen way of life is now,
+finally, to be set forth under St Paul’s familiar figure of _the light
+and the darkness_. He bids his Gentile readers not to be
+“joint-partakers with them”--with the sons of disobedience upon whom
+God’s wrath is coming (ver. 6)--for he has hailed them already, in
+chapter iii. 6, as “joint-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
+through the gospel.” “Once” indeed they shared in the lot of the
+disobedient; but for them the darkness has past, and the true light now
+shineth.
+
+In wrath or promise, in hope of life eternal or in the fearful looking
+for of judgement they, and we, must partake. This future participation
+depends upon present character. “Do not,” the apostle entreats, “cast
+in your lot again with the unclean and covetous. Their ways you have
+renounced, and their doom you have exchanged for the heritage of the
+saints. Let no vain words deceive you into supposing that you may keep
+your new inheritance, and yet return to your old sins. Show yourselves
+worthy of your calling. Walk as children of the light, and you will
+possess the eternal kingdom.” Each man carries with him into the next
+state of being the entail of his past life. That heritage depends on his
+own choice; yet not upon his individual will working by itself, but on
+the grace and will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted or
+rejected. He has light: he must walk in it; and he will reach the realm
+of light. Thus the apostle, in verses 7 and 8, concludes his warning
+against relapse into heathen sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 delineate _the character of the children of the light_:
+verses 11-14 set forth _their influence upon the surrounding darkness_.
+Into these two divisions the exposition of this paragraph naturally
+falls.
+
+I. “The fruit _of the light_” (not _of the Spirit_) is the true text of
+verse 9, as it stands in the older Greek copies, Versions, and Fathers.
+Calvin showed his judgement and independence in preferring this reading
+to that of the received Greek text. Similarly Bengel,[135] and most of
+the later critics. The sentence is parenthetical, and contains a
+singular and instructive figure. It is one of those sparks from the
+anvil, in which great writers not unfrequently give us their finest
+utterances,--sentences that get a peculiar point from the eagerness with
+which they are struck off in the heat and clash of thought, as the mind
+reaches forward to some thought lying beyond. The clause is an epitome,
+in five words, of Christian virtue, whose qualities, origin and method
+are all defined. It sums up exquisitely the moral teaching of the
+epistle. Galatians v. 22, 23 (_the fruit of the Spirit_) and Philippians
+iv. 8 (_Whatsoever things are true_, etc.) are parallel to this passage,
+as Pauline definitions, equally perfect, of the virtues of a Christian
+man. This has the advantage of the others in brevity and epigrammatic
+point.
+
+“You are light in the Lord,” the apostle said; “walk as children of the
+light.” But his readers might ask: “What does this mean? It is poetry:
+let us have it translated into plain prose. How shall we walk as
+children of the light? Show us the path.”--“I will tell you,” the
+apostle answers: “the fruit of the light is in all goodness and
+righteousness and truth. Walk in these ways; let your life bear this
+fruit; and you will be true children of the light of God. So living, you
+will find out what it is that pleases God, and how joyful a thing it is
+to please Him (ver. 10). Your life will then be free from all complicity
+with the works of darkness. It will shine with a brightness clear and
+penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness and transform
+the darkness itself. It will speak with a voice that all must hear,
+bidding them awake from the sleep of sin to see in Christ their light of
+life.” Such is the setting in which this delightful definition stands.
+
+But it is more than a definition. While this sentence declares what
+Christian virtue is, it signifies also whence it comes, how it is
+generated and maintained. It asserts the connexion that exists between
+Christian character and Christian faith. The fruit cannot be grown
+without the tree, any more than the tree can grow soundly without
+yielding its proper fruit. _Right is the fruit of light._
+
+The principle that religion is the basis of moral virtue, is one that
+many moralists disputed in St Paul’s time; and it has fallen into some
+discredit in our own. In philosophical theory, and to a large extent in
+popular maxim and belief, it is assumed that faith and morals, character
+and creed, are not only distinct but independent things and that there
+is no necessary connexion between the two. Christians are themselves to
+blame for this fallacy, through the discrepancy not seldom visible
+between their creed and life. Our narrowness of view and the harshness
+of our ethical judgements have helped to foster this grave error.
+
+Great Christian teachers have spoken of the virtues of the heathen as
+“splendid sins.” But Christ and His apostles never said so. He said:
+“Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.” And they said: “In
+every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted
+of Him.” The Christian creed has no jealousy in regard to human
+excellence. “Whatsoever things are true and honourable and just and
+pure,” wherever and in whomsoever they are found, our faith honours and
+delights in them, and accepts them to the utmost of their worth. But
+then it claims them all for its own,--as the fruit of the one “true
+light which lighteth every man.” Wherever this fruit appears, we know
+that that light has been, though its ways are past finding out. Through
+secret crevices, by subtle refractions and multiplied reflections, the
+true light reaches many a life lying far outside its visible course.
+
+All goodness has one source; for, said Jesus, “there is none good but
+one, that is God.” The channels may be tortuous, obstructed and obscure:
+the stream is always one. There is nothing more touching, and nothing
+more encouraging to our faith in God’s universal love and His will that
+all men should be saved, than to see, as we do sometimes under
+conditions most adverse and in spots the most unlikely, features of
+moral beauty and Christlike goodness appearing like springs in the
+desert or flowers blooming in Alpine snows,--signs of the universal
+light,
+
+    “Which yet in the absolutest drench of dark
+    Ne’er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
+    To the despair of hell!”
+
+The action of God’s grace in Christ is by no means limited to the sphere
+of its recognized working. All the more earnestly on this account do we
+vindicate this grace against those who deny its necessity or the
+permanence of its moral influence. The fruit, in the main, they approve.
+But they would cut down the plant from which it came; they seek to
+quench the light under which it grew. They are like men who should take
+you to some lofty tree that has flourished for ages rooted in the rock,
+and who should say: “See how wide its branches and how stout its stem,
+how firmly it stands upon its native soil! Let us cut it loose from
+those dark and ugly roots--that mysterious theology, those superstitions
+of the past. The human mind has outgrown them. Virtue can support itself
+on its own proper basis. It is time to assert the dignity of man, and to
+proclaim the independence of morality.” If these men have their way, and
+if European society renounces the authority of God, how quickly will
+that tree of the Lord’s planting, the vast growth of Christian virtue
+and beneficence, wither to its topmost bough; and the next storm will
+bring it to the ground, with all its stately strength and summer beauty.
+Unbelief in God lays the axe at the root of human society. Our life--the
+life of individuals, of families and nations--is rooted in the unseen
+and hid with Christ in God. Thence it draws its vitality and virtue,
+through those spiritual fibres by which we are linked to God and lay
+hold on eternal life. Since Christ Jesus our forerunner entered the
+heavenly places, the anchor of human hopes has been cast within the
+veil; if that anchor drags, there is no other that will hold. The rocks
+are plain to see on which our richly freighted ship of life will
+founder. Without the religion of Jesus Christ, our civilization is not
+worth a hundred years’ purchase.
+
+Moral effects do not follow upon their causes as rapidly as physical
+effects: they follow as certainly. We live largely upon the accumulated
+ethical capital of our forefathers. When that is spent, we are left to
+our intrinsic poverty of soul, to our faithlessness and feebleness. The
+scepticism of one generation bears fruit in the immorality of the next,
+or the next after that; the unbelief and cynicism of the teacher in the
+vice of his disciple. Such fruit of blasting and mildew the decay of
+faith has never failed to bear.
+
+The corresponding truth will be at once acknowledged. There is no real
+religion without virtue. If the godly man is not a good man, if he is
+not a sincere and pure-hearted man, “that man’s religion is vain”: no
+matter what his professions or his emotions, no matter what his
+services to the Church. He is one of those to whom Jesus Christ will
+say: “I know you not; depart from me, all ye that work iniquity.” There
+is a flaw in him somewhere, a rift within the lute that spoils all its
+music. “A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit.”
+
+In Christ’s garden there forms in clustered beauty and perfectness the
+ripe growth of virtue, which in the sunshine of His love and under the
+freshening breath of His Spirit sends forth its spices and “yieldeth its
+fruit every month.” In it there abide _goodness_, _righteousness_,
+_truth_--these three; and who shall say which of them is greatest?
+
+I. _Goodness_ stands first, as the most visible and obvious form of
+Christian excellence,--that which every one looks for in a religious
+man, and which every one admires when it is to be seen. Righteousness,
+regarded by itself, is not so readily appreciated. There is something
+austere and forbidding in it. “For a righteous man scarcely would one
+die”--you respect, even revere him; but you do not love him: “but for
+the good man peradventure, one would even dare to die.”
+
+Christian goodness is the sanctification of the heart and its
+affections, renewed and governed by the love of God in Christ. It is,
+notwithstanding, but seldom inculcated in the New Testament;[136]
+because it is referred to its spring and principle in _love_. Goodness
+is love embodied. Now love, as the Christian knows it, is of God. “We
+love,” says the apostle John, “because He first loved us.... He loved
+us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” This is the
+faith that makes good men,--the best the world has ever known, the best
+that it holds now. Vanity, selfishness, evil temper and desire are
+shamed and burnt out of the soul by the holy fire of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ our Lord. In the warm, tender light of the cross the heart
+is softened and cleansed, and expanded to the widest charity. It becomes
+the home of all generous instincts and pure affections. So “the fruit of
+the light is in all goodness.”
+
+2. And _righteousness_.
+
+This second and central definition applies a searching test to all
+spurious forms of goodness, superficial or sentimental,--to the goodness
+of mere good manners, or good nature. The principle of righteousness,
+fully understood, includes everything in moral worth, and is often used
+to denote in one word the entire fruit of God’s grace in man. For
+righteousness is the sanctification of the conscience. It is loyalty to
+God’s holy and perfect law. It is no mere outward keeping of formal
+rules, such as the legal righteousness of Judaism, no submission to
+necessity or calculation of advantages: it is a love of the law in a
+man’s inmost spirit; it is the quality of a heart one with that law,
+reconciled to it as it is reconciled to God Himself in Jesus Christ.
+
+At the bottom, therefore, righteousness and goodness are one. Each is
+the counterface and complement of the other. Righteousness is to
+goodness as the strong backbone of principle, the firm hand and the
+vigorous grasp of duty, the steadfast foot that plants itself on the
+eternal ground of the right and true and stands against a world’s
+assault. Goodness without righteousness is a weak and fitful sentiment:
+righteousness without goodness is a dead formality. He cannot love God
+or his neighbour truly, who does not love God’s law; and he knows
+nothing aright of that law, who does not know that it is the law of
+love.
+
+This also, this above all is “the fruit of the light.” Two watchwords we
+have from the lips of Jesus, two mottoes of His own life and
+mission,--the one given at the end, the other at the beginning of His
+course: “Greater _love_ hath none than this, that one lay down his life
+for his friends”; and, “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all
+_righteousness_.” By a double flame was He consumed a sacrifice upon the
+cross,--by the passion of His zeal for God’s righteousness, and by the
+passion of His pity for mankind. In that twofold light we see light, and
+become “light in the Lord.” Therefore the fruit of the light, the moral
+product of a true faith in the gospel, is in all _goodness and
+righteousness_.
+
+There is a danger of merging the latter in the former of these
+attributes. Evangelical piety is credited with an excess of the
+sentimental and emotional disposition, cultivated at the expense of the
+more sterling elements of character. High principle, scrupulous honour,
+stern fidelity to duty are no less essential to the image of Christ in
+the soul than are warm feeling and zealous devotion to His service.
+_Jesus Christ the righteous_, as His apostles loved to call Him, is the
+pattern of a manly faith, up to which we must grow in all things. “_He_
+is the propitiation for our sins.” Never was there an act of such
+unswerving integrity and absolute loyalty to the law of right as the
+sacrifice of Calvary. God forbid that we should magnify love at the
+expense of law, or make good feeling a substitute for duty.
+
+3. _Truth_ comes last in this enumeration, for it signifies the inward
+reality and depth of the other two.
+
+Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of the lips. Heathen
+honesty goes as far as this. Men of the world expect as much from each
+other, and brand the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires a
+reality behind itself. The acted falsehood is excluded, the hinted and
+intended lie no less than that expressly uttered. Beyond all this, it is
+the truth of the man that God requires--speech, action, thought, all
+consistent, harmonious and transparent, with the light of God’s truth
+shining through them. Truth is the harmony of the inward and the
+outward, the correspondence of what the man is in himself with that
+which he appears and wishes to appear to be.
+
+Now, it is only children of the light, only men thoroughly good and
+upright who can, in this strict sense, be men of truth. So long as any
+malice or iniquity is left in our nature, we have something to conceal.
+We cannot afford to be sincere. We are compelled to pay, by very shame,
+the degrading tribute which vice renders to virtue, the homage of
+hypocrisy. But find a man whose intellect, whose heart and will, tried
+at whatever point, ring sound and true, in whom there is no affectation,
+no make-believe, no pretence or exaggeration, no discrepancy, no discord
+in the music of his life and thought, “an Israelite indeed, in whom is
+no guile”--there is a saint for you, and a man of God; there is one whom
+you may “grapple to your soul with hoops of steel.”
+
+Truth is the hall-mark of entire sanctification; it is the highest and
+rarest attainment of the Christian life. It is equally the charm of an
+innocent, unspoilt childhood, and of a ripe and purified old age. The
+apostle John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” is the most perfect
+embodiment, after his Master, of this consummating grace. In him
+righteousness and love were blended in the translucence of an utter
+simplicity and truth.
+
+We must beware of giving a subjective and merely personal aspect to this
+divine quality. While truth is the unity of the outward and inward, of
+heart and act and word in the man, it is at the same time the agreement
+of the man with the reality of things as they exist in God. The former
+kind of truth rests upon the latter; the subjective upon the objective
+order. The truth of God makes us true. We magnify our own sincerity,
+until it becomes vitiated and pretentious. In our eagerness to realize
+and express our own convictions, we give too little pains to form them
+upon a sound basis; we make a great virtue of _speaking out_ what is in
+our hearts, but take small heed of what _comes in_ to the heart, and
+speak out of a loose self-confidence and idolatry of our own opinions.
+So the Pharisees were true, who called Christ an impostor. So every
+careless slanderer, and scandalmonger credulous of evil, who believes
+the lies he propagates. “Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in
+which every one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he
+thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the Palace of Truth.
+A palace of veracity, if you will; but no temple of the truth. A place
+where each one would be at liberty to utter his own crude unrealities,
+to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half-formed, hasty judgements;
+where the depraved ear would reckon discord harmony, and the depraved
+eye mistake colour; the depraved moral taste take Herod or Tiberius for
+a king, and shout beneath the Redeemer’s cross, ‘Himself He cannot
+save!’ A temple of the truth? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious
+falsehoods, a Babel of confused sounds, in which egotism would rival
+egotism, and truth would be each man’s own lie.”[137] In the pride of
+our veracity, we miss the verity of things; we are true only to our
+blind self, false to the light of God. “Every one that is of the truth
+heareth my voice:” so said He who was Truth incarnate, making His word a
+law for all true men.
+
+“In _all_ goodness and righteousness and truth,” says the apostle. Let
+us seek them all. We are apt to become specialists in virtue, as in
+other departments of life. Men will endeavour even to compensate by
+extreme efforts in one direction for deficiencies in some other
+direction, which they scarcely desire to make good. So they grow out of
+shape, into oddities and moral malformations. There is a want of balance
+and of finish about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who
+have long and steadily pursued the way of faith. We have sweetness
+without strength, and strength without gentleness, and truth spoken
+without love, and words of passionate zeal without accuracy and
+heedfulness.
+
+All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to the cause of our
+religion.
+
+    “It is the little rift within the lute
+    That by-and-by will make the music mute,
+      And ever widening slowly silence all;
+    The little rift within the lover’s lute,
+    Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
+      That rotting inward slowly moulders all.”
+
+Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us count
+no wrong a trifle. Let us never imagine that our defects in one kind
+will be atoned for by excellencies in another. Our friends may say
+this, in charity, for us; it is a fatal thing when a man begins to say
+so to himself. “May the God of peace sanctify you fully. May your whole
+spirit, soul, and body in blameless integrity be preserved to the coming
+of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. v. 23).
+
+II. The _effect_ upon surrounding darkness of the light of God in
+Christian lives is described in verses 11-14, in words which it remains
+for us briefly to examine.
+
+Verse 12 distinguishes “the things secretly done” by the Gentiles, “of
+which it is a shame even to speak,” from the open and manifest forms of
+evil in which they invite their Christian neighbours to join (ver. 11).
+Instead of doing this and “having fellowship with the unfruitful works
+of darkness,” they must “rather reprove them.” Silent absence, or
+abstinence is not enough. Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all
+hazards be rebuked. On the other hand, St Paul does not warrant
+Christians in prying into the hidden sins of the world around them and
+playing the moral detective. Publicity is not a remedy for all evils,
+but a great aggravation of some, and the surest means of disseminating
+them. “It is a shame”--a disgrace to our common nature, and a grievous
+peril to the young and innocent--to fill the public prints with the
+nauseous details of crime and to taint the air with its putridities.
+
+“But all things,” the apostle says--whether it be those open works of
+darkness, profitless of good, which expose themselves to direct
+conviction, or the depths of Satan that hide their infamy from the light
+of day--“all things being reproved by the light, are made manifest”
+(ver. 13). The fruit of the light convicts the unfruitful works of
+darkness. The daily life of a Christian man amongst men of the world is
+a perpetual reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word is
+spoken, of which the reprover never guesses, as well as against open and
+unblushing vices.
+
+“This is the condemnation,” said Jesus, “that light is come into the
+world.” And this condemnation every one who walks in Christ’s steps, and
+breathes His Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on,
+more frequently in silence than by spoken argument. Our unconscious and
+spontaneous influence is the most real and effective part of it. Life is
+the light of men--words only as the index of the life from which they
+spring. Just so far as our lives touch the conscience of others and
+reveal the difference between darkness and light, so far do we hold
+forth the word of life and carry on the Holy Spirit’s work in convincing
+the world of sin. “Let your light so shine.”
+
+This manifestation leads to a transformation: “For everything that is
+made manifest _is light_” (ver. 13). “You are light in the Lord,” St
+Paul says to his converted Gentile readers,--you who were “once
+darkness,” once wandering in the lusts and pleasures of the heathen
+around you, without hope and without God. The light of the gospel
+disclosed, and then dispelled the darkness of that former time; and so
+it may be with your still heathen kindred, through the light you bring
+to them. So it will be with the night of sin that is spread over the
+world. The light which shines upon sin-laden and sorrowful hearts,
+shines on them to change them into its own nature. _The manifested is
+light_: in other words, if men can be made to see the true nature of
+their sin, they will forsake it. If the light can but penetrate their
+conscience, it will save them. “Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    Awake, O sleeper; and arise from out of the dead!
+      And the Christ shall dawn upon thee!”
+
+The speaker of this verse can be no other than God, or the Spirit of God
+in Scripture. The sentence is no mere quotation. It re-utters, in the
+style of Mary’s or Zechariah’s song, the promise of the Old Covenant
+from the lips of the New. It gathers up the import of the prophecies
+concerning the salvation of Christ, as they sounded in the apostle’s
+ears and as he conveyed them to the world. Isaiah lx. 1-3 supplies the
+basis of our passage, where the prophet awakens Zion from the sleep of
+the Exile and bids her shine once more in the glory of her God and show
+forth His light to the nations: “Arise,” he cries, “shine, for thy light
+is come!” There are echoes in the verse, besides, of Isaiah li. 17,
+xxvi. 19; perhaps even of Jonah i. 6: “What meanest thou, O sleeper?
+arise, and call upon thy God!” We seem to have here, as in chapter iv.
+4-6, a snatch of the earliest Christian hymns. The lines are a free
+paraphrase from the Old Testament, formed by weaving together Messianic
+passages--belonging to such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in the
+Pauline Churches. Certainly those Churches did not wait until the second
+century to compose their hymns and spiritual songs (comp. ver. 19). Our
+Lord’s sublime announcement (John v. 25), already verified, that “the
+hour had come when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God, and
+they that heard should live,” gave the key to the prophetic sayings
+which promised through Israel the light of life to all nations.
+
+With this song on her lips the Church went forth, clad in the armour of
+light, strong in the joy of salvation; and darkness and the works of
+darkness fled before her.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[135] Mr. Wesley adopted this and other emendations from Bengel, “that
+great light of the Christian world,” in the translation accompanying his
+_Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament_. He there supplied the
+Methodist preachers with many of the most valuable improvements made in
+the Revised Version, a hundred years before the time.
+
+[136] The word belongs to Paul’s vocabulary; it is found besides in 2
+Thess. i. 11; Rom. xv. 14; and Gal. v. 22. See the Commentary on this
+last epistle in the _Expositor’s Bible_, pp. 384, 385.
+
+[137] F. W. Robertson: _Sermons_ (First Series), xix., on “The Kingdom
+of the Truth.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+_THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT._
+
+    “Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
+    redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not
+    foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
+
+    “And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with
+    the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and
+    spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the
+    Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord
+    Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to
+    another in the fear of Christ.”--EPH. v. 15-21.
+
+
+Very solemnly did the moral homily to the Asian Christians begin in
+chapter iv. 17: “This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you
+must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk.” So much has now been said and
+testified in the intervening paragraphs, by way both of dehortation and
+exhortation. Here the apostle pauses; and casting his eye over the whole
+pathway of life he has marked out in this discourse, he bids his
+readers: “Look then carefully how you walk. Show that you are not fools,
+but wise to observe your steps and to seize your opportunities in these
+evil times,--days so perilous that you need your best wisdom and
+knowledge of God’s will to save you from fatal stumbling.”
+
+So far St Paul’s renewed exhortation, in verses 15-17, inculcates care
+and wary discretion,--the skill that in the strategy of life finds its
+vantage in unequal ground, that makes opposing winds help forward the
+seafarer. In this sober wisdom it is likely the Asian Christians were
+deficient. In many ways, both directly and indirectly, the need of
+increased thoughtfulness on the readers’ part has been indicated. But
+there is another side to the Christian nature: it has its moods of
+exhilaration, as well as of caution and reflection; ardent emotion,
+eager speech and exultant song are things proper to a high religious
+life. For these the apostle makes room in verses 18-20, while the three
+foregoing verses enjoin the circumspection and vigilance that become the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus.
+
+A striking contrast thus arises between the _sobriety_ and the
+_excitement_ that mark the life of grace. We see with what strictness we
+must watch over ourselves, and guard the character and interests of the
+Church; and with what joyousness and holy freedom we may take our part
+in its communion. Temperament and constitution modify these injunctions
+in their personal application. The Holy Spirit does not enable us all to
+speak with equal fervour and freedom, nor to sing with the same
+tunefulness. His power operates in the limbs of Christ’s body “according
+to the measure of each single part.” But the self-same Spirit works in
+both these contrasted ways,--in the sanguine and the melancholic
+disposition, in the demonstrative and in the reserved, in the quick play
+of fancy and the brightness and impulsiveness of youth no less than in
+the sober gait and solid sense of riper age. Let us see how the two
+opposite aspects of Christian experience are set out in the apostle’s
+words.
+
+I. First of all, upon the one side, _heedfulness_ is enjoined. The
+children of light must use the light to see their way. To “stumble at
+noonday” is a proof of folly or blindness. So misusing our light, we
+shall quickly lose it and return to the paths of darkness.
+
+According to the preferable (Revised) order of the words, the qualifying
+adverb “carefully” belongs to the “look,” not to the “walk.” The
+circumspect _look_ precedes the wise step. The spot is marked on which
+the foot is to be planted; the eye ranges right and left and takes in
+the bearings of the new position, forecasting its possibilities. “Look
+before you leap,” our sage proverb says. According to the carefulness of
+the look, the success of the leap is likely to be.
+
+There is no word in the epistle more apposite than this to
+
+                        “our day
+    Of haste, half-work, and disarray.”
+
+We are too restless to think, too impatient to learn. Everything is
+sacrificed to speed. The telegraph and the daily newspaper symbolize the
+age. The public ear loves to be caught quickly and with new sensations:
+a premium is set on carelessness and hurry. Earnest men, eager for the
+triumph of a good cause, push forward with unsifted statements and
+unweighed denunciations, that discredit Christian advocacy and wound the
+cause of truth and charity. Time, thus wronged and driven beyond her
+pace, has her revenge; she deals hardly with these light judgements of
+the hour. They are as the chaff which the wind carrieth away. After all,
+it is still truth that lives; thorough work that lasts; accuracy that
+hits the mark. And the time-servers are “unwise,” both intellectually
+and morally. They are most unwise who think to succeed in life’s high
+calling without self-distrust, and without scrupulous care and pains in
+all work they do for the kingdom of God.
+
+In the evil of his own times St Paul sees a special reason for
+heedfulness: “Walk not as unwise, but as wise, buying up the
+opportunity, _because the days are evil_.” In Colossians iv. 5 the
+parallel sentence shows that in giving this caution he is thinking of
+the relation of Christians to the world outside: “Walk in wisdom toward
+those without, buying up the opportunity.” Evil days they were, when
+Paul lay in Nero’s prison; when that wild beast was raging against
+everything that resisted his mad will or reproved his monstrous vices.
+With supreme power in the hands of such a creature of Satan, who could
+tell what fires of persecution were kindling for the people of Christ,
+or what terrible revelation of God’s anger against the present evil
+world might be impending. At Ephesus the spirit of heathenism had shown
+itself peculiarly menacing. Here, too, in the rich and cultivated
+province of Asia where the currents of Eastern and Western thought met,
+heresy and its corruptions made their first decided appearance in the
+Churches of the Gentiles. Conflicts are approaching which will try to
+the uttermost the strength of the Christian faith and the temper of its
+weapons (vi. 10-16).
+
+As wise men, reading thoughtfully the signs of the times, the Asian
+Christians will “redeem the [present] season.” They will use to the
+utmost the light given them. They will employ every means to increase
+their knowledge of Christ, to confirm their faith and the habits of
+their spiritual life. They are like men expecting a siege, who
+strengthen their fortifications and furbish their weapons and practise
+their drill and lay up store of supplies, that they may “stand in the
+evil day.” Such wisdom Ecclesiastes preaches to the young man: “Remember
+now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come.”
+
+Within a year after this epistle was penned, Rome was burnt and the
+crime of its burning washed out, at Nero’s caprice, in Christian blood.
+In four years more St Paul and St Peter had died a martyr’s death at
+Rome; and Nero had fallen by the assassin’s hand. At once the Empire was
+convulsed with civil war; and the year 68-69 was known as that of the
+Four Emperors. Amid the storms threatening the ruin of the Roman State,
+the Jewish war against Rome was carried on, ending in the year 70 with
+the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple and
+nationality. These were the days of tribulation of which our Lord spoke,
+“such as had not been since the beginning of the world” (Matt. xxiv. 21,
+22). The entire fabric of life was shaken; and in the midst of
+earthquake and tempest, blood and fire, Israel met its day of judgement
+and the former age passed away. In the year 63, when the apostle wrote,
+the sky was everywhere red and lowering with signs of coming storm. None
+knew where or how the tempest might break, or what would be its issue.
+
+When men amid evil days and portents of danger must be told not to be
+“foolish” nor “drunken with wine,” one is disposed to tax them with
+levity. It was difficult for these Asian Greeks to take life seriously,
+and to realize the gravity of their situation. St Paul appeals to them
+by their duty, still more than by their danger: “Be not foolish, but
+understand what _the will of the Lord_ is.” As he bade the Thessalonians
+consider that chastity was not matter of choice and of their own
+advantage only, it was “God’s will” (1 Ep. iv. 3), so the Ephesians
+must understand that Christ is no mere adviser, nor the Christian life
+an optional system that men may adopt when and so far as it suits them.
+He is our Lord; and it is our business to understand, in order that we
+may execute, His designs. For this Christ’s servants require a watchful
+eye and an alert intelligence. They must be no dullards nor simpletons,
+who would enter into the Divine Master’s plans; no triflers, no
+creatures of sentiment and impulse, who are to be the agents of His
+will. He can and does employ every sincere heart that gives itself in
+love to Him. But His nobler tasks are for the wise taught by His Spirit,
+for those who can “understand,” with penetrating sympathy and breadth of
+comprehension, “what the will of the Lord is.” Hence the distinction of
+St Paul himself, and of John the beloved disciple, amongst His ministers
+and witnesses,--men great in mind as they were in heart, whose thoughts
+about Christ were as grand as their love to Him was fervent.
+
+Nowhere does the apostle say so much of “the will of God” in regard to
+the dispensation of grace as he does in this epistle.[138] For he sees
+life and salvation here in their largest bearings and proportions. He
+prayed at the outset that the Gentile readers might realize the value
+that God puts upon them, and the mighty forces He has set at work for
+their salvation (i. 18-20); and again, that they might comprehend the
+vast dimensions of His plan for the building of the Church (iii. 18).
+Now that he has shown the relation of this eternal purpose to the
+character and everyday life of the converted Gentiles, “the will of God”
+becomes matter of immediate import; it is revealed in its bearing upon
+conduct, upon the affairs of business and society. It is not the
+purpose, the promises, the doctrine of the Lord alone, but “the _will_
+of the Lord” that they have to understand, as it touches their spirit
+and behaviour day by day. They must realize the practical demands of
+their religion,--how it is to make them truthful, gracious, pure and
+wise. They must translate creed into life and act. Such is the wisdom
+which their apostle strives to instil into the Asian Christians. Their
+first need was spiritual enlightenment; their second need was moral
+intelligence. Might they only have sense to understand and loyalty to
+obey the will of Christ.--And oh may we!
+
+II. There were converted thieves in the Ephesian Church, who still
+needed to be warned against their old propensities (iv. 28); there were
+men who had been sorcerers and fortune-tellers (Acts xix. 18, 19). It
+appears that there were in this circle converted _drunkards_ also, men
+to whom the apostle is obliged to say: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein
+is riot.”
+
+In view of the following context (vv. 19-21), and remembering how the
+Lord’s table was defiled by excess at Corinth (1 Cor. xi. 17-34), it
+seems to us probable that the warning of verse 18 had special reference
+to the Christian assemblies. The institution of the common meal, the
+_Agapé_ or Lovefeast accompanying the Lord’s Supper, suited the manners
+of the early Christians, and was long continued. The cities of Asia
+Minor were full of trade-guilds and clubs for various social and
+religious purposes, in which the common supper, or club-feast, furnished
+usually by each member bringing his contribution to the table, was a
+familiar bond of fellowship. This afforded to the Church a natural and
+pleasant means of intercourse; but it must be purified from sensual
+indulgence. _Wine_ was its chief danger.
+
+The eastern coast of the Ægean is an ancient home of the vine. And the
+Greeks of the Asian towns, on those bright shores and under their genial
+sky, were a light-hearted, sociable race. They sought the wine-cup not
+for animal indulgence, but as a zest to good-fellowship and to give a
+freer flow to social joys. This was the influence that ruled their
+feasts, that loosened their tongues and inspired their gaiety. Hence
+their wit was prone to become ribaldry (ver. 4); and their songs were
+the opposite of the “spiritual songs” that gladden the feasts of the
+Church (ver. 19). The quick imagination and the social instincts of the
+Ionian Greeks, the aptness for speech and song native to the land of
+Homer and Sappho, were gifts not to be repressed but sanctified. The
+lyre is to be tuned to other strains; and poetry must draw its
+inspiration from a higher source. Dionysus and his reeling Fauns give
+place to the pure Spirit of Jesus and the Father. “The Aonian mount”
+must now pay tribute to “Sion hill”; and the fountain of Castalia yields
+its honours to
+
+            “Siloa’s brook that flowed
+    Fast by the oracle of God.”
+
+Our nature craves excitement,--some stimulus that shall set the pulses
+dancing and thrill the jaded frame, and lift the spirit above the
+taskwork of life and the dreary and hard conditions which make up the
+daily lot of multitudes. It is this craving that gives to strong drink
+its cruel fascination. Alcohol is a mighty magician. The tired labouring
+man, the household drudge shut up in city courts refreshed by no
+pleasant sight or cheering voice, by its aid can leave fretted nerves
+and aching limbs and dull care behind, and taste, if it be only for a
+feverish moment, of the joy of bounding life. Can such cravings be
+hindered from seeking their relief? The removal of temptation will
+accomplish little, unless higher tastes are formed and springs of purer
+pleasure opened to the masses for whom our civilization makes life so
+drab and colourless. “One finds traces of the primitive greatness of our
+nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as impurity proceeds at
+the bottom from an abuse of the craving for love, so drunkenness betrays
+a certain demand for ardour and enthusiasm, which in itself is natural
+and even noble.... Man loves to _feel_ himself alive; he would fain live
+twice his life at once; and he would rather draw excitement from
+horrible things than have no excitement at all” (Monod).
+
+For the drunkards of Ephesus the apostle finds a cure in the joys of the
+Holy Ghost. The mightiest and most moving spring of feeling is in the
+spirit of man kindred to God. There is a deep excitement and
+refreshment, a “joy that human thought transcends,” in the love of God
+shed abroad in the heart and the communion of true saints, which makes
+sensuous delights cheap and poor. Toil and care are forgotten, sickness
+and trouble seem as nothing; we can glory in tribulation and laugh in
+the face of death, when the strong wine of God’s consolations is poured
+into the soul.
+
+“Be filled with the Spirit,” says the apostle--or more strictly, “filled
+_in_ the Spirit”; since the Holy Spirit of God is the element of the
+believer’s life, surrounding while it penetrates his nature: it is the
+atmosphere that he breathes, the ocean in which he is immersed. As a
+flood fills up the river-banks, as the drunkard is filled with the wine
+that he drains without limit, so the apostle would have his readers
+yield themselves to the tide of the Spirit’s coming and steep their
+nature in His influence. The Greek imperative, moreover, is present, and
+“describes this influence as ever going forth from the Spirit” (Beet).
+This is to be a continual replenishment. Paul has prayed that we may “be
+filled unto all the fulness of God” (iii. 19), and has bidden us grow
+“to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (iv. 13) in
+whom we “are made full” (Col. ii. 9): in the replenishment of the Spirit
+the fulness of God in Christ is sensibly imparted. God’s fulness is the
+hidden and eternal spring of all that can fill our nature; Christ’s
+fulness is its revelation and renewed communication to the race; the
+Holy Spirit’s fulness is its abiding energy within the soul and within
+the Church. Thus possessed, the Church is truly the body of Christ (iv.
+4), and the habitation of God (ii. 21, 22).
+
+The words of verses 19, 20 show that St Paul is thinking of that
+presence of the Spirit in the Christian community, which is the spring
+of its affections and activities. The Spirit of Jesus, the Son of man,
+is a kindly and gracious Spirit, the guardian of brotherhood and
+friendship, the inspirer of pure social joys and genial converse. The
+joy in the Holy Ghost that in its warmth and freshness filled the hearts
+of the first Christians, soared upward on the wings of song. Their very
+talk was music: they “spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and
+spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the
+Lord.” Love loves to sing. Its joys
+
+            “from out our hearts arise,
+    And speak and sparkle in our eyes,
+      And vibrate on our tongue.”
+
+All exalted sentiment tends to rhythmical expression. There is a
+mystical alliance, which is amongst the most significant facts in our
+constitution, between emotion and art. The rudest natures, touched by
+high feeling, will shape themselves to some sort of beauty, to some
+grace and refinement of expression. Each new stirring of the pulse of
+man’s common life has been marked by a re-birth of poetry and art. The
+songs of Mary and Zechariah were the parents and patterns of a multitude
+of holy canticles. In the Psalms of Scripture the New Testament Church
+found already an instrument of wide compass strung and tuned for her
+use. We can imagine the delight with which the Gentile Christians would
+take up the Psalter and draw out one and another of its pearls, and
+would in turn recite them at their meetings, and adapt them to their
+native measures and modes of song. After a while, they began to mix with
+the praise-songs of Israel newer strains--“hymns” to the glory of Christ
+and the Father, such as that with which this epistle opens, needing but
+little change in form to make it a true poem, and such as those which
+break in upon the dread visions of the Apocalypse; and added to these,
+“spiritual songs” of a more personal and incidental character, like
+Simeon’s _Nunc dimittis_ or Paul’s swan-song in his last letter to
+Timothy. In verse 14 above we detected, as we thought, an early Church
+paraphrase of the Old Testament. In later epistles addressed to Ephesus,
+there are fragments of just such artless chants as the Asian Christians,
+exhorted and taught by their apostle, were wont to sing in their
+assemblies: see 1 Timothy iii. 16, and 2 Timothy ii. 11-13.
+
+Upon this congenial soil, we trace the beginnings of Christian
+psalmody. The parallel text of Colossians (iii. 16) discloses in the
+songs of the Pauline Churches a didactic as well as a lyric character.
+The apostle bids his readers “_teach and admonish_ one another by
+psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.” The form of the sentence of chapter iv.
+4-6 in this letter, and of 1 Timothy iii. 16, suggests that these
+passages were destined for use as a chanted rehearsal of Christian
+belief. Thus “the word of Christ dwelling richly” in the heart, poured
+itself freely from the lips, and added to its grave discourse the charms
+of gladdening and spirit-stirring song.
+
+As in their heathen days they were used to “speak to each other,” in
+festive or solemn hours, with hymns to Artemis of the Ephesians, or
+Dionysus giver of the vine, or to Persephoné sad queen of the dead--in
+songs merry and gay, too often loose and wanton; in songs of the dark
+underworld and the grim Furies and inexorable Fate, that told how life
+fleets fast and we must pluck its pleasures while we may;--so now the
+Christians of Ephesus and Colossæ, of Pergamum and of Smyrna would sing
+of the universal Father whose presence fills earth and sky, of the Son
+of His love, His image amongst men, who died in sacrifice for their sins
+and asked grace for His murderers, of the joys of forgiveness and the
+cleansed heart, of life eternal and the treasure laid up for the just in
+the heavenly places, of Christ’s return in glory and the judgement of
+the nations and the world quickly to dissolve and perish, of a
+brotherhood dearer than earthly kindred, of the saints who sleep in
+Jesus and in peace await His coming, of the Good Shepherd who feeds His
+sheep and leads them to fountains of living water calling each by his
+name, of creation redeemed and glorified by His love, of pain and
+sorrow sanctified and the trials that make perfect in Christ’s
+discipline, of the joy that fills the heart in suffering for Him, and
+the vision of His face awaiting us beyond the grave. So reciting and
+chanting--now in single voice, now in full chorus--singing the Psalms of
+David to their Greek music, or hymns composed by their leaders, or
+sometimes improvised in the rapture of the moment, the Churches of
+Ephesus and of the Asian cities lauded and glorified “the name of our
+Lord Jesus Christ” and the counsels of redeeming love. So their worship
+and fellowship were filled with gladness. Thus in their great Church
+meetings, and in smaller companies, many a joyous hour passed; and all
+hearts were cheered and strengthened in the Lord.
+
+“Singing and _playing_,” says the apostle. For music aided song; voice
+and instrument blended in His praise whose glory claims the tribute of
+all creatures. But it was “with the heart,” even more than with voice or
+tuneful strings, that melody was made. For this inward music the Lord
+listens. Where other skill is wanting and neither voice nor hand can
+take its part in the concert of praise, He hears the silent gratitude,
+the humble joy that wells upward when the lips are still or the full
+heart cannot find expression.
+
+But the Spirit who dwelt in the praises of the new Israel, was not
+confined to its public assemblings. The people of Christ should be
+“_always giving thanks_, for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus
+Christ.” It is one of St Paul’s commonest injunctions. “In _everything_
+give thanks,” he wrote to the Thessalonians in his earliest extant
+letter (1 Ep. v. 18). “For all things,” he says to the
+Ephesians,--“though fallen on evil days.” Do we not “know that to them
+that love God all things work together for good”--evil days as well as
+good days? Nothing comes altogether amiss to the child of God. In the
+heaviest loss, the severest pain, the sharpest sting of injury--“in
+everything” the ingenuity of love and the sweetness of patience will
+find some token of mercy. If the evil is to our eyes all evil and we can
+see in it no reason for thanksgiving, then faith will give thanks for
+that which we “know not now, but shall know hereafter.”
+
+_Always_, the apostle says,--_for all things_! No room for a moment’s
+discontent. In this perfecting of praise he had himself undergone a long
+schooling in his four years’ imprisonment. Now, he tells us, he “has
+learnt the secret of contentment, in whatsoever state” (Phil. iv. 12).
+Let us try to learn it from him. These words, which we treat, almost
+unconsciously, as the exaggeration of homiletical appeal, state no more
+than the sober possibility, the experience attained by many a Christian
+in circumstances of the greatest suffering and deprivation. The love of
+God in Jesus Christ our Lord suffices for the life and joy of man’s
+spirit.
+
+The twenty-first verse, which seems to belong to a different line of
+thought, in reality completes the foregoing paragraph. In the Corinthian
+Church, as we remember, with its affluence of spiritual gifts, there
+were so many ready to prophesy, so many to sing and recite, that
+confusion arose and the Church meetings fell into disedifying uproar (1
+Cor. xiv. 26-34). The apostle would not have such scenes occur again.
+Hence when he urges the Asian Christians to seek the full inspiration of
+the Spirit and to give free utterance in song to the impulses of their
+new life, he adds this word of caution: “being subject to one another in
+fear of Christ.” He reminds them that “God is not the author of
+confusion.” His Spirit is a spirit of seemliness and reverence. “In fear
+of Christ,” the unseen witness and president of its assemblies, the
+Church will comport herself with the decorum that befits His bride. The
+spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets. The voices of
+the singers and the hands of them that play upon the strings of the harp
+or the keys of the organ, will keep tune with the worship of Christ’s
+congregation. Each must consider that it is his part to serve and not
+rule in the service of God’s house.
+
+In our common work and worship, in all the offices of life this is the
+Christian law. No man within Christ’s Church, however commanding his
+powers, may set himself above the duty of submitting his judgement and
+will to that of his fellows. In mutual subjection lies our freedom, with
+our strength and peace.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[138] See ch. i. 5-11, ii. 21, iii. 11, v. 10, vi. 6; comp. Col. i. 9,
+27, iv. 12; Phil. ii. 13,--epistles of the same group.
+
+
+
+
+_ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    Θέλω δὲ ὑμᾶς εἰδέναι ὅτι παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν,
+    κεφαλὴ δὲ γυναικὸς ὁ ἀνήρ, κεφαλὴ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ Θεός.--1 COR. xi. 3.
+
+    “And pure Religion breathing household laws.”
+
+    W. WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+_CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE._
+
+    “Wives, _be in subjection_ to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
+    For the husband is the head of the wife, as the Christ also is the
+    head of the Church, _being_ Himself the saviour of the body. But as
+    the Church is subject to the Christ, so let the wives also _be_ to
+    their husbands in everything.
+
+    “Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the
+    Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her,
+    having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He
+    might present the Church to Himself a glorious _Church_, not having
+    spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and
+    without blemish.
+
+    “Even so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own
+    bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever
+    hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the
+    Christ also the Church; because we are members of His body. ‘For
+    this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave
+    to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is
+    great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the Church.
+    Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as
+    himself; and _let_ the wife _see_ that she fear her husband.”--EPH.
+    v. 22-33.
+
+
+In mutual subjection the Christian spirit has its sharpest trials and
+attains its finest temper. “Be subject one to another,” was the last
+word of the apostle’s instructions respecting the “walk” of the Asian
+Churches. By its order and subjection the gifts of all the members of
+Christ’s body are made available for the upbuilding of God’s temple. The
+inward fellowship of the Spirit becomes a constructive and organizing
+force, reconstituting human life and framing the world into the kingdom
+of Christ and God. “In fear of Christ” the loyal Christian man submits
+himself to the community; not from the dread of human displeasure, but
+knowing that he must give account to the Head of the Church and the
+Judge of the last day, if his self-will should weaken the Church’s
+strength and interrupt her holy work. “For the Lord’s sake” His freemen
+submit to every ordinance of men. This is such a fear as the servant has
+of a good master (vi. 5), or the true wife for a loving husband (ver.
+33),--not that which “perfect love casts out,” but which it deepens and
+sanctifies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this subjection to Christ the relationship of marriage furnishes an
+example and a mirror. St Paul passes on to the new topic without any
+grammatical pause, verse 22 being simply an extension of the participial
+clause that forms verse 21: “Being in subjection to one another in fear
+of Christ--ye wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” The relation
+of the two verses is not that of the particular to the general, so much
+as that of image and object, of type and antitype. Submission to Christ
+in the Church suggests by analogy that of the wife to her husband in the
+house. Both have their origin in Christ, in whom all things were
+created, the Lord of life in its natural as well as in its spiritual and
+regenerate sphere (Col. i. 15-17). The bond that links husband and wife,
+lying at the basis of collective human existence, has in turn its ground
+in the relation of Christ to humanity.
+
+The race springs not from a unit, but from a united pair. The history of
+mankind began in wedlock. The family is the first institution of
+society, and the mother of all the rest. It is the life-basis, the
+primitive cell of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic. In the
+health and purity of household life lies the moral wealth, the vigour
+and durability of all civil institutions. The mighty upgrowth of nations
+and the great achievements of history germinated in the nursery of home
+and at the mother’s breast. Christian marriage is not an expedient--the
+last of many that have been tried--for the satisfaction of desire and
+the continuance of the human species. The Institutor of human life laid
+down its principle in the first frame of things. Its establishment was a
+great prophetic mystery (ver. 32). Its law stands registered in the
+eternal statutes. And the Almighty Father watches over its observance
+with an awful jealousy. Is it not written: “Fornicators and adulterers
+God will judge”; and again, “The Lord is an avenger concerning all these
+things”?
+
+St Paul rightly gives to this subject a conspicuous place in this
+epistle of Christ and the Church. The corner-stone of the new social
+order which the gospel was to establish in the world lies here. The
+entire influence of the Church upon society depends upon right views on
+the relationship of man and woman and on the ethics of marriage.
+
+In wedlock there are blended most completely the two principles of
+association amongst moral beings,--viz., authority and love, submission
+and self-surrender.
+
+I. On the one side, _submission to authority_.
+
+“Wives, be in subjection, as to the Lord,”--as is fitting in the Lord
+(Col. iii. 18). Again, in 1 Timothy ii. 11, 12, the apostle writes: “I
+suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion,” or (as the word may
+rather signify) “to act independently of the man.” Were these directions
+temporary and occasional? Were they due, as one hears it suggested, to
+the uneducated and undeveloped condition of women in the apostle’s time?
+Or do they not affirm a law that is deeply seated in nature and in the
+feminine constitution? The words of 1 Corinthians xi. 2-15 show that, in
+the apostle’s view of life, this subordination is fundamental. “The head
+of woman is the man,” as “the head of every man is the Christ” and “the
+head of Christ is God.” “The woman,” he says, “is of the man,” and “was
+created because of the man.” Whether these sentences square with our
+modern conceptions or not, there they stand, and their import is
+unmistakable.[139] They teach that in the Divine order of things it is
+the man’s part to lead and rule, and the woman’s part to be ruled. But
+the Christian woman will not feel that there is any loss or hardship in
+this. For in the Christian order, ambition is sin. To obey is better
+than to rule. She remembers who has said: “I am amongst you as he that
+serveth.” The children of the world strive for place and power; but “it
+shall not be so amongst you.”
+
+Such subordination implies no inferiority, rather the opposite. A free
+and sympathetic obedience--which is the true submission--can only
+subsist between equals. The apostle writes: “Children, obey; ...
+Servants, obey” (vi. 1, 5); but “Wives, submit yourselves to your own
+husbands, as to the Lord.” The same word denotes submission within the
+Church, and within the house. It is here that Christianity, in contrast
+with Paganism, and notably with Mohammedanism, raises the weaker sex to
+honour. In soul and destiny it declares the woman to be man, endowed
+with all rights and powers inherent in humanity. “In Christ Jesus there
+is no male and female,” any more than there is “Jew and Greek” or “bond
+and free.” The same sentence which broke down the barriers of Jewish
+caste, and in course of time abolished slavery, condemned the odious
+assumptions of masculine pride. It is one of the glories of our faith
+that it has enfranchised our sisters, and raises them in spiritual
+calling to the full level of their brothers and husbands. Both sexes are
+children of God by the same birthright; both receive the same Holy
+Spirit, according to the prediction quoted by St Peter on the day of
+Pentecost: “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.... Yea, on my
+servants and on my handmaidens in those days will I pour out of my
+Spirit, saith the Lord” (Acts ii. 17, 18). This one point of headship,
+of public authority and guidance, is reserved. It is the point on which
+Christ forbids emulation amongst His people.
+
+Christian courtesy treats the woman as “the glory of the man”; it
+surrounds her from girlhood to old age with protection and deference.
+This homage, duly rendered, is a full equivalent for the honour of
+visible command. When, as it happens not seldom in the partnership of
+life, the superior wisdom dwells with the weaker vessel, the golden gift
+of persuasion is not wanting, by which the official ruler is guided, to
+his own advantage, and his adviser accomplishes more than she could do
+by any overt leadership. The chivalry of the Middle Ages, from which the
+refinement of European society takes its rise, was a product of
+Christianity grafted on the Teutonic nature. Notwithstanding the folly
+and excess that was mixed with it, there was a beautiful reverence in
+the old knightly service and championship of women. It humanized the
+ferocity of barbarous times. It tamed the brute strength of warlike
+races and taught them honour and gentleness. Its prevalence marked a
+permanent advance in civilization.
+
+Shall we say that this law of St Paul is that laid down specifically for
+_Christian_ women? is it not rather a law of nature--the intrinsic
+propriety of sex, whose dictates are reinforced by the Christian
+revelation? The apostle takes us back to the creation of mankind for the
+basis of his principles in dealing with this subject (ver. 31). The new
+commandments are the old which were in the world from the beginning,
+though concealed and overgrown with corruption. Notwithstanding the
+debasement of marriage under the non-Christian systems, the instincts of
+natural religion taught the wife her place in the house and gave rise to
+many a graceful and appropriate custom expressive of the honour due from
+one sex to the other. So the apostle regarded the man’s bared and
+cropped head and the woman’s flowing tresses as symbols of their
+relative place in the Divine order (1 Cor. xi. 13-15). These and such
+distinctions--between the dignities of strength and of beauty--no
+artificial sentiment and no capricious revolt can set aside, while the
+world stands. St Paul appeals to the common sense of mankind, to that
+which “nature itself teaches,” in censuring the forwardness of some
+Corinthian women who appeared to think that the liberty of the gospel
+released them from the limitations of their nature.
+
+Some earnest promoters of women’s rights have fallen into the error that
+Christianity, to which they owe all that is best in their present
+status, is the obstacle in the way of their further progress. It is an
+obstacle to claims that are against nature and against the law of
+God,--claims only tolerable so long as they are exceptional. But the
+barriers imposed by Christianity, against which these people fret, are
+their main protection. “The moment Christianity disappears, the law of
+strength revives; and under that law women can have no hope except that
+their slavery may be mild and pleasant.” To escape from the “bondage of
+Christian law” means to go back to the bondage of paganism.
+
+“As unto the Lord” gives the pattern and the principle of the Christian
+wife’s submission. Not that, as Meyer seems to put it, the husband in
+virtue of marriage “represents Christ to the wife.” Her relation to the
+Lord is as full, direct, and personal as his. Indeed, the clause
+inserted at the end of verse 23 seems expressly designed to guard
+against this exaggeration. The qualification that Christ is “Himself
+Saviour of the body,” thrown in between the two sentences comparing the
+marital headship to that which Christ holds towards the Church, has the
+effect of limiting the former.[140] The subjection of the Christian wife
+to her husband reserves for Christ the first place in the heart and the
+undiminished rights of Saviourship. St Paul indicates a real, and not
+unfrequent danger. The husband may eclipse Christ in the wife’s soul,
+and be counted as her all in all. Her absorption in him may be too
+complete. Hence the brief guarding clause: “He Himself [and no other]
+Saviour of the body [to which all believers alike belong].” As the
+Saviour of the Church, Christ holds an unrivalled and unqualified
+lordship over every member of the same.
+
+“Nevertheless, as the Church is subject to the Christ, so also wives
+[should be] to their husbands in everything” (ver. 24). Again, in verse
+33: “Let the wife see that she fear her husband”--with the reverent and
+confiding fear which love makes sweet. As the Christian wife obeys the
+Lord Christ in the spiritual sphere, in the sphere of marriage she is
+subject to her husband. The ties that bind her to Christ, bind her more
+closely to the duties of home. These duties illustrate for her the
+submissive love that Christ’s people, and herself as one of them, owe to
+their Divine Head. Her service in the Church, in turn, will send her
+home with a quickened sense of the sacredness of her domestic calling.
+It will lighten the yoke of obedience; it will check the discontent that
+masculine exactions provoke; and will teach her to win by patience and
+gentleness the power within the house that is her queenly crown.
+
+II. The apostle alludes to submission as the wife’s duty; for she might,
+possibly, be tempted to think this superseded by the liberty of the
+children of God. Love he need not enjoin upon her; but he writes:
+“Husbands, _love your wives_, even as the Christ also loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her” (comp. Col. iii. 18, 19).
+
+The danger of selfishness lies on the masculine side. The man’s nature
+is more exacting; and the self-forgetfulness and solicitous affection of
+the woman may blind him to his own want of the truest love. Full of
+business and with a hundred cares and attractions lying outside the
+domestic circle, he too readily forms habits of self-absorption and
+learns to make his wife and home a convenience, from which he takes as
+his right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of devotion
+and confidence in return. This lack of love denies the higher rights of
+marriage; it makes the wife’s submission a joyless constraint. Along
+with this selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there
+supervenes sometimes an irritability of temper that chafes over domestic
+troubles and makes a grievance of the most trifling mishap or
+inadvertence, ignoring the wife’s patient affection and anxiety to
+please. Too often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family
+tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness of their
+espousals. “There are many,” says Bengel (on this point unusually
+caustic), “who out of doors are civil and kind to all; when at home,
+toward their wives and children, whom they have no need to fear, they
+freely practise secret bitterness.”
+
+“Love your wives, _even as the Christ loved the Church_.” What a glory
+this confers upon the husband’s part in marriage! His devotion pictures,
+as no other love can, the devotion of Christ to His redeemed people. His
+love must therefore be a spiritual passion, the love of soul to soul,
+that partakes of God and of eternity. Of the three Greek words for
+love,--_eros_, familiar in Greek poetry and mythology, denoting the
+flame of sexual passion, is not named in the New Testament; _philia_,
+the love of friendship, is tolerably frequent, in its verb at least; but
+_agapé_ absorbs the former and transcends both. This exquisite word
+denotes love in its spiritual purity and depth, the love of God and of
+Christ, and of souls to each other in God. This is the specific
+Christian affection. It is the attribute of God who “loved the world and
+gave His Son the Only-begotten,” of “the Christ” who “loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her.” Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is
+its note. Its strength and authority it uses as material for sacrifice
+and instruments of service, not as prerogatives of pride or titles to
+enjoyment. Let this mind be in you, O husband, toward your wife, which
+was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and lowly in heart, counting it
+His honour to serve and His reward to save and bless.
+
+From verse 26 we gather that Christ is the husband’s model, not only in
+the rule of self-devotion, but in the end toward which that devotion is
+directed: “that He might sanctify the Church,--that He might present her
+to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle,--_that she might
+be holy and without blemish_.” The perfection of the wife’s character
+will be to the religious husband one of the dearest objects in life. He
+will desire for her that which is highest and best, as for himself. He
+is put in charge of a soul more precious to him than any other, over
+which he has an influence incomparably great. This care he cannot
+delegate to any priest or father-confessor. The peril of such delegation
+and the grievous mischiefs that arise when there is no spiritual
+confidence between husband and wife, when through unbelief or
+superstition the head of the house hands over his priesthood to another
+man, are painfully shown by the experience of Roman Catholic countries.
+The irreligion of laymen, the carelessness and unworthiness of fathers
+and husbands are responsible for the baneful influences of the
+confessional. The apostle bade the Corinthian wives, who were eager for
+religious knowledge, to “ask their husbands at home” (1 Cor. xiv. 35).
+Christian husbands should take more account of their office than they
+do; they should not be strangers to the spiritual trials and experiences
+of the heart so near to them. It might lead them to walk more worthily
+and to seek higher religious attainments, if they considered that the
+shepherding of at least one soul devolves upon themselves, that they are
+unworthy of the name of husband without such care for the welfare of the
+soul linked to their own as Christ bears toward His bride the Church.
+Those who have no father or husband to look to, or who look in vain to
+this quarter for spiritual help, St Paul refers, beside the light and
+comfort of Scripture and the public ministry and fellowship of the
+Church, to the “aged women” who are the natural guides and exemplars of
+the younger in their own sex (Titus ii. 3-5).
+
+The selfishness of the stronger sex, supported by the force of habit and
+social usage, was hard to subdue in the Greek Christian Churches.
+Through some eight verses St Paul labours this one point. In verse 28 he
+adduces another reason, added to the example of Christ, for the love
+enjoined. “So ought men indeed to love their wives as their own bodies.
+He that loveth his wife loveth himself.” The “So” gathers its force from
+the previous example. In loving us Christ does not love something
+foreign and, as it were, outside of Himself. “We are members of His
+body” (ver. 30). It is the love of the Head to the members, of the Son
+of man to the sons of men, whose race-life is founded in Him. Jesus
+Christ laid it down as the highest law, under that of love to God: “Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_.” His love to us followed this
+rule. His life was wrapped up in ours. By such community of life
+self-love is transfigured, and exalted into the purest self-forgetting.
+
+Thus it is with true marriage. The wedding of a human pair makes each
+the other’s property. They are “one flesh” (ver. 31); and so long as
+the flesh endures there remains this consciousness of union, whose
+violation is deadly sin. As the Church is not her own, nor Christ His
+own since He became man with men, so the husband and wife are no longer
+independent and self-complete personalities, but incorporated into a new
+existence common to both. Their love must correspond to this fact. If
+the man loves himself, if he values his own limbs and tends and guards
+from injury his bodily frame (ver. 29), he must do the same equally by
+his wife; for her life and limbs are as a part of his own. This the
+apostle lays down as an obvious duty. Nature teaches the obligation, by
+every manly instinct.
+
+The saying the apostle quotes in verse 31 dates from the origin of the
+human family; it is taken from the lips of the first husband and father
+of the race, while as yet unstained by sin (Gen. ii. 23, 24). Christ
+infers from it the singleness and indelibility of the marriage covenant.
+But this doctrine, natural as it is, was not inferred by natural
+religion. The cultivated Greek took a wife for the production of
+children. Her rights put no restriction upon his appetite. Love was not
+in the marriage contract. If she received the maintenance due to her
+rank and the mistress-ship of the house, and was the mother of his
+lawful children, she had all that a free-born woman could demand. The
+slave-woman had no rights. Her body was at her owner’s disposal. Nothing
+in Christianity appeared more novel and more severe, in comparison with
+the dissolute morals of the time, than the Christian view of marriage.
+Even Christ’s Jewish disciples seemed to think the state of wedlock
+intolerable under the condition He imposed. This want of reverence and
+constancy between the sexes was a main cause of the degeneracy of the
+age. All virtues disappear with this one. Roman manliness and
+uprightness, Greek courtesy and courage, filial piety, civic worth,
+loyalty in friendship--the qualities that once in a high degree adorned
+the classic nations, were now rare amongst men. In the most exalted
+ranks infamous vices flourished; and purity of life was a cause for
+odium and suspicion.
+
+Amidst this seething mass of corruption the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus created new hearts and new homes. It kindled a pure fire on the
+desecrated hearth. It taught man and woman a chaste love; and their
+alliances were formed “in sanctification and honour, not in the passion
+of lust as it is with the Gentiles who know not God” (1 Thess. iv. 3-6).
+Every Christian house, thus based on an honourable and religious union,
+became the centre of a leaven that wrought upon the corrupt society
+around. It held forth an example of wedded loyalty and domestic joy
+beautiful and strange in that loveless Pagan world. Children grew up
+trained in pure and gentle manners. From that hour the hope of a better
+day began. The influence of the new ideal, filtrating everywhere into
+the surrounding heathenism and assimilating even before it converted the
+hostile world, raised society, though gradually and with many relapses,
+from the extreme debasement of the age of the Cæsars. Never subsequently
+have the morals of civilized mankind sunk to a level quite so low. The
+Christian conception of love and marriage opened a new era for mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[139] See Dr. Maclaren’s admirable words on this subject in _Colossians
+and Philemon_ (Expositor’s Bible), pp. 336-40; and Dr. Dale’s _Lectures
+on Ephesians_, Lect. xix., “Wives and Husbands.”
+
+[140] In verse 24 St Paul resumes with ἀλλά, the _but_ of opposition and
+not mere contrast, indicating a case where the claims of husband and
+Saviour may, conceivably, be in competition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    “The Christ is the head of the Church, _being_ Himself the Saviour
+    of the body.... The Church is subject to the Christ in
+    everything....
+
+    “The Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He
+    might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with
+    the word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious
+    _Church_, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she
+    should be holy and without blemish....
+
+    “The Christ [nourisheth and cherisheth] the Church; because we are
+    members of His body. ‘For this cause shall a man leave his father
+    and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become
+    one flesh.’ This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ
+    and of the Church.”--EPH. v. 23-32.
+
+
+We have extracted from the apostle’s homily upon marriage the sentences
+referring to Christ and His Church, in order to gather up their
+collective import. The main topic of the epistle here again asserts
+itself; and under the figure of marriage St Paul brings to its
+conclusion his doctrine on the subject of the Church. This passage
+answers, theologically, a purpose similar to that of the allegory of
+Hagar and Sarah in the epistle to the Galatians: it lights up for the
+imagination the teaching and argument of the former part of the epistle;
+it shows how the doctrine of Christ and the Church has its counterpart
+in nature, as the struggle between the legal and evangelical spirit had
+its counterpart in the patriarchal history. The three detached
+paragraphs present us three considerations, of which we shall treat the
+second first in order of exposition: Christ’s _love to the Church_; His
+_authority over the Church_; and _the mystery of the Church’s origin in
+Him_.
+
+I. “Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church,
+and gave up Himself for her.” This is parallel to the declaration of
+Galatians ii. 20: “He loved me; He gave up Himself for me.” The
+sacrifice of the cross has at once its personal and its collective
+purpose. Both are to be kept in mind.
+
+On the one hand, we must value infinitely and joyfully assert our
+individual part in the redeeming love of the Son of God; but we must
+equally admit the sovereign rights of the Church in the Redeemer’s
+passion. Our souls bow down before the glory of the love with which He
+has from eternity sought her for His own. There is in some Christians an
+absorption in the work of grace within their own hearts, an
+individualistic salvation-seeking that, like all selfishness, defeats
+its end; for it narrows and impoverishes the inner life thus sedulously
+cherished. The Church does not exist simply for the benefit of
+individual souls; it is an eternal institution, with an affiance to
+Christ, a calling and destiny of its own; within that universal sphere
+our personal destiny holds its particular place.
+
+It is “the Christ” who stands, throughout this context (vv. 23-29), over
+against “the Church” as her Lover and Husband; whereas in the context of
+Galatians ii. 20 we read “Christ”--the bare personal name--repeated
+again and again without the distinguishing article. _Christ_ is the
+Person whom the soul knows and loves, with whom it holds communion in
+the Spirit. _The Christ_ is the same regarded in the wide scope of His
+nature and office,--the Christ of humanity and of the ages. “The Christ”
+of this epistle expands the Saviour’s title to its boundless
+significance, and gives breadth and length to that which in “Christ” is
+gathered up into a single point.[141]
+
+This Christ “gave Himself up for the Church,”--yielded Himself to the
+death which the sins of His people merited and brought upon Him. Under
+the same verb, the apostle says in Romans iv. 25: He “_was delivered_
+because of our trespasses, and raised up because of our
+justification”--the sacrifice being there regarded on its passive side.
+Here, as in Galatians ii. 20, the act is made His own,--a voluntary
+surrender. “No man taketh my life from me,” He said (John x. 18). In His
+case alone amongst the sons of men, death was neither natural nor
+inevitable. His surrender of life was an absolute sacrifice. He “laid
+down His life for His friends,” as no other friend of man could do--the
+One who died for all. The love measured by this sacrifice is
+proportionately great.
+
+The sayings of verses 25-27 set the glory of the vicarious death in a
+vivid light. Of such worth was the person of the Christ, of such
+significance and moral value His sacrificial death, that it weighed
+against the trespass, not of a man--Paul or any other--but of a world of
+men. He “purchased through His own blood,” said Paul to the Ephesian
+elders, “the Church of God” (Acts xx. 28)--the whole flock that feeds in
+the pastures of the Great Shepherd, that has passed or will pass through
+the gates of His fold. Great was the honour and glory with which he was
+crowned, when led as victim to the altar of the world’s atonement (Heb.
+ii. 9). Who will not say, as the meek Son of man treads so willingly
+His mournful path to Calvary, “Worthy is the Lamb!” Is not the heavenly
+Bridegroom worthy of the bride, that He consents to win by the sacrifice
+of Himself!
+
+He is worthy; and _she must be made worthy_. “He gave up Himself, that
+He might sanctify her,--that He might Himself present to Himself a
+glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the
+kind,--that she may be holy and without blemish.” The sanctification of
+the Church is the grand purpose of redeeming grace. This was the design
+of God for His sons in Christ before the world’s foundation, “that we
+should be holy and unblemished before Him” (i. 4). This, therefore, was
+the end of Christ’s mission upon earth; this was the intention of His
+sacrificial death. “For their sakes,” said Jesus concerning His
+disciples, “I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in
+truth” (John xvii. 19). His purchase of the Church is no selfish act. To
+God His Father Christ devotes every spirit of man that is yielded to
+Him. As the Priest of mankind it was His office thus to consecrate
+humanity, which is already in purpose and in essence “sanctified through
+the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. x. 10).
+
+Only in this passage, where the apostle is thinking of the preparation
+of the Church for its perfect union with its Head, does he name Christ
+as our _Sanctifier_; in 1 Corinthians i. 2 he comes near this
+expression, addressing his readers as men “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”
+In the epistle to the Hebrews this character is largely ascribed to Him,
+being the function of His priesthood. One in nature with the sanctified,
+Jesus our great Priest “sanctifies us through His own blood,” so that
+with cleansed consciences we may draw near to the living God.[142] As
+Christ the Priest stands towards His people, so Christ the Husband
+towards His Church. He devotes her with Himself to God. He cleanses her
+that she may dwell with Him for ever, a spotless bride, dead unto sin
+and living unto God through Him.
+
+“That He might sanctify her, _having cleansed her_ in the laver of water
+by the word.” The Church’s purification is antecedent in thought to her
+sanctification through the sacrifice of Christ; and it is a means
+thereto. “Ye were washed, ye were sanctified,” writes the apostle in 1
+Corinthians vi. 11, putting the two things in the same order. It is the
+order of doctrine which he has laid down in the epistle to the Romans,
+where sanctification is built on the foundation laid in justification
+through the blood of Christ. Through the virtue of the sacrificial death
+the Church in all her members was washed from the defilements of sin,
+that she might enter upon God’s service. Of the same initial
+purification of the heart St John writes in his first epistle (i. 7-9):
+“The blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin.... He is
+faithful and just, that He should forgive us our sins and cleanse us
+from all unrighteousness.” This is “the redemption through Christ’s
+blood,” for which St Paul in his first words of praise called upon us to
+bless God (i. 7). It is the special distinction of the New Covenant,
+which renders possible its other gifts of grace, that “the worshippers
+once cleansed” need have “no further consciousness of sins” (Heb. x. 2,
+14-18). In the theological use here made of the idea of _cleansing_, St
+Paul comes into line with St John and the epistle to the Hebrews. The
+purification is nothing else than that which he has elsewhere styled
+_justification_. He employs the terms synonymously in the later epistle
+to Titus (ii. 14; iii. 7).
+
+“Having cleansed” is a phrase congruous with the figure of _the laver_,
+or _bath_ (comp. again Tit. 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 passage
+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 God. 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 God, 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 passed 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,
+“God’s word--the Spirit’s sword”; of Romans x. 8, “the word of faith
+which we proclaim”; of Luke i. 37, “the word from God 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 _verbum 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 God
+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 God of a
+good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The vital
+constituent 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 God,--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 God 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 pass from her face: the worldly passions
+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 God!
+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 pass 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 God’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 assume
+the attitude 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 God; 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 assemblies.
+Royalties and nobilities, and the holders of popular power--all whose
+“names are named in this world,” along with the principalities in
+heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of the Church must
+lay aside their robes and forget their titles, 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. God “chose
+us in Christ before the world’s foundation” (i. 4). We were created in
+the Son of God’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 analogous to the
+derivation of the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in
+its ideal, and as conceived in the purpose of God, 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 God.... Man is the image and glory of God: 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 God 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 God 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 passage 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 analogy 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 God 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 God at the institution 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. God 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] Ἐν ῥήματι. Λόγος is word as expressive of _thought_. Ῥῆμα, the
+utterance of a living voice,--a _sentence_, _pronouncement_, _message_;
+it is the Greek term employed in all the passages 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 Ἕνεκεν τούτου of the original to Ἀντὶ τούτου,
+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 God 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 God; 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 assembly 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 God.
+
+The Latin _pietas_ impressed a religious character upon filial duty.
+This word signified at once dutifulness towards the gods, 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 illustration 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 associated 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 God,” 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 God giveth thee.” This blessing is the heritage of dutiful children
+in every land. Those who have watched the history of godly 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 promptitude and faithfulness and kindliness of heart, which are the
+best guarantees for happiness and success in life. Through parental
+nurture “godliness” secures its “promise of the life that now is.”
+
+Children are exhorted to submission: fathers to _gentleness_. “Do not,”
+the apostle says, “anger your children”; in the corresponding place in
+Colossians, “Do not irritate your children, lest they be disheartened”
+(ch. iii. 21). In these parallel texts two distinct verbs are rendered
+by the one English word “provoke.” The Colossian passage warns against
+the chafing effect of parental exactions and fretfulness, that tend to
+break the child’s spirit and spoil its temper. Our text warns the father
+against angering his child by unfair or oppressive treatment. From this
+verb comes the noun “wrath” (or “provocation”) used in chapter iv. 26,
+denoting that stirring of anger which gives peculiar occasion to the
+devil.
+
+Not that the father is forbidden to cross his child’s wishes, or to do
+anything or refuse anything that may excite its anger. Nothing is worse
+for a child than to find that parents fear its displeasure, and that it
+will gain its ends by passion. But the father must not be exasperating,
+must not needlessly thwart the child’s inclinations and excite in order
+to subdue its anger, as some will do even of set purpose, thinking that
+in this way obedience is learnt. This policy may secure submission; but
+it is gained at the cost of a rankling sense of injustice.
+
+Household rule should be equally firm and kind, neither provoking nor
+avoiding the displeasure of its subjects, inflicting no severity for
+severity’s sake, but shrinking from none that fidelity demands. With
+much parental fondness, there is sometimes in family government a want
+of seriousness and steady principle, an absence in father or mother of
+the sense that they are dealing with moral and responsible beings in
+their little ones, and not with toys, which is reflected in the caprice
+and self-indulgence of the children’s maturer life. Such parents will
+give account hereafter of their stewardship with an inconsolable grief.
+
+It is almost superfluous to insist on the apostle’s exhortation to treat
+children kindly. For them these are days of Paradise, compared with
+times not far distant. Never were the wants and the fancies of these
+small mortals catered for as they are now. In some households the danger
+lies at the opposite extreme from that of over-strictness. The children
+are idolized. Not their comfort and welfare only, but their humours and
+caprices become the law of the house. They are “nourished” indeed, but
+not “in the discipline and admonition of the Lord.” It is a great
+unkindness to treat our children so that they shall be strangers to
+hardship and restriction, so that they shall not know what real
+obedience means, and have no reverence for age, no habits of deference
+and self-denial. It is the way to breed monsters of selfishness,
+pampered creatures who will be useless and miserable in adult life.
+
+“Discipline and admonition” are distinguished as positive and negative
+terms. The first is the “training up of the child in the way that he
+should go”; the second checks and holds him back from the ways in which
+he should not go. The former word (_paideia_)--denoting primarily
+_treating-as-a-boy_--signifies very often “chastisement”;[149] but it
+has a wider sense, embracing instruction besides.[150] It includes the
+whole course of training by which the boy is reared into a
+man.--_Admonition_ is a still more familiar word with St Paul.[151] It
+may be reproof bearing upon errors in the past; or it may be warning,
+that points out dangers lying in the future. Both these services parents
+owe to their children. Admonition implies faults in the nature of the
+child, and wisdom in the father to see and correct them.
+
+“Foolishness,” says the Hebrew proverb, “is bound up in the heart of a
+child.” In the Old Testament discipline there was something over-stern.
+The “hardness of heart” censured by the Lord Jesus, which allowed of two
+mothers in the house, put barriers between the father and his offspring
+that rendered “the rod of correction” more needful than it is under the
+rule of Christ. But correction, in gentler or severer sort, there must
+be, so long as children spring from sinful parents. The child’s
+conscience responds to the kindly and searching word of reproof, to the
+admonition of love. This faithful dealing with his children wins for the
+father in the end a deep gratitude, and makes his memory a guard in
+days of temptation and an object of tender reverence.
+
+The child’s “obedience _in the Lord_” is its response to “the discipline
+and admonition _of the Lord_” exercised by its parents. The discipline
+which wise Christian fathers give their children, is the Lord’s
+discipline applied through them. “Correction and instruction should
+proceed from the Lord and be directed by the Spirit of the Lord, in such
+a way that it is not so much the father who corrects his children and
+teaches them, as the Lord through him” (Monod). Thus the Father of whom
+every family on earth is named, within each Christian house works all in
+all. Thus the chief Shepherd, through His under-shepherds, guides and
+feeds the lambs of His flock. By the gate of His fold fathers and
+mothers themselves have entered; and the little ones follow with them.
+In the pastures of His word they nourish them, and rule them with His
+rod and staff. To their offspring they become an image of the Good
+Shepherd and the Father in heaven. Their office teaches them more of
+God’s fatherly ways with themselves. From their children’s humbleness
+and confidence, from their simple wisdom, their hopes and fears and
+ignorances, the elders learn deep and affecting lessons concerning their
+own relations to the heavenly Father.
+
+St Paul’s instruction to fathers applies to all who have the charge of
+children: to schoolmasters of every degree, whose work, secular as it
+may be called, touches the springs of moral life and character; to
+teachers in the Sunday school, successors to the work that Christ
+assigned to Peter, of shepherding His lambs. These instructors supply
+the Lord’s nurture to multitudes of children, in whose homes Christian
+faith and example are wanting. The ideas which children form of Christ
+and His religion, are gathered from what they see and hear in the
+school. Many a child receives its bias for life from the influence of
+the teacher before whom it sits on Sunday. The love and meekness of
+wisdom, or the coldness or carelessness of the one who thus stands
+between Christ and the infant soul, will make or mar its spiritual
+future.
+
+II. From the children of the house the apostle proceeds to address the
+_servants_--slaves as they were, until the gospel unbound their chains.
+The juxtaposition of children and slaves is full of significance; it is
+a tacit prophecy of emancipation. It brings the slave within the
+household, and gives a new dignity to domestic service.[152]
+
+The Greek philosophers regarded slavery as a fundamental institution,
+indispensable to the existence of civilized society. That the few might
+enjoy freedom and culture, the many were doomed to bondage. Aristotle
+defines the slave as an “animated tool,” and the tool as an “inanimate
+slave.” Two or three facts will suffice to show how utterly slaves were
+deprived of human rights in the brilliant times of the classic humanism.
+In Athens it was the legal rule to admit the evidence of a slave only
+upon torture, as that of a freeman was received upon oath. Amongst the
+Romans, if a master had been murdered in his house, the whole of his
+domestic servants, amounting sometimes to hundreds, were put to death
+without inquiry. It was a common mark of hospitality to assign to a
+guest a female slave for the night, like any other convenience. Let it
+be remembered that the slave population outnumbered the free citizens of
+the Roman and Greek cities by many times; that they were frequently of
+the same race, and might be even superior in education to their masters.
+Indeed, it was a lucrative trade to rear young slaves and train them in
+literary and other accomplishments, and then to let them out in these
+capacities for hire. Let any one consider the condition of society which
+all this involved, and he will have some conception of the degradation
+in which the masses of mankind were plunged, and of the crushing tyranny
+that the world laboured under in the boasted days of republican liberty
+and Hellenic art.
+
+No wonder that the new religion was welcome to the slaves of the Pagan
+cities, and that they flocked into the Church. Welcome to them was the
+voice that said: “Come unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy
+laden”; welcome the proclamation that made them Christ’s freedmen,
+“brethren beloved” where they had been “animated tools” (Philem. 16). In
+the light of such teaching, slavery was doomed. Its re-adoption by
+Christian nations, and the imposition of its yoke on the negro race, is
+amongst the great crimes of history,--a crime for which the white man
+has had to pay rivers of his blood.
+
+The social fabric, as it then existed, was so entirely based upon
+slavery, that for Christ and the apostles to have proclaimed its
+abolition would have meant universal anarchy. In writing to Philemon
+about his converted slave Onesimus, the apostle does not say, “Release
+him,” though the word seems to be trembling on his lips. In 1
+Corinthians vii. 20-24 he even advises the slave who has the chance of
+manumission to remain where he is, content to be “the Lord’s freedman.”
+To the Christian slave what mattered it who ruled over his perishing
+body! his spirit was free, death would be his discharge and
+enfranchisement. No decree is issued to abolish bond-service between man
+and man; but it was destroyed in its essence by the spirit of Christian
+brotherhood. It melted away in the spread of the gospel, as snow and
+winter melt before the face of spring.
+
+“Ye slaves, obey your lords according to the flesh.” The apostle does
+not disguise the slave’s subservience; nor does he speak in the language
+of pity or of condescension. He appeals as a man to men and equals, on
+the ground of a common faith and service to Christ. He awakens in these
+degraded tools of society the sense of spiritual manhood, of conscience
+and loyalty, of love and faith and hope. As in Colossians iii. 22-iv. 1,
+the apostle designates the earthly master not by his common title
+(_despotēs_), but by the very word (_kyrios_) that is the title of the
+_Lord_ Christ, giving the slave in this way to understand that he has,
+in common with his master (ver. 9), a higher Lord in the spirit. “Ye are
+slaves to the Lord Christ!” (Col. iii. 24). St Paul is accustomed to
+call himself “a slave of Christ Jesus.”[153] Nay, it is even said, in
+Philippians ii. 7, that Christ Jesus “took the form of a slave!”
+
+How much there was, then, to console the Christian bondman for his lot.
+In self-abnegation, in the willing forfeiture of personal rights, in his
+menial and unrequited tasks, in submission to insult and injustice, he
+found a holy joy. His was a path in which he might closely follow the
+steps of the great Servant of mankind. His position enabled him to
+“adorn the Saviour’s doctrine” above other men (Tit. ii. 9, 10).
+Affectionate, gentle, bearing injury with joyful courage, the Christian
+slave held up to that hardened and jaded Pagan age the example which it
+most required. God chose the base things of the world to bring to nought
+the mighty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The relations of servant and master will endure, in one shape or other,
+while the world stands. And the apostle’s injunctions bear upon servants
+of every order. We are all, in our various capacities, servants of the
+community. The moral worth of our service and its blessing to ourselves
+depend on the conditions that are here laid down.
+
+1. There must be _a genuine care for our work_.
+
+“Obey,” he says, “with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart,
+as unto the Christ.” The fear enjoined is no dread of human displeasure,
+of the master’s whip or tongue. It is the same “fear and trembling” with
+which we are bidden to “work out our own salvation” (Phil. ii. 12). The
+inward work of the soul’s salvation and the outward work of the busy
+hands labouring in the mine or at the loom, or in the lowliest domestic
+duties,--all alike are to be performed under a solemn responsibility to
+God and in the presence of Christ, the Lord of nature and of men, who
+understands every sort of work, and will render to each of His servants
+a just and exact reward. No man, whether he be minister of state or
+stable-groom, will dare to do heedless work, who lives and acts in that
+august Presence,--
+
+    “As ever in the great Task-master’s eye.”
+
+2. The sense of Christ’s Lordship ensures _honesty in work_.
+
+So the apostle continues: “Not with _eye-service_, as _men-pleasers_.”
+Both these are rare compound words,--the former indeed occurring only
+here and in the companion letter, being coined, probably, by the writer
+for this use. It is the common fault and temptation of servants in all
+degrees to observe the master’s eye, and to work busily or slackly as
+they are watched or not. Such workmen act as they do, because they look
+to men and not to God. Their work is without conscience and
+self-respect. The visible master says “Well done!” But there is another
+Master looking on, who says “Ill done!” to all pretentious doings and
+works of eye-service,--who sees not as man sees, but judges with the act
+the motive and intent.
+
+              “Not on the vulgar mass
+              Called ‘work’ must sentence pass,
+    Things done, which took the eye and had the price.”
+
+In His book of accounts there is a stern reckoning in store for
+deceitful dealers and the makers-up of unsound goods, in whatever
+handicraft or headcraft they are engaged.
+
+Let us all adopt St Paul’s maxim; it will be an immense economy. What
+armies of overlookers and inspectors we shall be able to dismiss, when
+every servant works as well behind his master’s back as to his face,
+when every manufacturer and shopkeeper puts himself in the purchaser’s
+place and deals as he would have others deal with him. It was for the
+Christian slaves of the Greek trading cities to rebuke the Greek spirit
+of fraud and trickery, by which the common dealings of life in all
+directions were vitiated.
+
+3. To the carefulness and honesty of the slave’s daily labour he must
+even add _heartiness_: “as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from
+the soul, with good will doing service, as to the Lord and not to men.”
+
+They must do _the will of God_ in the service of men, as Jesus Christ
+Himself did it,--and with His meekness and fortitude and unwearied love.
+Their work will thus be rendered from inner principle, with thought and
+affection and resolution spent upon it. That alone is the work of a man,
+whether he preaches or ploughs, which comes from the soul behind the
+hands and the tongue, into which the workman puts as much of his soul,
+of himself, as the work is capable of holding.
+
+4. Add to all this, the servant’s _anticipation of the final reward_. In
+each case, “whatsoever one may do that is good, this he will receive
+from the Lord, whether he be a bondman or a freeman.” The complementary
+truth is given in the Colossian letter: “He who does wrong, will receive
+back the wrong that he did.”
+
+The doctrine of equal retribution at the judgement-seat of Christ
+matches that of equal salvation at the cross of Christ. How trifling and
+evanescent the differences of earthly rank appear, in view of these
+sublime realities. There is a “Lord in heaven,” alike for servant and
+for master, “with whom is no respect of persons” (ver. 9). This grand
+conviction beats down all caste-pride. It teaches justice to the mighty
+and the proud; it exalts the humble, and assures the down-trodden of
+redress. No bribery or privilege, no sophistry or legal cunning will
+avail, no concealment or distortion of the facts will be possible in
+that Court of final appeal. The servant and the master, the monarch and
+his meanest subject will stand before the bar of Jesus Christ upon the
+same footing. And the poor slave, wonderful to think, who was faithful
+in the “few things” of his drudging earthly lot, will receive the “many
+things” of a son of God and a joint-heir with Christ!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“_And_, _ye lords_, do the same things towards them”--be as good to your
+slaves as they are required to be towards you. A bold application this
+of Christ’s great rule: “What you would that men should do to you, do
+even so to them.” In many instances this rule suggested _liberation_,
+where the slave was prepared for freedom. In any case, the master is to
+put himself in his dependant’s place, and to act by him as he would
+desire himself to be treated if their positions were reversed.
+
+Slaves were held to be scarcely human. Deceit and sensuality were
+regarded as their chief characteristics. They must be ruled, the
+moralists said, by the fear of punishment. This was the only way to keep
+them in their place. The Christian master adopts a different policy. He
+“desists from threatening”; he treats his servants with even-handed
+justice, with fit courtesy and consideration. The recollection is ever
+present to his mind, that he must give account of his charge over each
+one of them to his Lord and theirs. So he will make, as far as in him
+lies, his own domain an image of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[148] We cannot absolutely _prove_ infant baptism from the New Testament
+texts adduced on its behalf; but they afford a strong presumption in its
+favour, which is confirmed on the one hand by the analogy of
+circumcision, and on the other by the immemorial usage of the early
+Church. Titus i. 6 shows that stress was laid on the faith of children,
+and that discrimination was used in their recognition as Church members.
+
+[149] 1 Cor. xi. 32; Heb. xii. 5, 11, etc.
+
+[150] Acts vii. 22, xxii. 3; Rom. ii. 20; 2 Tim. ii. 25, iii. 14.
+
+[151] 1 Cor. x. 11; Col. i. 28, iii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 14, etc.
+
+[152] The word _family_ (Latin _familia_) denoted originally the
+servants of the establishment, the domestic slaves. Its modern usage is
+an index to the elevating influence of Christianity upon social
+relations.
+
+[153] Rom. i. 1; 2 Cor. iv. 5; Gal. i. 10, etc.
+
+
+
+
+_ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+CHAPTER vi. 10-20.
+
+    Ἰδοὺ ὁ Σατανᾶς ἐξῃτήσατο ὑμᾶς, τοῦ σινιάσαι ὡς τὸν σῖτον.
+
+    LUKE xxii. 31.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+_THE FOES OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    “From henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the might of His
+    strength. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not
+    against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
+    powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
+    spiritual _hosts_ of wickedness, in the heavenly _places_.”--EPH.
+    vi. 10-12.
+
+
+We follow the Revised reading of the opening word of this paragraph, and
+the preferable rendering given by the Revisers in their margin. The
+adverb is the same that is found in Galatians vi. 17 (“_Henceforth_ let
+no man trouble me”); not that used in Philippians iii. 1 and elsewhere
+(“_Finally_, my brethren,” etc.). The copyists have conformed our text,
+seemingly, to the latter passage. We are recalled to the circumstances
+and occasion of the epistle. High as St Paul soars in meditation, he
+does not forget the situation of his readers. The words of chapter iv.
+14 showed us how well aware he is of the dangers looming before the
+Asian Churches.
+
+The epistle to the Colossians is altogether a letter of conflict (see
+ch. ii. 1 ff.). In writing that letter St Paul was wrestling with
+spiritual powers, mighty for evil, which had commenced their attack upon
+this outlying post of the Ephesian province. He sees in the sky the
+cloud portending a desolating storm. The clash of hostile arms is heard
+approaching. This is no time for sloth or fear, for a faith half-hearted
+or half-equipped. “You have need of your best manhood and of all the
+weapons of the spiritual armoury, to hold your ground in the conflict
+that is coming upon you. _Henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the
+might of His strength._”
+
+It is the apostle’s call to arms!--“Be strengthened in the Lord,” he
+says (to render the imperative literally: so in 2 Timothy ii. I). _Make
+His strength your own._ The strength he bids them assume is _power_,
+_ability_, strength adequate to its end.[154] “The might of His
+strength” repeats the combination of terms we found in chapter i. 19.
+That sovereign power of the Almighty which raised Jesus our Lord from
+the dead, belongs to the Lord Christ Himself. From its resources He will
+clothe and arm His people. “In the Lord,” says Israel evermore, “is
+righteousness and strength. The rock of my salvation and my refuge is in
+God.” The Church’s strength lies in the almightiness of her risen Lord,
+the Captain of her warfare.
+
+“The _panoply_ of God” (ver. II) reminds us of the saying of Jesus in
+reference to His casting out of demons, recorded in Luke xi. 21, 22--the
+only other instance in the New Testament of this somewhat rare Greek
+word. The Lord Jesus describes Himself in conflict with Satan, who as
+“the strong one armed keeps his possessions in peace,”--until there
+“come upon him the stronger than he,” who “conquers him and takes away
+his panoply wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils.” In this text
+the situation is reversed; and the “full armour” belongs to Christ’s
+servants, who are equipped to meet the counter-attack of Satan and the
+powers of evil. There is a Divine and a Satanic panoply--arms tempered
+in heaven and in hell, to be wielded by the sons of light and of
+darkness respectively (comp. Rom. xiii. 12). The weapons of warfare on
+the two sides are even as the two leaders that furnish them--“the strong
+one armed” and the “Stronger than he.” Mightier are faith and love than
+unbelief and hate; “greater is He that is in you than he that is in the
+world.”
+
+Let us review the forces marshalled against us,--their _nature_, their
+_mode of assault_, and _the arena of the contest_.
+
+1. The Asian Christians had to “stand against _the wiles_ [_schemes_, or
+_methods_[155]] _of the devil_.”
+
+Unquestionably, the New Testament assumes the personality of Satan. This
+belief runs counter to modern thought, governed as it is by the tendency
+to depersonalize existence. The conception of evil spirits given us in
+the Bible is treated as an obsolete superstition; and the name of the
+Evil One with multitudes serves only to point a profane or careless
+jest. To Jesus Christ, it is very certain, Satan was no figure of
+speech; but a thinking and active being, of whose presence and influence
+He saw tokens everywhere in this evil world (comp. ii. 2). If the Lord
+Jesus “speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen” concerning
+the mysteries of the other world, there can be no question of the
+existence of a personal devil. If in any matter He was bound, as a
+teacher of spiritual truth, to disavow Jewish superstition, surely
+Christ was so bound in this matter. Yet instead of repudiating the
+current belief in Satan and the demons, He earnestly accepts it; and it
+entered into His own deepest experiences. In the visible forms of sin
+Jesus saw the shadow of His great antagonist. “From the Evil One” He
+taught His disciples to pray that they might be delivered. The victims
+of disease and madness whom He healed, were so many captives rescued
+from the malignant power of Satan. And when Jesus went to meet His
+death, He viewed it as the supreme conflict with the usurper and
+oppressor who claimed to be “the prince of this world.”[156]
+
+Satan is the consummate form of depraved and untruthful intellect. We
+read of his “thoughts,” his “schemes,” his subtlety and deceit and
+impostures;[157] of his slanders against God and man,[158] from which,
+indeed, the name devil (_diabolus_) is given him. Falsehood and hatred
+are his chief qualities. Hence Jesus called him “the manslayer” and “the
+father of falsehood” (John viii. 44). He was the first sinner, and the
+fountain of sin (1 John iii. 8). All who do unrighteousness or hate
+their brethren are, so far, his offspring (1 John iii. 10). With a realm
+so wide, Satan might well be called not only “the prince,” but the very
+“god of this world” (2 Cor. iv. 4). Plausibly he said to Jesus, in
+showing Him the kingdoms of the world, at the time when Tiberius Cæsar
+occupied the imperial throne: “All this authority and glory are
+delivered unto me. To whomsoever I will, I give it.” His power is
+exercised with an intelligence perhaps as great as any can be that is
+morally corrupt; but it is limited on all sides. In dealing with Jesus
+Christ he showed conspicuous ignorance.
+
+Chief amongst the wiles of the devil at this time was the “scheme of
+error,” the cunningly woven net of the Gnostical delusion, in which the
+apostle feared that the Asian Churches would be entangled. Satan’s
+empire is ruled with a settled policy, and his warfare carried on with a
+system of strategy which takes advantage of every opening for
+attack.[159] The manifold combinations of error, the various arts of
+seduction and temptation, the ten thousand forms of the deceit of
+unrighteousness constitute “the wiles of the devil.”
+
+Such is the gigantic opponent with whom Christ and the Church have been
+in conflict through all ages. But Satan does not stand alone. In verse
+12 there is called up before us an imposing array of spiritual powers.
+They are “the angels of the devil,” whom Jesus set in contrast with the
+angels of God that surround and serve the Son of man (Matt. xxv. 41).
+These unhappy beings are, again, identified with the “demons,” or
+“unclean spirits,” having Satan for their “prince,” whom our Lord
+expelled wherever He found them infesting the bodies of men.[160] They
+are represented in the New Testament as fallen beings, expelled from a
+“principality” and “habitation of their own” (Jude 6) which they once
+enjoyed, and reserved for the dreadful punishment which Christ calls
+“the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” They are here
+entitled _principalities_ and _powers_ (or _dominions_), after the same
+style as the angels of God, to whose ranks, as we are almost compelled
+to suppose, these apostates once belonged.
+
+In contrast with the “angels of light” (2 Cor. xi. 14) and “ministering
+spirits” of the kingdom of God (Heb. i. 14), the angels of Satan have
+constituted themselves _the world-rulers of this darkness_. We find the
+compound expression _cosmo-krator_ (world-ruler) in later rabbinical
+usage, borrowed from the Greek and applied to “the angel of death,”
+before whom all mortal things must bow. Possibly, St Paul brought the
+term with him from the school of Gamaliel. Satan being the god of this
+world and swaying “the dominion of darkness,”[161] according to the same
+vocabulary his angels are “the rulers of the world’s darkness”; and the
+provinces of the empire of evil fall under their direction.
+
+The darkness surrounding the apostle in Rome and the Churches in
+Asia--“this darkness,” he says--was dense and foul. With Nero and his
+satellites the masters of empire, the world seemed to be ruled by demons
+rather than by men. The frightful wish of one of the Psalmists was
+fulfilled for the heathen world: “Set a wicked man over him, and let
+Satan stand at his right hand.”
+
+The last of St Paul’s synonyms for the satanic forces, “the spiritual
+[powers] of wickedness,” may have served to warn the Church against
+reading a political sense into the passage and regarding the civil
+constitution of society and the visible world-rulers as objects for
+their hatred. Pilate was a specimen, by no means amongst the worst, of
+the men in power. Jesus regarded him with pity. His real antagonist
+lurked behind these human instruments. The above phrase, “spirituals of
+wickedness,” is Hebraistic, like “judge” and “steward of
+unrighteousness,”[162] and is equivalent to “wicked spirits.” The
+adjective “spiritual,” which does duty for a substantive--“the
+spiritual [forces, or elements] of wickedness”[163]--brings out the
+collective character of these hostile powers.
+
+St Paul’s demonology[164] is identical with that of Jesus Christ. The
+two doctrines stand or fall together. The advent of Christ appears to
+have stirred to extraordinary activity the satanic powers. They asserted
+themselves in Palestine at this particular time in the most open and
+terrifying manner. In an age of scepticism and science like our own, it
+belongs to “the wiles of the devil” to work obscurely. This is dictated
+by obvious policy. Moreover, his power is greatly reduced. Satan is no
+longer the god of this world, since Christianity rose to its ascendant.
+The manifestations of demonism are, at least in Christian lands, vastly
+less conspicuous than in the first age of the Church. But those are more
+bold than wise who deny their existence, and who profess to explain all
+occult phenomena and phrenetic moral aberrations by physical causes. The
+popular idolatries of his own day, with their horrible rites and inhuman
+orgies, St Paul ascribed to devilry. He declared that those who sat at
+the feast of the idol and gave sanction to its worship, were partaking
+of “the cup and the table of demons” (1 Cor. x. 20, 21). Heathen
+idolatries at the present time are, in many instances, equally
+diabolical; and those who witness them cannot easily doubt the truth of
+the representations of Scripture upon this subject.
+
+II. The conflict against these spiritual enemies is essentially a
+_spiritual_ conflict. “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh.”
+
+They are not human antagonists whom the Church has to fear,--mortal men
+whom we can look in the face and meet with equal courage, in the contest
+where hot blood and straining muscle do their part. The fight needs
+mettle of another kind. The foes of our faith are untouched by carnal
+weapons. They come upon us without sound or footfall. They assail the
+will and conscience; they follow us into the regions of spiritual
+thought, of prayer and meditation. Hence the weapons of our warfare,
+like those which the apostle wielded (2 Cor. x. 2-5), “are not carnal,”
+but spiritual and “mighty toward God.”
+
+It is true that the Asian Churches had visible enemies arrayed against
+them. There were the “wild beasts” with whom St Paul “fought at
+Ephesus,” the heathen mob of the city, sworn foes of every despiser of
+their great goddess Artemis. There was Alexander the coppersmith, ready
+to do the apostle evil, and “the Jews from Asia,” a party of whom all
+but murdered him in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 27-36); there was Demetrius the
+silversmith, instigator of the tumult which drove him from Ephesus, and
+“the craftsmen of like occupation,” whose trade was damaged by the
+progress of the new religion. These were formidable opponents, strong in
+everything that brings terror to flesh and blood. But after all, these
+were of small account in St Paul’s view; and the Church need never
+dread material antagonism. The centre of the struggle lies elsewhere.
+The apostle looks beyond the ranks of his earthly foes to the power of
+Satan by which they are animated and directed,--“impotent pieces of the
+game he plays.” From this hidden region he sees impending an attack more
+perilous than all the violence of persecution, a conflict urged with
+weapons of finer proof than the sharp steel of sword and axe, and with
+darts tipped with a fiercer fire than that which burns the flesh or
+devours the goods.
+
+Even in outward struggles against worldly power, our wrestling is not
+simply against blood and flesh. Calvin makes a bold application of the
+passage when he says: “This sentence we should remember so often as we
+are tempted to revengefulness, under the smart of injuries from men. For
+when nature prompts us to fling ourselves upon them with all our might,
+this unreasonable passion will be checked and reined in suddenly, when
+we consider that these men who trouble us are nothing more than darts
+cast by the hand of Satan; and that while we stoop to pick up these, we
+shall expose ourselves to the full force of his blows.” _Vasa sunt_,
+says Augustine of human troublers, _alius utitur_; _organa sunt, alius
+tangit_.
+
+The crucial assaults of evil, in many instances, come in no outward and
+palpable guise. There are sinister influences that affect the spirit
+more directly, fires that search its inmost fibres, a darkness that
+sweeps down upon the very light that is in us threatening its
+extinction. “Doubts, the spectres of the mind,” haunt it; clouds brood
+over the interior sky and fierce storms sweep down on the soul, that
+rise from beyond the seen horizon. “Jesus was led of the Spirit into the
+wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.” Away from the tracks of men
+and the seductions of flesh and blood the choicest spirits have been
+tested and schooled. So they are tempered in the spiritual furnace to a
+fineness which turns the edge of the sharpest weapons the world may use
+against them.
+
+Some men are constitutionally more exposed than others to these interior
+assaults. There are conditions of the brain and nerves, tendencies lying
+deep in the organism, that give points of vantage to the enemy of souls.
+These are the opportunities of the tempter; they do not constitute the
+temptation itself, which comes from a hidden and objective source.
+Similarly in the trials of the Church, in the great assaults made upon
+her vital truths, historical conditions and the external movements of
+the age furnish the material for the conflicts through which it has to
+pass; but the spring and moving agent, the master will that dominates
+these hostile forces is that of Satan.
+
+The Church was engaged in a double conflict--of the flesh and of the
+spirit. On the one hand, it was assailed by the material seductions of
+heathenism and the terrors of ruthless persecution. On the other hand,
+it underwent a severe intellectual conflict with the systems of error
+that were rooted in the mind of the age. These forces opposed the
+Christian truth from without; but they became much more dangerous when
+they found their way within the Church, vitiating her teaching and
+practice, and growing like tares among the wheat. It is of heresy more
+than persecution that the apostle is thinking, when he writes these
+ominous words. Not blood and flesh, but the mind and spirit of the Asian
+believers will bear the brunt of the attack that the craft of the devil
+is preparing for the apostolic Church.
+
+III. The last clause of verse 12, _in the heavenly places_, refuses to
+combine with the above description of the powers hostile to the Church.
+The heavenly places are the abode of God and the blessed angels. This is
+the region where the Father has blessed us in Christ (i. 3); where He
+seated the Christ at His own right hand (i. 20), and has in some sense
+seated us with Christ (ii. 6); and where the angelic princedoms dwell
+who follow with keen and studious sympathy the Church’s fortunes (iii.
+10). To locate the devil and his angels _there_ seems to us highly
+incongruous; the juxtaposition is out of the question with St Paul.
+Chapter ii. 2 gives no real support to this view: supposing “the air” to
+be literally intended in that passage, it belongs to _earth_ and not to
+heaven.[165] Nor do the parallels from other Scriptures adduced supply
+any but the most precarious basis for an interpretation against which
+the use of the exalted phrase in our epistle revolts.
+
+No; Satan and his hosts do not dwell with Christ and the holy angels “in
+the heavenly places.” But the Church dwells there already, by her faith;
+and it is in the heavenly places of her faith and hope that she is
+assailed by the powers of hell. This final prepositional clause should
+be separated by a comma from the words immediately foregoing; it forms a
+distinct predicate to the sentence contained in verse 12. It specifies
+the _locality_ of the struggle; it marks out the battle-field. “Our
+wrestling is ... in the heavenly places.”[166] So we construe the
+sentence, following the ancient Greek commentators.
+
+The life of the Church “is hid with the Christ in God”; her treasure is
+laid up in heaven. She is assailed by a philosophy and vain deceit that
+perverts her highest doctrines, that clouds her vision of Christ and
+limits His glory, and threatens to drag her down from the high places
+where she sits with her ascended Lord.[167] Such was, in effect, the aim
+of the Colossian heresy, and of the great Gnostical movement to which
+this speculation was a prelude, that for a century and more entangled
+Christian faith in its metaphysical subtleties and false mysticism. The
+epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike the leading note of the
+controversies of the Church in this region during its first ages. Their
+character was thoroughly transcendental. “The heavenly things” were the
+subject-matter of the great conflicts of this epoch.
+
+The questions of religious controversy characteristic of our own times,
+though not identical with those of Colossæ or Ephesus, concern matters
+equally high and vital. It is not this or that doctrine that is now at
+stake--the nature or extent of the atonement, the procession of the Holy
+Spirit from the Son with the Father, the verbal or plenary inspiration
+of Scripture; but the personal being of God, the historical truth of
+Christianity, the reality of the supernatural,--these and the like
+questions, which formed the accepted basis and the common assumptions of
+former theological discussions, are now brought into dispute. Religion
+has to justify its very existence. Christianity must answer for its
+life, as at the beginning. God is denied. Worship is openly renounced.
+Our treasures in heaven are proclaimed to be worthless and illusive.
+The entire spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to the
+region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties of modern
+religious thought lie at the foundation of things, and touch the core of
+the spiritual life. Unbelief appears, in some quarters, to be more
+serious and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics and
+ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and immortality. The
+Churches are engaged in trivial contentions with each other, while the
+enemy pushes his way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.
+
+“The apostle incites the readers,” says Chrysostom, “by the thought of
+the prize at stake. When he has said that our enemies are powerful, he
+adds thereto that these are great possessions which they seek to wrest
+from us. When he says _in the heavenly places_, this implies _for the
+heavenly things_. How it must rouse and sober us to know that the hazard
+is for great things, and great will be the prize of victory. Our foe
+strives to take _heaven_ from us.” Let the Church be stripped of all her
+temporalities, and driven naked as at first into the wilderness. She
+carries with her the crown jewels; and her treasure is unimpaired, so
+long as faith in Christ and the hope of heaven remain firm in her heart.
+But let these be lost; let heaven and the Father in heaven fade with our
+childhood’s dreams; let Christ go back to His grave--then we are utterly
+undone. We have lost our all in all!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[154] Ἐνδυναμοῦσθε [from δύναμις] ἐν Κυρίῳ καὶ ἐν τῷ κράτει τῆς ἰσχύος
+αὐτοῦ. See the note on these synonyms, on p. 76. Comp., for this verb,
+Col. i. II; 2 Tim. iv. 17; Phil. iv. 13: Πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῳ ἐνδυναμοῦντί
+με,--“I have strength for everything in Him that _enables_ me.”]
+
+[155] Comp. remark on μεθοδεία (iv. 14), p. 247.
+
+[156] John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11: comp. Luke iv. 5-7; Heb. ii. 14.
+
+[157] 2 Cor. ii. 11, xi. 3; 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10; 2 Tim. ii. 26, etc.
+
+[158] Rev. xii, 7-10; Gen. iii. 4, 5; Zech. iii. 1; Job i.
+
+[159] Ch. iv. 27; 2 Cor. ii. 11; Luke xxii. 31.
+
+[160] Luke x. 17-20, xi. 14-26.
+
+[161] Col. i. 13: comp. Acts xxvi. 18, etc.
+
+[162] Luke xvi. 8, xviii. 6.
+
+[163] Τὰ πνευματικὰ tῆs πονηρίας.
+
+[164] Mr. Moule aptly observes, in his excellent and most useful
+Commentary on Ephesians in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_: St Paul’s “testimony to the real and objective existence” of
+evil spirits “gains in strength when it is remembered that the epistle
+was addressed (at least, among other designations) to Ephesus, and that
+Ephesus (see Acts xix.) was a peculiarly active scene of asserted
+magical and other dealings with the unseen darkness. Supposing that the
+right line to take in dealing with such beliefs and practices had been
+to say that the whole basis of them was a fiction of the human mind, not
+only would such a verse as this [vi. 12] not have been written, but, we
+may well assume, something would have been written strongly
+contradictory to the thought of it” (p. 176).
+
+[165] See p. 103.
+
+[166] The objection against the common rendering taken from the absence
+of the Greek article (τά) before the phrase ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις,
+required to link it to τὰ πνευματικὰ τῆς πονηρίας, is not decisive.
+
+[167] Col. ii. 8-10, iii. 1-4; Phil. iii. 20, 21: comp. Eph. i. 3, ii.
+6, 18, iv. 10, 15; Heb. vi. 19, 20, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+_THE DIVINE PANOPLY._
+
+    “Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    withstand in the evil day, and, having conquered all, to stand.
+    Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put
+    on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with
+    the readiness of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of
+    faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of
+    the evil _one_. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
+    the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and
+    supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching
+    thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the
+    saints.”--EPH. vi. 13-18.
+
+
+_Stand_ is the watchword for this battle, the apostle’s order of the
+day: “that you may be able to _stand_ against the stratagems of the
+devil, ... that you may be able to _withstand_ in the evil day, and
+mastering all your enemies[168] to _stand_.... _Stand_ therefore,
+girding your loins about with truth.” The apostle is fond of this
+martial style, and such appeals are frequent in the letters of this
+period.[169] The Gentile believers are raised to the heavenly places of
+fellowship with Christ, and invested with the lofty character of sons
+and heirs of God: let them hold their ground; let them maintain the
+honour of their calling and the wealth of their high estate, standing
+fast in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. _Pro aris et focis_ the
+patriot draws his sword, and manfully repels the invader. Even so the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus contends for his heavenly city and the
+household of faith. He defends the dearest interests and hopes of human
+life.
+
+This defence is needed, for an “evil day” is at hand! This emphatic
+reference points to something more definite than the general day of
+temptation that is co-extensive with our earthly life. St Paul foresaw a
+crisis of extreme danger impending over the young Church of Christ. The
+prophecies of Jesus taught His disciples, from the first, that His
+kingdom could only prevail by means of a severe conflict, and that some
+desperate struggle would precede the final Messianic triumph. This
+prospect looms before the minds of the New Testament writers, as “the
+day of Jehovah” dominated the imagination of the Hebrew prophets. Paul’s
+apocalypse in 1 and 2 Thessalonians is full of reminiscences of Christ’s
+visions of judgement. It culminates in the prediction of the evil day of
+Antichrist, which is to usher in the second, glorious coming of the Lord
+Jesus. The consummation, as the apostle was then inclined to think,
+might arrive within that generation (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17), although he
+declares its times and seasons wholly unknown. In his later epistles,
+and in this especially, it is clear that he anticipated a longer
+duration for the existing order of things; and “the evil day” for which
+the Asian Churches are to prepare can scarcely have denoted, to the
+apostle’s mind, the final day of Antichrist, though it may well be an
+epoch of similar nature and a token and shadow of the last things.
+
+In point of fact, a great secular crisis was now approaching. The six
+years (64-70 after Christ) extending from the fire of Rome to the fall
+of Jerusalem, were amongst the most fateful and calamitous recorded in
+history. This period was, in a very real sense, the day of judgement for
+Israel and the ancient world. It was a foretaste of the ultimate doom of
+the kingdom of evil amongst men; and through it Christ appears to have
+looked forward to the end of the world. Already “the days are evil” (v.
+16); and “the evil day” is at hand--a time of terror and despair for all
+who have not a firm faith in the kingdom of God.
+
+Two chief characteristics marked this crisis, as it affected the people
+of Christ: _persecution from without_, and _apostasy within the Church_
+(Matt. xxiv. 5, 8-12). To the latter feature St Paul refers
+elsewhere.[170] Of persecution he took less account, for this was indeed
+his ordinary lot, and had already visited his Churches; but it was
+afterwards to assume a more violent and appalling form.
+
+When we turn to the epistle to the Seven Churches (Rev. ii., iii.)
+written in the next ensuing period, we find a fierce battle raging,
+resembling that for which this letter warns the Asian Churches to
+prepare. The storm which our apostle foresees, had then burst. The
+message addressed to each Church concludes with a promise to “him that
+overcometh.” To the faithful it is said: “I know thy endurance.” The
+angel of the Church of Pergamum dwells where is “the throne of Satan,”
+and where “Antipas the faithful martyr was killed.” There also, says the
+Lord Jesus, “are those who hold the teaching of Balaam, and the teaching
+of the Nicolaitans,” with whom “I will make war with the sword of my
+mouth” (comp. Eph. vi. 17). Laodicea has shrunk from the trial, and
+grown rich by the world’s friendship. Thyatira “suffers the woman
+Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce” the
+servants of Christ. Sardis has but “a few names that have not defiled
+their garments.” Even Ephesus, though she had tried the false teachers
+and found them wanting (surely Paul’s epistles to Timothy had helped her
+in this examination), has yet “left her first love.” The day of trial
+has proved an evil day to these Churches. Satan has been allowed to sift
+them; and while some good wheat remains, much of the faith of the
+numerous and prosperous communities of the province of Asia has turned
+out to be faulty and vain. The presentiments that weighed on St Paul’s
+mind when four years ago he took leave of the Ephesian elders at
+Miletus, and which reappear in this passage, were only too well
+justified by the course of events. Indeed, the history of the Church in
+this region has been altogether mournful and admonitory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it is time to look at the _armour_ in which St Paul bids his readers
+equip themselves against the evil day. It consists of seven weapons,
+offensive or defensive--if we count prayer amongst them: the _girdle of
+truth_, the _breastplate of righteousness_, the _shoes of readiness to
+bear the message of peace_, the _shield of faith_, the _helmet of
+salvation_, the _sword of the word_, and the continual _cry of prayer_.
+
+1. In girding himself for the field, the first thing the soldier does is
+to fasten round his waist the military _belt_. With this he binds in his
+under-garments, that there may be nothing loose or trailing about him,
+and braces up his limbs for action. Peace admits of relaxation. The
+girdle is unclasped; the muscles are unstrung. But everything about the
+warrior is tense and firm; his dress, his figure and movements speak of
+decision and concentrated energy. He stands before us an image of
+resolute conviction, of _a mind made up_. Such a picture the words “girt
+about with truth” convey to us.
+
+The epistle is pervaded by the sense of the Church’s need of
+intellectual conviction. Many of the Asian believers were children,
+half-enlightened and irresolute, ready to be “tossed to and fro and
+carried about with every wind of doctrine” (iv. 14). They had “heard the
+truth as it is in Jesus,” but had an imperfect comprehension of its
+meaning.[171] They required to add to their faith knowledge,--the
+knowledge won by searching thought respecting the great truths of
+religion, by a thorough mental appropriation of the things revealed to
+us in Christ. Only by such a process can truth brace the mind and knit
+its powers together in “the full assurance of the understanding in the
+knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ” (Col. ii, 2, 3).
+
+Such is the faith needed by the Church, now as then, the faith of an
+intelligent, firm and manly assurance. There is in such faith a security
+and a vigour of action that the faith of mere sentiment and emotional
+impression, with its nerveless grasp, its hectic and impulsive fervours,
+cannot impart. The luxury of agnosticism, the languors of doubt, the
+vague sympathies and hesitant eclecticism in which delicate and cultured
+minds are apt to indulge; the lofty critical attitude, as of some
+intellectual god sitting above the strife of creeds, which others find
+congenial--these are conditions of mind unfit for the soldier of Christ
+Jesus. He must have sure knowledge, definite and decided purposes--a
+soul girdled with truth.
+
+2. Having girt his loins, the soldier next fastens on his _breastplate_,
+or cuirass.
+
+This is the chief piece of his defensive armour; it protects the vital
+organs. In the picture drawn in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, the breastplate is
+made “of faith and love.” In this more detailed representation, faith
+becomes the outlying defensive “shield,” while righteousness serves for
+the innermost defence, the rampart of the heart. But, in truth, the
+Christian righteousness is compounded of faith and love.
+
+This attribute must be understood in its full Pauline meaning. It is the
+state of one who is right with God and with God’s law. It is the
+righteousness both of standing and of character, of imputation and of
+impartation, which begins with justification and continues in the new,
+obedient life of the believer. These are never separate, in the true
+doctrine of grace. “The righteousness that is of God by faith,” is the
+soul’s main defence against the shafts of Satan. It wards off deadly
+blows, both from this side and from that. Does the enemy bring up
+against me my old sins? I can say: “It is God that justifieth; who is he
+that condemneth?”--Am I tempted to presume on my forgiveness, and to
+fall into transgression once more? From this breastplate the arrow of
+temptation falls pointless, as it resounds: “He that doeth righteousness
+is righteous. He that is born of God doth not commit sin.” The
+completeness of pardon for past offence and the integrity of character
+that belong to the justified life, are woven together into an
+impenetrable mail.
+
+3. Now the soldier, having girt his loins and guarded his breast, must
+look well to his feet. There are lying ready for him _shoes_ of wondrous
+make.
+
+What is the quality most needed in the soldier’s shoes? Some say, it is
+_firmness_; and they so translate the Greek word employed by the
+apostle, occurring only here in the New Testament, which in certain
+passages of the Septuagint seems to acquire this sense, under the
+influence of Hebrew idiom.[172] But firmness was embodied in the girdle.
+_Expedition_ belongs to the shoes. The soldier is so shod that he may
+move with alertness over all sorts of ground.
+
+Thus shod with speed and willingness were “the beautiful feet” of those
+that brought over desert and mountain “the good tidings of peace,” the
+news of Israel’s return to Zion (Isai. lii. 7-9). With such swift
+strength were the feet of our apostle shod, when “from Jerusalem round
+about unto Illyricum” he had “fulfilled the gospel of Christ,” and is
+“ready,” as he says, “to preach the glad tidings to you also that are in
+Rome” (Rom. i. 15). This readiness belonged to His own holy feet, who
+“came and preached peace to the far off and the near” (ii. 17),--when,
+for example, sitting a weary traveller by the well-side at Sychar, He
+found refreshment in revealing to the woman of Samaria the fountain of
+living water. Such readiness befits His servants, who have heard from
+Him the message of salvation and are sent to proclaim it everywhere.
+
+The girdle and breastplate look to one’s own safety. They must be
+supplemented by the evangelic zeal inseparable from the spirit of
+Christ. This is, moreover, a safeguard of Church life. Von Hofmann says
+admirably upon this point: “The objection [brought against the above
+interpretation] that the apostle is addressing the faithful at large,
+who are not all of them called to preach the gospel, is mistaken. Every
+believer should be prepared to witness for Christ so often as
+opportunity affords, and needs a _readiness_ thereto. The knowledge of
+Christ’s peace qualifies him to convey its message. He brings it with
+him into the strife of the world. And it is the consciousness that he
+possesses himself such peace and has it to communicate to others, which
+enables him to walk firmly and with sure step in the way of faith.” When
+we are bidden to “_stand_ in the evil day,” that does not mean to stand
+idle or content to hold our ground. Attack is often the best mode of
+defence. We keep our faith by spreading it. We defend ourselves from our
+opponents by converting them to the gospel, which breathes everywhere
+reconciliation and fraternity. Our Foreign Missions are our grand modern
+apologetic; and God’s peacemakers are His mightiest warriors.
+
+4. With his body girt and fenced and his feet clad with the gospel
+shoes, the soldier reaches out his left hand to “take up withal the
+_shield_,” while his right hand grasps first the helmet which he places
+on his head, and then the sword that is offered to him in the word of
+God.
+
+The shield signified is not the small round buckler, or target, of the
+light-armed man; but the door-like shield,[173] measuring four feet by
+two-and-a-half and rounded to the shape of the body, that the Greek
+hoplite and the Roman legionary carried. Joined together, these large
+shields formed a wall, behind which a body of troops could hide
+themselves from the rain of the enemy’s missiles. Such is the office of
+faith in the conflicts of life: it is the soldier’s main defence, the
+common bulwark of the Church. Like the city’s outer wall, faith bears
+the brunt and onset of all hostility. On this shield of faith the darts
+of Satan are caught, their point broken and their fire quenched. These
+military shields were made of wood, covered on the outside with thick
+leather, which not only deadened the shock of the missile, but protected
+the frame of the shield from the “fire-tipped darts” that were used in
+the artillery of the ancients. These flaming arrows, armed with some
+quickly burning and light combustible, if they failed to pierce the
+warrior’s shield, fell in a moment extinguished at his feet.
+
+St Paul can scarcely mean by his “fiery darts” incitements to passion in
+ourselves, inflammatory temptations that seek to rouse the inward fires
+of anger or lust. For these missiles are “fire-pointed darts _of the
+Evil One_.” The fire belongs to the enemy who shoots the dart. It
+signifies the malignant hate with which Satan hurls slanders and threats
+against the people of God through his human instruments. A bold faith
+wards off and quenches this fire even at a distance, so that the soul
+never feels its heat. The heart’s confidence is unmoved and the Church’s
+songs of praise are undisturbed, while persecution rages and the enemies
+of Christ gnash their teeth against her. Such a shield to him was the
+faith of Stephen the proto-martyr.
+
+    “I heard the defaming of many; there was terror on every side.
+    But I trusted in Thee, O Jehovah: I said, Thou art my God!”
+
+To “take up the shield of faith,” is it not, like the Psalmist, to meet
+injuries and threats, the boasts of unbelief and of worldly power, the
+poisoned arrows of the deceitful and the bitter words of unjust
+reproach, with faith’s quiet counter-assertion? “Who shall separate us
+from the love of Christ?” says the apostle in the midst of tribulation.
+“God is my witness, whom I serve in the gospel of His Son,” he answers
+when his fidelity is questioned. No shaft of malice, no arrow of fear
+can pierce the soul that holds such a shield.
+
+5. At this point (ver. 17), when the sentence beginning at verse 14 has
+drawn itself out to such length, and the relative clause of verse 16_b_
+makes a break and eddy in the current of thought, the writer pauses for
+a moment. He resumes the exhortation in a form slightly changed and with
+rising emphasis, passing from the participle to the finite verb: “And
+take _the helmet of salvation_.”
+
+The word _take_, in the original, differs from the _taking up_ of verses
+13 and 16. It signifies the _accepting_ of something offered by the hand
+of another. So the Thessalonians “_accepted_ the word” brought them by
+St Paul (1 Thess. i. 6) and Titus “_accepted_ the consolation” given him
+by the Corinthians (2 Cor. viii. 17)--in each case a welcome gift. God’s
+hand is stretched out to bestow on His chosen warrior the helmet of
+salvation and the sword of His word, to complete his equipment for the
+perilous field. We accept these gifts with devout gratitude, knowing
+from what source they come and where the heavenly arms were fashioned.
+
+The “helmet of salvation” is worn by the Lord Himself, as He is depicted
+by the prophet coming to the succour of His people (Isai. lix. 17). This
+helmet, on the head of Jehovah, is the crest and badge of their Divine
+champion. Given to the human warrior, it becomes the sign of his
+protection by God. The apostle does not call it “the _hope_ of
+salvation,” as he does in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, thinking of the
+believer’s assurance of victory in the last struggle. Nor is it the
+sense and assurance of past salvation that here guards the Christian
+soldier. The presence of his Saviour and God in itself constitutes his
+highest safeguard.
+
+    “O Jehovah my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
+    Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle.”
+
+The warrior’s head rising above his shield was frequently open to
+attack. The arrow might shoot over the shield’s edge, and inflict a
+mortal blow. Our faith, at the best, has its deficiencies and its
+limits; but God’s salvation reaches beyond our highest confidence in
+Him. His overshadowing presence is the crown of our salvation, His love
+its shining crest.
+
+Thus the equipment of Christ’s soldier is complete; and he is arrayed in
+the full armour of light. His loins girt with truth, his breast clad
+with righteousness, his feet shod with zeal, his head crowned with
+safety, while faith’s all-encompassing shield is cast about him, he
+steps forth to do battle with the powers of darkness, “strong in the
+Lord, and in the might of His strength.”
+
+6. It only remains that “the _sword_ of the Spirit” be put into his
+right hand, while his lips are open in continual prayer to the God of
+his strength.
+
+The “cleansing word” of chapter v. 26, by whose virtue we passed through
+the gate of baptism into the flock of Christ, now becomes the guarding
+and smiting word, to be used in conflict with our spiritual foes. Of the
+Messiah it was said, in language quoted by the apostle against
+Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 8): “He shall smite the earth with the rod of
+His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked”
+(Isai. xi. 4). Similarly, in Hosea the Lord tells how He has “hewed” the
+unfaithful “by His prophets, and slain them by the words of His mouth”
+(Hos. vi. 5). From such sayings of the Old Testament the idea of the
+sword of the Divine word is derived. We find it again in Hebrews iv. 12:
+“The word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword”;
+and in the “sword, two-edged, sharp,” which John in the Revelation saw
+“coming out of the mouth of the Son of man”: it belongs to Him whose
+name is “the word of God,” and with it “He shall smite the
+nations.”[174]
+
+This sword of the inspired word Paul himself wielded with supernatural
+effect, as when he rebuked Elymas the sorcerer, or when he defended his
+gospel against the Judaizers of Galatia and Corinth. In his hand it was
+even as
+
+                      “The sword
+    Of Michael, from the armoury of God,
+        ... tempered so that neither keen
+    Nor solid might resist that edge.”
+
+With what piercing reproofs, what keen thrusts of argument, what
+double-edged irony and dexterous sword-play did this mighty combatant
+smite the enemies of the cross of Christ! In times of conflict never may
+such leaders be wanting to the Church, men using weapons of warfare not
+carnal, but mighty to “cast down strongholds,” to “bring down every high
+thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and make captive
+every thought to Christ’s obedience.”
+
+In her struggle with the world’s gigantic lusts and tyrannies, the
+Israel of God must be armed with this lofty and lightning-like power,
+with the flaming sword of the Spirit. No less in the secret, internal
+conflicts of the religious life, the sword of the word is the decisive
+weapon. The Son of man put it to proof in His combat in the wilderness.
+Satan himself sought to wrest this instrument to his purpose. With pious
+texts in his mouth he addressed our Lord, like an angel of light, fain
+to deceive Him by the very Scripture He had Himself inspired! until,
+with the last thrust of quotation, Jesus unmasked the tempter and drove
+him from the field, saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
+
+7. We have surveyed the Christian soldier with his harness on. From head
+to foot he is clothed in arms supernatural. No weapon of defence or
+offence is lacking, that the spiritual combat needs. Nothing seems to be
+wanting: yet everything is wanting, if this be all. Our text began: “Be
+strong in the Lord.” It is _prayer_ that links the believer with the
+strength of God.
+
+What avails Michael’s sword, if the hand that holds it is slack and
+listless? what the panoply of God, if behind it beats a craven heart? He
+is but a soldier in semblance who wears arms without the courage and the
+strength to use them. The life that is to animate that armed figure, to
+beat with high resolve beneath the corslet, to nerve the arm as it lifts
+the strong shield and plies the sharp sword, to set the swift feet
+moving on their gospel errands, to weld the Church together into one
+army of the living God, comes from the inspiration of God’s Spirit
+received in answer to believing prayer. So the apostle adds: “With all
+prayer and supplication praying at every time in the Spirit.”
+
+There is here no needless repetition. “Prayer” is the universal word for
+reverent address to God; and “supplication” the entreaty for such help
+as “on every occasion”--at each turn of the battle, in each emergency of
+life--we find ourselves to need. And Christian prayer is always “in the
+Spirit,”--being offered in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, who
+is the element of the believer’s life in Christ, who helps our
+infirmities and, virtually, intercedes for us (Rom. viii. 26, 27). When
+the apostle continues, “_watching_ [or _keeping awake_] thereunto,” he
+reminds us, as perhaps he was thinking himself, of our Lord’s warning to
+the disciples sleeping in Gethsemane: “Watch and pray, lest ye enter
+into temptation.” The “perseverance” he requires in this wakeful
+attention to prayer, is the resolute persistence of the suppliant, who
+will neither be daunted by opposition nor wearied by delay.[175]
+
+The word “supplication” is resumed at the end of verse 18, in order to
+enlist the prayers of the readers for the service of the Church at
+large: “with wakeful heed thereto, in all persistence and _supplication
+for all the saints_.” Prayer for ourselves must broaden out into a
+catholic intercession for all the servants of our Master, for all the
+children of the household of faith. By the bands of prayer we are knit
+together,--a vast multitude of saints throughout the earth, unknown by
+face or name to our fellows, but one in the love of Christ and in our
+heavenly calling, and all engaged in the same perilous conflict.
+
+“All the saints,” St Paul said (i. 15), were interested in the faith of
+the Asian believers; they were called “with all the saints” to share in
+the comprehension of the immense designs of God’s kingdom (iii. 18).
+The dangers and temptations of the Church are equally far-reaching; they
+have a common origin and character in all Christian communities. Let our
+prayers, at least, be catholic. At the throne of grace, let us forget
+our sectarian divisions. Having access in one Spirit to the Father, let
+us realize in His presence our communion with all His children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[168] Comp. Rom. viii. 37, xvi. 20. _To bring down_, _overpower_,
+_conquer_ is the military sense of κατεργάζομαι,--not found elsewhere in
+the New Testament, but, as it seems to us, unmistakable here. It occurs
+in Ezek. xxxiv. 4 (LXX), and 1 Esdr. iv. 4.
+
+[169] Col. i. 23, ii. 5; Phil. i. 27-30, iv. 1: comp. 1 Thess. v. 8;
+Rom. xiii. 11-14; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; 2 Cor. x. 3-6.
+
+[170] 2 Thess. ii. 3; Acts xx. 29, 30; 1 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iii. 1.
+
+[171] Ch. 1. 17-23, iii. 16-19, iv. 13-15, 20-24.
+
+[172] Ἑτοιμασία is adopted by the Greek translators as the equivalent of
+the Hebrew word for _foundation_, or _base_, in Ps. lxxxix. 14; Ezra ii.
+68, iii. 3; Dan. xi. 7, 20, 21. See, however, the note of Meyer, who
+thinks that they misunderstood the Hebrew.
+
+[173] Θυρεός: Latin _scutum_; only here in N.T.
+
+[174] Rev. i. 16, ii. 12, xix. 13-15.
+
+[175] Ἐν πάσῃ προσκαρτερήσει: _in every kind of persistence_,--a
+perseverance that tries all arts and holds its ground at every point.
+The verb προσκαρτερέω appears in the parallel passages: Col. iv. 2; Rom.
+xii. 12; also in Acts i. 14.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONCLUSION.
+
+CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    Πέπεισμαι γὰρ ὅτι οὔτε θάνατος οὔτε ζωὴ οὔτε ἄγγελοι οὔτε ἀρχαὶ οὔτε
+    ἐνεστῶτα οὔτε μέλλοντα οὔτε δυνάμεις οὔτε ὕψωμα οὔτε βάθος οὔτε τις
+    κτίσις ἑτέρα δυνήσεται ἡμᾶς χωρίσαι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ Θεοῦ τῆς ἐν
+    Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν--ROM. viii. 38, 39.
+
+    “Love for Christ is immortal.”--R. W. DALE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+_REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION._
+
+    “And [pray] on my behalf, that the word may be given unto me in
+    opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the
+    gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may
+    speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
+
+    “But that ye also may know my affairs, how I do, Tychicus, the
+    beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known
+    to you all things: whom I have sent unto you for this very purpose,
+    that ye may know our state, and that he may comfort your
+    hearts.”--EPH. vi. 19-22.
+
+
+The apostle has bidden his readers apply themselves with wakeful and
+incessant earnestness to prayer (ver. 18). For this is, after all, the
+chief arm of the spiritual combat. By this means the soul draws
+reinforcements of mercy and hope from the eternal sources (ver. 10). By
+this means the Asian Christians will be able not only to carry on their
+own conflict with vigour, but to help all the saints (ver. 18); and
+through their aid the whole Church of God will be sustained in its war
+with the prince of this world.
+
+The apostle Paul himself stood in the forefront of this battle. He was
+suffering for the cause of common Christendom; he was a mark for the
+attack of the enemies of the gospel.[176] On him, more than on any other
+man, the safety and progress of the Church depended (Phil. i. 25). In
+this position he naturally says: “Watching unto prayer in all
+perseverance and supplication for all the saints--_and for me_.” If his
+heart should fail him, or his mouth be closed, if the word of
+inspiration ceased to be given him and the great teacher of the Gentiles
+in faith and truth no longer spoke as he ought to speak, it would be a
+heavy blow and sore discouragement to the friends of Christ throughout
+the world. “My afflictions are your glory (iii. 13). My unworthy
+testimony to Christ is showing forth His praise to all men and
+angels.[177] Pray for me then, that I may speak and act in this hour of
+trial in a manner worthy of the dispensation given to me.”
+
+Strong and confident as the apostle Paul was, he felt himself to be
+nothing without prayer. It is his habit to expect the support of the
+intercessions of all who love him in Christ.[178] He knew that he was
+helped by this means, on numberless occasions and in wonderful ways. He
+asks his present readers to entreat that “the word[179] may be given me
+when I open my mouth, so that I may freely make known the mystery of the
+gospel, on which behalf I serve as ambassador in bonds, that in it I may
+speak freely, as I ought to speak.” This sentence hangs upon the verb
+“may-be-given.” Jesus said to His apostles: “It shall be _given_ you in
+that hour what you shall speak, when brought before rulers and kings”
+(Matt x. 18-20). The apostle stands now before the Roman world. He has
+appealed to Cæsar, and awaits his trial. If he has not yet appeared at
+the Emperor’s tribunal, he will shortly have to do so. Christ’s
+ambassador is about to plead in chains before the highest of human
+courts. It is not his own life or freedom that he is concerned about;
+the ambassador has only to consider how he shall represent his
+Sovereign’s interests. The importance which Paul attached to this
+occasion, is manifest from the words written to Timothy (2 Ep. iv. 17)
+referring to his later trial. St Paul has this special need in his
+thoughts, in addition to the help from above continually required in the
+discharge of his ministry, under the hampering conditions of his
+imprisonment (comp. Col. iv. 3, 4).
+
+The Church must entreat on Paul’s behalf that the word he utters may be
+God’s, and not his own. It is in vain to “open the mouth,” unless there
+is this higher prompting and through the gates of speech there issues a
+Divine message, unless the speaker is the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit
+rather than of his individual thought and will. “The words that I speak
+unto you,” Jesus said, “I speak not of myself.” The bold apostle intends
+to open his mouth; but he must have the true “word given” him to say. We
+should pray for Christ’s ambassadors, and especially for the more public
+and eloquent pleaders of the Christian cause, that it may be thus with
+them. Rash and vain words, that bear the stamp of the mere man who
+utters them and not of the Spirit of his Master, do a hurt to the cause
+of the gospel proportioned to the blessing that comes from such lips
+when they speak the word given to them.
+
+Such inspiration would enable the apostle to “make known the mystery of
+the gospel _with freedom and confidence of speech_”: the expression
+rendered “with boldness”[180] means all this. Before the emperor Nero,
+or the slave Onesimus, he will be able with the same aptness and dignity
+and self-command to declare his message and to vindicate his Master’s
+name. “The mystery of the gospel” is no other secret than that which
+this epistle unfolds (iii. 3-9), the great fact that Jesus Christ is the
+Saviour and the Lord of the whole world. Jesus proclaimed Himself to
+Pilate, who represented at Jerusalem the imperial rule, as the King of
+all who are of the truth; and the apostle Paul has the like message to
+convey to the head of the Empire. It needed the greatest boldness and
+the greatest wisdom in the ambassador of the Messianic King to play his
+part at Rome; an unwise word might make his own life forfeit, and bring
+incalculable dangers on the Church.
+
+St Paul’s trial, we suppose, passed off successfully, as he at this time
+anticipated.[181] The Roman government was perfectly aware that the
+political charge against their prisoner was frivolous; and Nero, if he
+personally gave Paul a hearing on this earlier trial, in all probability
+viewed his spiritual pretensions on his Master’s behalf with
+contemptuous tolerance. If he did so, the toleration was not due to any
+want of courage or clearness on the defendant’s part. It is possible
+even that the courage and address of the advocate of the “new
+superstition” pleased the tyrant, who was not without his moments of
+good humour nor without the instincts of a man of taste. The apostle, we
+may well believe, made an impression on the supreme court at Rome
+similar to that made on his judges in Cæsarea.
+
+St Paul’s bonds in Christ have now become widely “manifest” in Rome
+(Phil. i. 13). He pleads in circumstances of disgrace. But God brings
+good for His servants out of evil. As he said at a later time, so he
+could say now: “They have bound me; but they cannot bind the word of
+God.”[182] He was “not ashamed of the gospel” in the prospect of coming
+to Rome years before (Rom. i. 16); and he is not ashamed now, though he
+has come in chains as an evil-doer. Through the intercessions of
+Christ’s people all these injuries of Satan are turning to his salvation
+and to the “furtherance of the gospel”; and Paul rejoices and triumphs
+in them, well assured that Christ will be magnified whether by his life
+or death, whether by his freedom or his chains (Phil. i. 12-26). The
+prayers which the imprisoned apostle asks from the Church were
+fulfilled. For we read in the last verses of the Acts of the Apostles,
+which put into a sentence the history of this period: “He received all
+that came to him, preaching the kingdom and teaching the things
+concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, _with all boldness_, none forbidding
+him.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The paragraph relating to Tychicus is almost identical with that of
+Colossians iv. 7, 8. It begins with a “But” connecting what follows with
+the statement the apostle has just made respecting his position at Rome.
+As much as to say: “I want your prayers, set as I am for the defence of
+the gospel and in circumstances of difficulty and peril. But Tychicus
+will tell you more about me than I can convey by letter. I am sending
+him, in fact, for this very purpose.”
+
+St Paul knew the great anxiety of the Christians of Asia on his account.
+Epaphras of Colossæ had “shown him the love in the Spirit” that was
+felt towards him even by those in this region who had never seen him in
+the flesh (Col. i. 8). The tender heart of the apostle is touched by
+this assurance. So he sends Tychicus to visit as many of the Asian
+Churches as he may be able to reach, bringing news that will cheer their
+hearts and relieve their discouragement (iii. 13).[183] The note sent at
+this time to Philemon indicates the hopeful tidings that Tychicus was
+able to convey to Paul’s friends in the East: “I trust that through your
+prayers I shall be given to you” (Philem. 22). To the Philippians he
+writes, perhaps a little later, in the same strain: “I trust in the Lord
+that I myself shall come shortly” (Phil. ii. 24). He anticipates, with
+some confidence, his speedy acquital and release: it is not likely that
+this expectation, on the part of such a man as St Paul, was
+disappointed. The good news went round the Asian and Macedonian
+Churches: “Paul is likely soon to be free, and we shall see and hear him
+again!”
+
+In the parallel epistle he writes, “that you may know” (Col. iv. 8);
+here it is, “that you _also_ may know my affairs.” The added word is
+significant. The writer is imagining his letter read in the various
+assemblies which it will reach. He has the other epistle in his mind,
+and remembering that he there introduced Tychicus in similar terms, he
+says to this wider circle of Asian disciples: “That you also, as well as
+the Churches of the Lycus valley, may know how things are with me, I
+send Tychicus to give you a full report.” It is not necessary, however,
+to look beyond the last two verses for the reference of the _also_ of
+verse 21: “I have asked your prayers on my behalf; and I wish you in
+turn to know how things go with me.” Possibly, there were some matters
+connected with St Paul’s trial at Rome that could not be fitly or safely
+communicated by letter. Hence he adds: “He shall make known unto you all
+things.” When he writes “that ye may know my affairs, how I do,” we
+gather that Tychicus was to communicate to those he visited everything
+about the beloved apostle that would be of interest to his Asian
+brethren.
+
+The apostle commends Tychicus in language identical in the two letters,
+except that in Colossians “fellow-servant” is added to the honourable
+designations of “beloved brother and faithful minister,” under which he
+is here introduced. We find him first associated with St Paul in Acts
+xx. 4, where “Tychicus and Trophimus” represent Asia in the number of
+those who accompanied the apostle on his voyage to Jerusalem, when he
+carried the contributions of his Gentile Churches to the relief of the
+Christian poor in Jerusalem. Trophimus, his companion, is called a
+“Greek” and an “Ephesian” (Acts xxi. 28, 29). Whether Tychicus belonged
+to the same city or not, we cannot tell. He was almost certainly a
+Greek. The Pastoral epistles show Tychicus still in the apostle’s
+service in his last years. He appears to have joined St Paul’s staff and
+remained with him from the time that he accompanied him to Jerusalem in
+the year 59. From 2 Timothy iv 9-12 we gather that Tychicus was sent to
+Ephesus to relieve Timothy, when St Paul desired the presence of the
+latter at Rome. It is evident that he was a man greatly valued by the
+apostle and endeared to him.
+
+Tychicus was well known in the Asian Churches, and suitable therefore to
+be sent upon this errand. And the commendation given to him would be
+very welcome to the circle to which he belonged. The apostle has great
+tact in these personal matters, the tact which belongs to delicate
+feeling and a generous mind. He calls his messenger “the beloved
+brother” in his relation to the Church in general, and “faithful
+minister in the Lord” in his special relation to himself. So he
+describes Epaphroditus to the Philippians as “your apostle and minister
+of my need.” In conveying these letters and messages, this worthy man
+was Paul’s apostle and minister of his need in regard to the Asian
+Churches. He is a “_minister in the Lord_,” inasmuch as this office lies
+within the range of his service to the Lord Christ.
+
+We observe that in writing to the Colossians the apostle applies to
+Onesimus, the converted slave, the honourable epithets applied here to
+this long-tried friend: “the faithful and beloved brother” (Col. iv. 9).
+Every Christian believer should be in the eyes of his fellows a “beloved
+brother.” And every true servant of Christ and His people is a “faithful
+minister in the Lord,” be his rank high or low, and whether official
+hands have been laid upon his head or not. We are apt, by a trick of
+words, to limit to the order which we suitably call “the ministry”
+expressions that the New Testament applies to the common ministry of
+Christ’s saints (comp. iv. 12). This devoted servant of Christ is
+employed just now as a newsman and letter-carrier. But what a high
+responsibility it was, to be the bearer to the Asian cities, and to the
+Church for all time, of the epistles of Paul the apostle to the
+Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon. Had Tychicus been careless or
+dishonest, had he lost these precious documents or tampered with them,
+how great the loss to mankind! We cannot read them without feeling our
+debt to this beloved brother and faithful servant of the Church. Those
+who travel upon Christ’s business, who link distant communities to each
+other and convey from one to another the Holy Spirit’s fellowship and
+grace, are “the messengers of the Churches and the glory of Christ” (2
+Cor. viii. 23).
+
+
+THE BENEDICTION.
+
+    “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith,
+      From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
+    Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ
+                                In incorruption” (vv. 23, 24).
+
+Grace and Peace were the first words of the epistle,--the apostle’s
+salutation to all his Churches. In _Peace and Grace_ he breathes out his
+final blessing. The benediction is fuller than in most of the epistles,
+and exhibits several peculiar features.
+
+To the Thessalonians (2 Ep. iii. 16) St Paul wished: “Peace continually,
+in all ways, from the Lord of peace Himself”; and he commends the Romans
+twice to “the God of peace” (ch. xv. 33, xvi. 20): the Corinthians he
+bids to “live in peace,” so that “the God of love and peace” may be with
+them (2 Cor. xiii. 11). There is nothing in the least degree strange or
+un-Pauline in the wishes here expressed, except the fact that they are
+put in the third person--“_Peace to the brethren_,” etc.--instead of
+being addressed directly to the readers in the second person, as in all
+other of the apostle’s extant closing benedictions. This peculiarity, as
+we observed in the first Chapter, is in accordance with the encyclical
+and impersonal stamp of the epistle.[184] It is Paul’s most catholic
+benediction, his blessing upon “all the Israel of God” (comp. Gal. vi.
+16).
+
+“With faith,” that “love” is desired whereby, according to the Pauline
+ethics of salvation, faith works (Gal. v. 6), the love which as a
+vitalizing organic force creates the new man, formed in all his doings
+and dispositions after the image of Jesus Christ. From chapter iv. 1-3
+we have learnt how “peace” and “love” attend each other. Love is the
+source of the forbearance, the mutual consideration and self-sacrifice,
+without which there is no peace within the Church. Peace springs from
+love: love waits on faith. Amongst brethren in Christ, members of the
+same household of faith, peace and love have their home. These are the
+sons of peace: with good will and good hope, entering or quitting their
+abode, we say, “Peace be to this house!”
+
+The peace that the apostle looks for amongst Christian brethren is the
+fruit of peace with God through Christ. Such “peace guarding the
+thoughts and heart” of each Christian man, nothing contrary thereto will
+arise amongst them. Calm and quiet hearts make a peaceful Church. There
+are no clashing interests, no selfish competitions, no strife as to who
+shall be greatest. Differences of opinion and taste are kept within the
+bounds of mutual submission. The awe of God’s presence with His people,
+the remembrance of the dear price at which His Church was purchased, the
+sense of Christ’s Lordship in the Spirit and of the sacredness of our
+brotherhood in Him, check all turbulence and rivalry and teach us to
+seek the things that make for peace.
+
+“Peace _and love_,” the apostle desires. Love includes peace, and more;
+for it labours not to prevent contention only, but to help and enrich in
+all ways the body of Christ. By such “toil of love” faith is made
+complete. We are bidden indeed, in certain matters, to “have faith to
+ourselves before God” (Rom. xiv. 22). This maxim holds where one has a
+special faith in regard to such things as eating flesh or drinking wine,
+in which any one of us may without offence differ from his brethren. But
+it is a poor faith that dwells upon questions of this nature, and makes
+its religion of them. The essentials of faith, as we saw them delineated
+in chapter iv. 1-6, are things that unite and not distinguish us.
+
+As faith grows and deepens, it makes new channels in which love may
+flow. “We are bound to thank God always for you,” writes St Paul to the
+Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 3), “for that your faith groweth exceedingly,
+and the love of each one of you all toward one another multiplieth.”
+This is the sound and true growth of faith. Where an intenser faith
+makes men disputatious and exclusive; where it fails to breed meekness
+and courtesy, we cannot but suspect its quality. Such faith may be
+sincere; but it is mixed with a lamentable ignorance, and a resistance
+to the Holy Spirit that is likely to end in grave offence. “Contending
+earnestly for the faith” does not mean contending angrily, with the
+weapons of satire and censoriousness. It is well to remember that we are
+not the judges of our brethren. There are many questions raised and
+discussed amongst us, which we may safely leave to the judgement of the
+last day. It is too easy to fill the air with matters of contention, and
+to excite a sore and suspicious temper destructive of peace, and in
+which nothing but fault-finding will flourish. If we must contend, we
+may surely debate quietly on secondary matters, while we are one in
+Christ. If we have not _love with faith_, our faith is worthless (1 Cor.
+xiii. 2).
+
+Deep beneath the peace that dwells in the Church and the love that
+fills each believer’s heart, is the eternal fountain of _grace_. “Grace
+be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ,” says the apostle.
+Grace is theirs already; and they desire nothing so much as its
+increase. Their love to Christ is the fruit of the grace of God that is
+with them. This wish includes all good wishes; it surpasses both our
+deservings and desires. All that God prepared for us in His eternal
+counsels, and that Christ purchased by His redeeming love, all of good
+that our nature can receive now and for ever, is embraced in this one
+word: _Grace be with you._
+
+“With all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul says; for it is to
+lovers of Christ that God gives the continuance of His grace. If our
+love to Christ fails, grace leaves us. God cannot look with favour upon
+the man who has no love to His Son Jesus Christ. In giving his blessing
+to the Corinthians, St Paul was compelled to write with his own hand:
+“If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema.” The blessing
+involves the anathema. God’s love is not a love of indifference, an
+indiscriminate, immoral affection. It is a love of choice and
+predilection--“If any man love me,” said Jesus, “my Father will love
+him.” Is not the condition reasonable,--and the inference inevitable?
+The Father cannot grant His grace to those who have seen and hated Him
+in His Son and image. By that hatred they refuse His grace, and cast it
+from them.
+
+On the other hand, a sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ opens the
+heart to all the rich and purifying influences of Divine grace. The
+sinful woman, stained with false and foul love, who washed the Saviour’s
+feet with her tears, attained in that act to a height of purity
+undreamed of by the virtuous Pharisee. This new and holy flame burns
+out impure passion from the soul: it kindles lofty thoughts; it makes
+crooked natures straight, and timid and weak natures brave and strong.
+“To them that love God, we know, all things work together for good.” To
+them that love Christ, all things contribute blessing; all conditions
+and events of life become means of grace. If we love Christ, we shall
+love His people,--the Church, the bride of Christ from whom He will
+never be parted in our thoughts. If we love Christ, we shall love the
+work He has laid upon us, and the word He has taught us, and the
+sacramental pledges He has given us in remembrance of Him and assurance
+of His coming. If we love Him, we shall “keep His commandments,” and He
+will keep His promise to send us the “other Helper, to be with us for
+ever, even the Spirit of truth.” The gift of the Holy Spirit is the
+all-sufficiency of grace.[185] Here is the innermost sanctuary of our
+religion, the fountain and beginning of the soul’s eternal life,--in the
+love which joins it to the Lord in one spirit.
+
+_In incorruption_ is the last and sealing word of this letter, which we
+have been so long studying together. It “stands as the crown and climax
+of this glorious epistle” (Alford). Like so many other words of the
+epistle, at first sight its interpretation is not clear. The apostle has
+used the term in several other passages, as synonymous with
+_immortality_[186] and denoting the state of the blessed after the
+resurrection, when they will stand before God complete in body and in
+spirit, with all that is mortal in them swallowed up of life--“raised in
+incorruption.” But there is nothing in this context to lead up to the
+idea of personal, bodily immortality. Those who construe the apostle’s
+words in this sense, place a comma before the final clause and treat it
+as a qualification of the main predicate of the sentence: “Grace be with
+all them that love our Lord,--grace [culminating] in incorruption”--or
+in other words, “grace crowned with glory!” But it must be admitted that
+this is somewhat strained.
+
+The rendering of our ordinary version, “in sincerity” (in the Revised
+rendering, “uncorruptness”), gives an ethical sense to the word that is
+scarcely borne out by usage. It is a different, though kindred
+expression that St Paul employs to express “uncorruptness” in Titus ii.
+7.[187]
+
+It appears to us that the term “incorruption,” in its ordinary
+significance, applies fitly to the believer’s love for the Lord, when
+the word is read in accordance with the symbolism of the epistle. This
+love is the life of the body of Christ. In it lies the Church’s
+immortality. The gates of death prevail not against her, rooted and
+grounded as she is in love to the risen and immortal Christ. “May that
+love be maintained,” the apostle says, “in its deathless power. Let it
+be an unspoilt and unwasting love.”
+
+Of earthly love we often say with sadness:--
+
+    “Space is against thee: it can part!
+    Time is against thee: it can chill!”
+
+Not so with the love of Christ. Neither death nor life parts the soul
+from Him. Our love to the Lord Jesus Christ seats us with Him in the
+heavenly places,--above the realm of decay, above this wasting flesh and
+perishing world.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[176] Col. i. 24--ii. 1; Phil. i. 16.
+
+[177] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 10; Phil. i. 20; 2 Tim. iv. 17.
+
+[178] I Thess. v. 25; 2 Thess. iii. 1; Rom. xv. 30-32; Col. iv. 3, etc.
+
+[179] Out of the instances in which the English Version renders λόγος in
+St Paul by _utterance_, the Revisers have substituted _word_ for
+_utterance_ only in Col. iv. 3. One wishes they had done so throughout.
+For λόγος surely implies the _content_, the _import_ of what is said.
+This passage reminds us of John xvii. 14: “I have given them Thy word”;
+and xiv. 24: “The word which ye hear is not mine, but His.”
+
+[180] Ἐν παρρησίᾳ: comp. iii. 12; Phil. i. 20; Philem. 8; 2 Cor. vii. 4;
+1 Thess. ii. 2, etc.
+
+[181] Phil. i. 25, 26, ii. 23, 24; Philem. 22.
+
+[182] 2 Tim. i. 7-12, ii. 3-10.
+
+[183] Comp. Phil. i. 24-26.
+
+[184] See pp. 13-17.
+
+[185] Ch. i. 14, iv. 30. See Chapter IV., above.
+
+[186] Rom. ii. 7; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 50, 53, 54; 2 Tim. i. 10. See Alford’s
+excellent note on this passage.
+
+[187] Ἀφθορία: ἀφθαρσία is deleted in the critical texts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS (_Expositor’s Bible_). Crown 8vo, cloth.
+
+COMMENTARY ON COLOSSIANS (_Pulpit Commentary_).
+
+COMMENTARY ON I. & II. THESSALONIANS (_Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_).
+
+AN ESSAY ON THE PASTORAL EPISTLES (SABATIER’S _The Apostle Paul_).
+
+THE EPISTLES OF PAUL THE APOSTLE: _a Sketch of their Origin and
+Contents._
+
+
+
+
+THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE.
+
+_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
+
+
+FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
+
+  Colossians.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
+
+  St. Mark.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  Genesis.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  1 Samuel.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  2 Samuel.
+  By the same Author.
+
+  Hebrews.
+  By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
+
+
+SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.
+
+  Galatians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Pastoral Epistles.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Book of Revelation.
+  By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
+
+  1 Corinthians.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  The Epistles of St. John.
+  By Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.
+
+
+THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
+
+  Judges and Ruth.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Jeremiah.
+  By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
+
+  Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  St. Matthew.
+  By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
+
+  Exodus.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  St. Luke.
+  By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
+
+
+FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.
+
+  Ecclesiastes.
+  By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
+
+  St. James and St. Jude.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Proverbs.
+  By Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
+
+  Leviticus.
+  By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+
+FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  1 and 2 Thessalonians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  The Book of Job.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Ephesians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+
+SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
+
+  1 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Philippians.
+  By Principal RAINY, D.D.
+
+  Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Joshua.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Epistles of St. Peter.
+  By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
+
+
+SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
+
+  2 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Romans.
+  By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Books of Chronicles.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  2 Corinthians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  Numbers.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
+
+
+EIGHTH SERIES, 1895-6.
+
+  Daniel.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  The Book of Jeremiah.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  Deuteronomy.
+  By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.
+
+  The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Ezekiel.
+  By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.
+
+  The Book of the  Twelve Prophets.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two Vols.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
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+Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians
+
+Author: G. G. Findlay
+
+Editor: W. Robertson Nicoll
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2012 [EBook #39196]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This e-text is intended for users whose text readers cannot display
+  the Unicode (utf-8) version of the file. Greek words have been
+  transliterated and enclosed in equals signs, e.g. =ho logos=.
+
+  _Italic_ words have been similarly enclosed in underscores.
+
+  As the oe ligature cannot be included in this file format, for
+  consistency both ae and oe ligatures have been replaced with the
+  separate letters throughout. In addition, where a macron is placed
+  above the letter e in the original to represent the Greek letter eta,
+  it is replaced in this version by a circumflex over the e: �.
+
+  A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+
+  The Table of Contents refers to original page numbers.
+
+  All advertising material has been placed at the end of the text.]
+
+
+
+
+         THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
+
+           EDITED BY THE REV.
+    W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
+    _Editor of "The Expositor," etc._
+
+      THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+
+
+                 THE
+       EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+             THIRD EDITION
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+    _Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    _INTRODUCTION._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    CHAPTER I.
+
+    THE WRITER AND READERS.
+                                                                  PAGE
+    Contrast of Galatians and Ephesians--Pauline qualities of
+    Ephesians: intellectual, historical, theological, spiritual,
+    ethical--The Idea of the Church--The Person of
+    Christ--Ephesians and Colossians--Style of
+    Ephesians--Circular Hypothesis--Epistle from
+    Laodicea--Designation of the Readers--Faithful Brethren          3
+
+
+    _PRAISE AND PRAYER._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+    CHAPTER II.
+
+    THE ETERNAL PURPOSE.
+
+    The Apostle's Hymn of Praise--Blessed be God!--Blessing
+    spiritual, heavenly, Christian--In the Beginning the
+    Election of Grace--The World and its Founder--Redemption
+    embedded in Creation--God's prescient
+    Choice--Our Holiness His Purpose--Divine Adoption--Who
+    are the Elect?                                                  21
+
+    CHAPTER III.
+
+    THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE.
+
+    Structure of the Paragraph--Grace an Experience--Christ the
+    Beloved--Forgiveness and its Price--The Value of
+    Forgiveness--Wisdom a Gift of Grace--The Gospel as an
+    intellectual Force--God's Will the Goal of human
+    Thought--Sonship and Heritage--The Fulness of the Times--The
+    Christian Inventory of the Universe--Reconciliation and
+    Reconstitution--Gathering in and Gathering out                  34
+
+    CHAPTER IV.
+
+    THE FINAL REDEMPTION.
+
+    Mutual Inheritance--Jewish and Gentile Heirs--Uses of the
+    Seal--The Stamp of Sanctity--Promise fulfilled and to be
+    fulfilled--Hearing and Believing--Salvation by the
+    Truth--Salvation for the Gentiles--Faith and the Holy
+    Spirit--The two Redemptions--The encumbered Property--The
+    Earnest of our consummate Life                                  50
+
+    CHAPTER V.
+
+    FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART.
+
+    Thanksgiving for the Readers--The God of Christ, the Father
+    of Glory--Christian Enlightenment--Seeing with the
+    Heart--What is our Hope?--God's Wealth in Men--The true
+    Standard of Value--The Power of Christ's Resurrection           65
+
+
+    THE DOCTRINE.
+
+    CHAPTER i. 20--iii. 13.
+
+    CHAPTER VI.
+
+    WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST.
+
+    Prayer and Teaching--Historical Effect of Christ's
+    Resurrection--The Stages of His Exaltation--Christianity
+    without Miracles--The efficient Cause of Christianity--The
+    perfect Resurrection--The First-begotten out of the
+    Dead--The Risen One, the Holy One--Resurrection and
+    Ascension--Ascension to Rule--Christ and the Angels--Christ
+    glorified God's Gift to the Church--Christ the Fulness of
+    God                                                             81
+
+    CHAPTER VII.
+
+    FROM DEATH TO LIFE.
+
+    Raised with Christ--Sin is Death--Jesus Christ in a dead
+    World--Alive in Body, dead in Spirit--Religious
+    Difficulties--Antipathy to God--The Power of the Air--God's
+    Anger against Sinners--The Soul's Awaking--Consciousness of
+    God--Fellowship in Salvation                                    95
+
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    SAVED FOR AN END.
+
+    Beginning and End of God's Plan--Mercy, Love, Kindness,
+    Grace and Gift--Not of Works--Boasting excluded--Evangelical
+    Assurance--In the heavenly Places--Grace a
+    Task-master--Creation and Redemption--The apostolic Church
+    and the coming Times                                           109
+
+    CHAPTER IX.
+
+    THE FAR AND NEAR.
+
+    Wherefore remember!--Sudden and gradual Conversion--The
+    Gentile World: Godless, hopeless, Christless--Away with the
+    Atheists!--The double Pessimism--The Uncircumcision--Nigh in
+    the Blood of Christ--Reunion in Guilt and in Pardon            120
+
+    CHAPTER X.
+
+    THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION.
+
+    The Jewish War--The two Parties in the Church--The Jewish
+    Enmity typical--The new Christian Humanity--The Church in
+    the first Century and the nineteenth--Hindrances to Unity:
+    external, internal--The Ground of Reconciliation--Enemies of
+    God--The Atonement of the Cross--Moral Communism--Personal
+    Faith--The Fraternization of Mankind                           131
+
+    CHAPTER XI.
+
+    GOD'S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.
+
+    The Divine Occupant--The Service of Man and of God--One
+    Temple and many Buildings--The Variety of the apostolic
+    Church--The primitive Catholicism--Church and Dissent--Union
+    by Approximation--Our Lord's Prayer for Unity--The apostolic
+    Basis--The Builder Spirit--The sure Foundation Stone           143
+
+    CHAPTER XII.
+
+    THE SECRET OF THE AGES.
+
+    St Paul's Style of Composition--Christ the Mystery of
+    God--Christ in the Old Testament--The Exploration of
+    Christ--The Portion of the Gentiles in Israel--The Organs of
+    the new Revelation--The unique Office and Influence of the
+    Apostle Paul                                                   155
+
+    CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN.
+
+    Christ the Bond of Angels and Men--Our Lord and
+    theirs--Jesus of Nazareth the Lord of the Ages--The Reality
+    of the Angels--Their Interest in the Church--The Peculiarity
+    of the human Problem--The Docility of the heavenly
+    Potentates--The angelic Standpoint--The Grandeur of
+    Christianity inspires Courage                                  167
+
+
+    _PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+    CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.
+
+    Contents of St Paul's Prayer--The Father of Angels and of
+    Men--Strength of Spirit and of the Spirit--Christ abiding in
+    the Heart--Christ and the Christ--Christ's Claim on the
+    Intellect--Neglect of Theology--Dimensions of God's
+    Building--Strength to grasp the Magnitude of
+    Christianity--The true Broad Churchman                         183
+
+    CHAPTER XV.
+
+    KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE.
+
+    Knowledge in the Growth--Paul's Study of the Love of
+    Christ--Christ's manifested Love--God's Fulness our
+    final Aim--The Fulness more than Love--Praise out-soaring
+    Prayer--God's Gifts beyond our Requests--The
+    Divine Power immanent in Men--The Inspirer of Prayer
+    its Fulfiller--The Union of the Church and Christ in
+    God's Praise--The eternal Glory                                197
+
+
+    _THE EXHORTATION.
+    ON CHURCH LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 1-16.
+
+    CHAPTER XVI.
+
+    THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES.
+
+    The Prisoner in the Lord--The Foes of Church Peace:
+    Low-mindedness, Ambition, Resentfulness--The Basis of Unity:
+    sevenfold, threefold--One Body despite Divisions--One Spirit
+    makes one Body--Unity of Life and Hope--One Lord in all
+    Churches--Baptism a Sign of Christ's Rule, the Seal of a
+    corporate Life--The one God, and the many                      213
+
+    CHAPTER XVII.
+
+    THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST.
+
+    Unity in Diversities--Christ the Administrator--The
+    Ascension of David and of David's Son--Height and
+    Breadth--The Giving of Jesus--Christ's Descent and
+    Ascent--The Warfare of Christ--The Spoils of His
+    Victory--The Enlistment of His Prisoners--Apostles and
+    Prophets, Evangelists and Pastors--Paul, Augustine, Luther,
+    Knox, Wesley--The Demands of the Future--Individual
+    Responsibility                                                 227
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+    THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    The Aim of the Christian Ministry--A perfect
+    Manhood--Sleight or Sport?--Junctures of Supply--Reunion in
+    the Knowledge of the Son of God--The Stature of Christ our
+    Standard--The Dangers of Childishness--Speculative
+    Error--Gnosticism and Agnosticism--Conditions of
+    Safety--Church Organization--The Framework of the Body of
+    Christ--Its Continuity of Tissue                               244
+
+
+    _ON CHRISTIAN MORALS._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 17-v. 21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIX.
+
+    THE WALK OF THE GENTILES.
+
+    The old World and the old Man--Impotence of Gentile
+    Reason--Science and Pessimism--Loss of the Life of
+    God--Ignorance the Mother of Indevotion--Induration of
+    Heart--Impudicity of Paganism                                  261
+
+    CHAPTER XX.
+
+    THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.
+
+    Defective Views of Christ amongst Paul's Readers--The
+    historical Jesus the true Christ--Paul and the Tradition of
+    Jesus--Jesus the human Model--Nero a Type of the Pagan
+    Order--The Fraud of Sin--The Growth and the Birth of the new
+    Man--Righteousness and Holiness                                275
+
+    CHAPTER XXI.
+
+    DISCARDED VICES.
+
+    The seven Gentile Sins--Truthfulness and the Truth--The
+    Perils of Anger--The Antidote to Theft--Sinfulness of vain
+    Speech--Malice and its Brood--Imitation of the Divine
+    Love--Filthiness and Jesting--The golden Leprosy               290
+
+    CHAPTER XXII.
+
+    DOCTRINE AND ETHICS.
+
+    The Intrinsic and Experimental in Morals--Originality of
+    Christian Ethics--Ethical Art and Science--Four Principles
+    of Pauline Ethics--Personality and Morals--Ethical
+    Character of Christ's Forgiveness--Auguste Comte and the
+    Gospel--The moral Import of the Resurrection--And of the
+    Atonement                                                      305
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+    THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.
+
+    Right the Fruit of Light--All Virtue from one
+    Source--Unbelief and Immorality--Christian Goodness--The Way
+    of Righteousness--Truth the Hall-mark of Sanctity--Verity
+    and Veracity--Specialists in Virtue--Reproof of open and of
+    hidden Sins--Manifestation and Transformation                  321
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+    THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+    Soberness and Excitement--The heedful Look--Evil Days for
+    the Asian Christians--Wisdom to know God's Will--Wine and
+    social Pleasure--The Craving for Excitement--Fulness of the
+    Spirit--The Rise of Christian Psalmody--The Music of the
+    Heart--Enthusiasm and Order                                    336
+
+
+    _ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    CHAPTER XXV.
+
+    CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.
+
+    The Divine Character of Marriage--Religious Equality of the
+    Sexes--The Glory of the Man--Women's Rights--Christ's
+    undivided Headship--Masculine Selfishness--Greek Terms for
+    Love--The Husband and the Priest--The double
+    Self--Indelibility of Wedlock                                  353
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+    CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    Marriage and the Doctrine of the Church--The Individual and
+    the Church--The Glory of the vicarious Death--Christ the
+    Sanctifier of His Church--The Signification of Baptism--The
+    Water and the Word--The Bride made ready--The Church a
+    Christocracy--Adam's Wedding-song--The Church inherent in
+    Christ                                                         366
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+    THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.
+
+    Children in the Church--The initial Form of
+    Duty--Commandment and Promise--Gentleness of fatherly
+    Rule--Spoilt Children--The Lord's Nurture--Greek and Roman
+    Slaves--The Church and the Slaves--Christ a Pattern for
+    Slaves--Servants of Society--Care, Honesty, Heartiness in
+    Work--The heavenly Master's Reward--Responsibility of the
+    earthly Master                                                 380
+
+
+    _ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 10-18.
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+    THE FOES OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    Henceforth be strong!--The two Panoplies--The Personality of
+    Satan--The Devil and his Angels--Paul's Demonology--The
+    spiritual Combat--Interior Temptations--Persecution and
+    Heresy--The Region of the Struggle--The Siege of the
+    heavenly City                                                  397
+
+    CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+    THE DIVINE PANOPLY.
+
+    The coming evil Day--Comparison with Revelation ii.,
+    iii.--The Girdle of Truth--The Breastplate of
+    Righteousness--Shoes of Gospel Readiness--The great Shield
+    of Faith--Fire-tipped Darts--The Helmet of Salvation--The
+    Spirit's Sword--The Weapon of All-prayer                       410
+
+
+    _THE CONCLUSION._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    CHAPTER XXX.
+
+    REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION.
+
+    Paul's Need of the Church's Prayers--Christ's Ambassador
+    before the Emperor--Speaking the Word given--Good News for
+    the Asian Churches--Character and Services of
+    Tychicus--Peace to the Brethren--Love with Faith--Love
+    toward Christ and Grace from God--The Love incorruptible       427
+
+
+
+
+
+_THE INTRODUCTION_
+
+CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    =Ou monon Ephesou alla schedo pas�s t�s Asias ho Paulos houtos
+    peisas metest�sen hikano ochlon= (Demetrius the Silversmith).
+
+    ACTS xix. 26.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_THE WRITER AND READERS._
+
+    "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the
+    saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and
+    peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."[1]--EPH. i. 1,
+    2.
+
+
+In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle we are conscious of
+entering a different atmosphere. We leave the region of controversy for
+that of meditation. From the battle-field we step into the hush and
+stillness of the temple. Verses 3-14 of this chapter constitute the most
+sustained and perfect act of praise that is found in the apostle's
+letters. It is as though a door were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts
+behind us, and earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these two
+writings, following each other in the established order of the epistles,
+is singular and in some ways extreme. They are, respectively, the most
+combative and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned, the most
+concrete and abstract, the most human and divine amongst the great
+apostle's writings.
+
+Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity of character. The
+two letters are not the expression of different minds, but of different
+phases of the same mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians
+is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic behind the
+ardent missionary and the masterly debater. Those critics who recognize
+the genuine apostle only in the four previous epistles and reject
+whatever does not conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how
+much is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul. Without the
+inwardness, the brooding faculty, the power of abstract and metaphysical
+thinking displayed in the epistles of this group, he could never have
+wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those earlier writings,
+nor grasped the principles which he there applies with such vigour and
+effect. That so many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny, St
+Paul's authorship of this epistle on internal grounds and because of the
+contrast to which we have referred, is one of those phenomena which in
+future histories of religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities
+of a hypercritical age.[2]
+
+Let us observe some of the Pauline qualities that are stamped upon the
+face of this document. There is, in the first place, the apostle's
+intellectual note, what has been well called his _passion for the
+absolute_. St Paul's was one of those minds, so discomposing to
+superficial and merely practical thinkers, which cannot be content with
+half-way conclusions. For every principle he seeks its ultimate basis;
+every line of thought he pushes to its furthest limits. His gospel, if
+he is to rest in it, must supply a principle of unity that will bind
+together all the elements of his mental world.
+
+Hence, in contesting the Jewish claim to religious superiority on the
+ground of circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant, St Paul developed in
+the epistle to the Galatians a religious philosophy of history; he
+arrived at a view of the function of the law in the education of mankind
+which disposed not only of the question at issue, but of all such
+questions. He established for ever the principle of salvation by faith
+and of spiritual sonship to God. What that former argument effects for
+the history of revelation, is done here for the gospel in its relations
+to society and universal life. The principle of Christ's headship is
+carried to its largest results. The centre of the Church becomes the
+centre of the universe. God's plan of the ages is disclosed, ranging
+through eternity and embracing every form of being, and "gathering into
+one all things in the Christ." In Galatians and Romans the thought of
+salvation by Christ breaks through Jewish limits and spreads itself over
+the field of history; in Colossians and Ephesians the idea of life in
+Christ overleaps the barriers of time and human existence, and brings
+"things in heaven and things in earth and things beneath the earth"
+under its sway.
+
+The second, historical note of original Paulinism we recognize in the
+writer's _attitude towards Judaism_. We should be prepared to stake the
+genuineness of the epistle on this consideration alone. The position and
+point of view of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles are unique in
+history. It is difficult to conceive how any one but Paul himself, at
+any other juncture, could have represented the relation of Jew and
+Gentile to each other as it is put before us here. The writer is a Jew,
+a man nourished on the hope of Israel (i. 12), who had looked at his
+fellow-men across "the middle wall of partition" (ii. 14). In his view,
+the covenant and the Christ belong, in the first instance and as by
+birthright, to the men of Israel. They are "the near," who live hard by
+the city and house of God. The blessedness of the Gentile readers
+consists in the revelation that they are "fellow-heirs and of the same
+body and joint-partakers with us of the promise in Christ Jesus" (iii.
+6). What is this but to say, as the apostle had done before, that the
+branches "of the naturally wild olive tree" were "against nature grafted
+into the good olive tree" and allowed to "partake of its root and
+fatness," along with "the natural branches," the children of the stock
+of Abraham who claimed it for "their own"; that "the men of faith are
+sons of Abraham" and "Abraham's blessing has come on the Gentiles
+through faith"?[3]
+
+For our author this revelation has lost none of its novelty and
+surprise. He is in the midst of the excitement it has produced, and is
+himself its chief agent and mouthpiece (iii. 1-9). This disclosure of
+God's secret plans for the world overwhelms him by its magnitude, by the
+splendour with which it invests the Divine character, and the sense of
+his personal unworthiness to be entrusted with it. We utterly disbelieve
+that any later Christian writer could or would have personated the
+apostle and mimicked his tone and sentiments in regard to his vocation,
+in the way that the "critical" hypothesis assumes. The criterion of
+Erasmus is decisive: _Nemo potest Paulinum pectus effingere._
+
+St Paul's doctrine of _the cross_ is admittedly his specific
+theological note. In the shameful sacrificial death of Jesus Christ he
+saw the instrument of man's release from the curse of the broken law;[4]
+and through this knowledge the cross which was the "scandal" of Saul the
+Pharisee, had become Paul's glory and its proclamation the business of
+his life. It is this doctrine, in its original strength and fulness,
+which lies behind such sentences as those of chapter i. 7, ii. 13, and
+v. 2: "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
+trespasses--brought nigh in the blood of Christ--an offering and
+sacrifice to God for an odour of sweet smell."
+
+Another mark of the apostle's hand, his specific spiritual note, we find
+in the _mysticism_ that pervades the epistle and forms, in fact, its
+substance. "I live no longer: Christ lives in me." "He that is joined to
+the Lord is one spirit."[5] In these sentences of the earlier letters we
+discover the spring of St Paul's theology, lying in his own
+experience--_the sense of personal union through the Spirit with Christ
+Jesus_. This was the deepest fact of Paul's consciousness. Here it meets
+us at every turn. More than twenty times the phrase "in Christ" or its
+equivalents recur, applied to Christian acts or states. It is enough to
+refer to chapter iii. 17, "that the Christ may make His dwelling in your
+hearts through faith," to show how profoundly this mysterious
+relationship is realized in this letter. No other New Testament writer
+conceived the idea in Paul's way, nor has any subsequent writer of whom
+we know made the like constant and original use of it. It was the habit
+of the apostle's mind, the index of his innermost life. Kindred to this,
+and hardly less conspicuous, is his conception of "God in Christ" (2
+Cor. v. 19) saving and operating upon men, who, as we read here, "chose
+us in Christ before the world's foundation--forgave us in Him--made us
+in Him to sit together in the heavenly places--formed us in Christ Jesus
+for good works."
+
+The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception of the _new
+man_ in Christ Jesus, whose sins were slain by His death, and who shares
+His risen life unto God (Rom. vi.). From this idea, as from a
+fountainhead, the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle (ch. iii.)
+deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and disposition of the
+believer, his conduct in all social duties and practical affairs are the
+expression of a "life hid with Christ in God." It is the identical "new
+man" of Romans and Colossians who presents himself as our ideal here,
+raised with Christ from the dead and "sitting with Him in the heavenly
+places." The newness of life in which he walks, receives its impulse and
+direction from this exalted fellowship.
+
+The characteristics of St Paul's teaching which we have described--his
+logical thoroughness and finality, his peculiar historical, theological,
+spiritual, and ethical standpoint and manner of thought--are combined in
+the conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz., its
+idea of _the Church_ as the body of Christ,--or in other words, of _the
+new humanity_ created in Him. This forms the centre of the circle of
+thought in which the writer's mind moves;[6] it is the meeting-point of
+the various lines of thought that we have already traced. The doctrine
+of personal salvation wrought out in the great evangelical epistles
+terminates in that of social and collective salvation. A new and
+precious title is conferred on Christ: He is "Saviour of _the body_" (v.
+23), _i.e._, of the corporate Christian community. "The Son of God who
+loved _me_ and gave up Himself for _me_" becomes "the Christ" who "loved
+_the Church_ and gave up Himself for _her_."[7] "The new man" is no
+longer the individual, a mere transformed _ego_; he is the type and
+beginning of a new mankind. A perfect society of men, all sons of God in
+Christ, is being constituted around the cross, in which the old
+antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is restored, and a
+body is provided to contain the fulness of Christ, a holy temple which
+God inhabits in the Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its
+centre and Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form the
+material--"the Jew first," lying nearest to the site.[8]
+
+The apostle Paul necessarily conceived the reconstruction of humanity
+under the form of a reconciliation of Israel and the Gentiles. The
+Catholicism we have here is Paul's Catholicism of _Gentile
+engrafting_--not Clement's, of _churchly order and uniformity_; nor
+Ignatius', of _monepiscopal rule_. It is profoundly characteristic of
+this apostle, that in "the law" which had been to his own experience the
+barrier and ground of quarrel between the soul and God, "the strength of
+sin," he should come to see likewise the barrier between men and men,
+and the strength of the sinful enmity which distracted the Churches of
+his foundation (ii. 14-16).
+
+The representation of the Church contained in this epistle is,
+therefore, by no means new in its elements. Such texts as 1 Corinthians
+iii. 16, 17 ("Ye are God's temple," etc.) and xii. 12-27 (concerning the
+_one body and many members_) bring us near to its actual expression.
+But the figures of the _body_ and _temple_ in these passages, had they
+stood alone, might be read as mere passing illustrations of the nature
+of Christian fellowship. Now they become proper designations of the
+Church, and receive their full significance. While in 1 Corinthians,
+moreover, these phrases do not look beyond the particular community
+addressed, in Ephesians they embrace the entire Christian society. This
+epistle signalizes a great step forwards in the development of the
+apostle's theology--perhaps we might say, the last step. The Pastoral
+epistles serve to put the final apostolic seal upon the theological
+edifice that is now complete. Their care is with the guarding and
+furnishing of the "great house"[9] which our epistle is engaged in
+building.
+
+The idea of the Church is not, however, independently developed.
+Ephesians and Colossians are companion letters,--the complement and
+explanation of each other. Both "speak with regard to Christ and the
+Church"; both reveal the Divine "glory in the Church and in Christ
+Jesus."[10] The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians
+on the latter of these objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and
+that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal step. The two
+epistles form one process of thought.
+
+Criticism has attempted to derive first one and then the other of the
+two from its fellow,--thus, in effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr.
+Holtzmann, in his _Kritik der Epheser-und Kolosserbriefe_,[11] undertook
+to show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the other. There is,
+Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus hidden in Colossians, which he has
+himself extracted. By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second
+century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned to the brief
+Colossian writing of St Paul, and worked it up, with his own Ephesian
+composition lying before him, into our existing epistle to the
+Colossians. This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not
+satisfied any one except its author, and need not detain us here. But
+Holtzmann has at any rate made good, against his predecessors on the
+negative side, the unity of origin of the two canonical epistles, the
+fact that they proceed from one mint and coinage. They are _twin_
+epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostle's mind. Much of
+their subject-matter, especially in the ethical section, is common to
+both. The glory of the Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths
+inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each other. To the
+confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," His
+response ever is, "_I will build my Church_."[12] The same
+correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic
+movement of the apostle's thought.
+
+At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two
+writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Paul's
+hand, and who admits that "among all the epistles bearing the name of
+Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most
+anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles," yet
+speaks of this epistle as a "verbose amplification" of the other, "a
+commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and
+repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevancies, full of
+pleonasms and obscurities."[13]
+
+In this instance, Renan's literary sense has deserted him. While
+Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so
+sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure,[14] Ephesians from
+beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and
+obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and
+involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which
+the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance.
+Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole
+difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of
+Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles,[15] we find the
+stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in
+this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those
+unfinished sentences and _anacolutha_, the grammatical inconsequence
+associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main
+characteristic of St Paul's style.[16] The epistle to the Colossians is
+like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that
+to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters
+restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict
+and repose which alternated in St Paul's mobile nature.
+
+In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the
+apostle's imprisonment and advancing age,[17] display less passion and
+energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy.
+They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the author's mind had
+been much thrown in upon itself. They have been well styled "the
+afternoon epistles," being marked by the subdued and reflective temper
+natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical
+representative of the third group of Paul's epistles, as Galatians is of
+the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter
+came, as it purports to do, from _Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
+through God's will_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But that it was addressed to "the saints which are _in Ephesus_" is more
+difficult to believe. The apostle has "heard of the faith which prevails
+amongst" his readers; he presumes that they "have heard of the Christ,
+and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus."[18] He hopes
+that by "reading" this epistle they will "perceive his understanding in
+the mystery of Christ" (iii. 2-4). He writes somewhat thus to the
+Colossians and Romans, whom he had never seen;[19] but can we imagine
+Paul addressing in this distant and uncertain fashion his children in
+the faith? In Ephesus he had laboured "for the space of three whole
+years" (Acts xx. 31), longer than in any other city of the Gentile
+mission, except Antioch. His speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus,
+delivered four years ago, was surcharged with personal feeling, full of
+pathetic reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance with the
+individual membership of the Ephesian Church. In the epistle such signs
+are altogether wanting. The absence of greetings and messages we could
+understand; these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But how the
+man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians and Corinthians could have
+composed this long and careful letter to his own Ephesian people without
+a single word of endearment or familiarity,[20] and without the least
+allusion to his past intercourse with them, we cannot understand. It is
+in the destination that the only serious difficulty lies touching the
+authorship. Nowhere do we see more of _the apostle_ and less of _the
+man_ in St Paul; nowhere more of _the_ Church, and less of _this or
+that_ particular church.
+
+It agrees with these internal indications that the local designation is
+wanting in the oldest Greek copies of the letter that are extant. The
+two great manuscripts of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic
+codices, omit the words "in Ephesus." Basil in the fourth century did
+not accept them, and says that "the old copies" were without them.
+Origen, in the beginning of the third century, seems to have known
+nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the second century, while
+he condemns the heretic Marcion (who lived about fifty years earlier)
+for entitling the epistle "To the Laodiceans," quotes only the _title_
+against him, and not the text of the address, which he would presumably
+have done, had he read it in the form familiar to us. We are compelled
+to suppose, with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally,
+that these words form no part of the original address.
+
+Here the _circular hypothesis_ of Beza and Ussher comes to our aid. It
+is supposed that the letter was destined for a number of Churches in
+Asia Minor, which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of the
+journey which took him to Colossae.[21] Along with the letters for the
+Colossians and Philemon, he was entrusted with this more general
+epistle, intended for the Gentile Christian communities of the
+neighbouring region at large. During St Paul's ministry at Ephesus, we
+are told that "all those that dwell in Asia heard the word of the Lord,
+both Jews and Greeks" (Acts xix. 10). In so large and populous an area,
+amongst the Churches founded at this time there were doubtless others
+beside those of the Lycus valley "which had not seen Paul's face in the
+flesh," some about which the apostle had less precise knowledge than he
+had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus, but for whom he was no less
+desirous that their "hearts should be comforted, and brought into all
+the wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge
+of the mystery of God" (Col. ii. 1, 2).
+
+To which or how many of the Asian Churches Tychicus would be able to
+communicate the letter was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at
+Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance by Tychicus
+(vi. 21, 22) supplied the only limit to its distribution. Proconsular
+Asia was the richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so
+populous that it was called "the province of five hundred cities."
+Ephesus was only the largest of many flourishing commercial and
+manufacturing towns.
+
+At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St Paul directs this
+Church to procure "from Laodicea," in exchange for their own, a letter
+which he is sending there (iv. 16). Is it possible that we have the lost
+Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So Ussher suggested; and
+though the assumption is not essential to his theory, it falls in with
+it very aptly. Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence of
+the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in this letter. The
+conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot, who says, writing on Colossians iv.
+16: "There are good reasons for the belief that St Paul here alludes to
+the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact a circular
+letter, addressed to the principal Churches of proconsular Asia.
+Tychicus was obliged to pass through Laodicea on his way to Colossae, and
+would leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was delivered."[22]
+The two epistles admirably supplement each other. The Apocalyptic letter
+"to the seven churches which are in Asia," ranging from Ephesus to
+Laodicea (Rev. ii., iii.), shows how much the Christian communities of
+this region had in common and how natural it would be to address them
+collectively. For the same region, with a yet wider scope, the "first
+catholic epistle of Peter" was destined, a writing that has many points
+of contact with this. Ephesus being the metropolis of the Asian
+Churches, and claiming a special interest in St Paul, came to regard the
+epistle as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it was
+communicated to the Church in other provinces. Hence it came to pass
+that when Paul's epistles were gathered into a single volume and a title
+was needed for this along with the rest, "To the Ephesians" was written
+over it; and this reference standing in the title, in course of time
+found its way into the text of the address. We propose to read this
+letter as _the general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia_, or _to
+Ephesus and its daughter Churches_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But how are we to read the address, with the local definition wanting?
+There are two constructions open to us:--(1) We might suppose that a
+space was left blank in the original to be filled in afterwards by
+Tychicus with the names of the particular Churches to which he
+distributed copies, or to be supplied by the voice of the reader. But if
+that were so, we should have expected to find some trace of this variety
+of designation in the ancient witnesses. As it is, the documents either
+give Ephesus in the address, or supply no local name at all. Nor is
+there, so far as we are aware, any analogy in ancient usage for the
+proceeding suggested. Moreover, the order of the Greek words[23] is
+against this supposition.--(2) We prefer, therefore, to follow
+Origen[24] and Basil, with some modern exegetes, in reading the sentence
+straight on, as it stands in the Sinaitic and Vatican copies. It then
+becomes: _To the saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus_.
+
+"The saints" is the apostle's designation for Christian believers
+generally,[25] as men consecrated to God in Christ (1 Cor. i. 2). The
+qualifying phrase "those who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus," is
+admonitory. As Lightfoot says with reference to the parallel
+qualification in Colossians i. 2, "This unusual addition is full of
+meaning. Some members of the [Asian] Churches were shaken in their
+allegiance, even if they had not fallen from it. The apostle therefore
+wishes it to be understood that, when he speaks of the saints, he means
+those who are true and steadfast members of the brotherhood. In this way
+he obliquely hints at the defection." By this further definition "he
+does not directly exclude any, but he indirectly warns all." We are
+reminded that we are in the neighbourhood of the Colossian heresy.
+Beneath the calm tenor of this epistle, the ear catches an undertone of
+controversy. In chapter iv. 14 and vi. 10-20 this undertone becomes
+clearly audible. We shall find the epistle end with the note of warning
+with which it begins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Salutation is according to St Paul's established form of greeting.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised
+Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations will
+be explained in the exposition.
+
+[2] The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson's
+_Introduction to the N. T._; see also Baur's _Paul_, Pfleiderer's
+_Paulinism_, Hilgenfeld's _Einleitung_, Hatch's article on "Paul" in the
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The case for the defence may be found in
+Weiss', Salmon's, Bleek's, or Dods' _N. T. Introduction_--the last
+brief, but to the point; in Reuss' _History of the N. T._; Milligan's
+article on "Ephesians" in _Encycl. Brit._; Gloag's _Introduction to the
+Pauline Epp._; Meyer's, or Beet's, or Eadie's _Commentary_; Sabatier's
+_The Apostle Paul_.
+
+[3] Rom. xi. 16-24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.
+
+[4] Gal. iii. 10-13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.
+
+[5] Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.
+
+[6] See ch. i. 9-13, ii. 11-22, iii. 5-11, iv. 1-16, v. 23-32.
+
+[7] Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.
+
+[8] Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17-20.
+
+[9] 1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.
+
+[10] Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.
+
+[11] _Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres
+Verwandtschaftsverh�ltnisses_ (Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and
+scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than
+this of Holtzmann, we do not know.
+
+Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann's
+collaborateur in the new _Hand-Commentar_, accepts Colossians in its
+integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the
+subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple
+of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.
+
+[12] Matt. xvi. 15-18; John xvii. 10: _I am glorified in them._
+
+[13] See his _Saint Paul_, Introduction, pp. xii.-xxiii.
+
+[14] See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20-23.
+
+[15] _E.g._, in Rom. i. 1-7, viii. 28-30, xi. 33-36, xvi. 25-27.
+
+[16] See the Winer-Moulton _N. T. Grammar_, p. 709: "It is in writers of
+great mental vivacity--more taken up with the thought than with the mode
+of its expression--that we may expect to find anacolutha most
+frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style
+of the apostle Paul."
+
+[17] Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.
+
+[18] Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.
+
+[19] Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.
+
+[20] "My brethren" in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even
+the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in the _third person_--a
+thing unexampled in St Paul's epistles.
+
+[21] Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7-9.
+
+[22] Compare Maclaren on _Colossians and Philemon_, p. 406, in this
+series.
+
+[23] =Tois hagiois tois ousin ... kai pistois en Christ� I�sou.= The
+interposition of the heterogeneous attributive between =hagiois= and
+=pistois= is harsh and improbable--not to say, with Hofmann, "quite
+incredible." The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck
+and of von Soden (in the _Hand-Commentar_), interpreters of opposite
+schools, agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regarding
+=pistois= as the complement of =tois ousin=.
+
+[24] Origen, in his fanciful way, makes of =tois ousin= a predicate by
+itself: "the saints _who are_," who possess real being like God Himself
+(Exod. iii. 14)--"called from non-existence into existence." He compares
+1 Cor. i. 28.
+
+[25] See, _e.g._, ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.
+
+
+
+
+PRAISE AND PRAYER.
+
+CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+        =Hous proegn�, kai pro�risen
+    symmorphous t�s eikonos tou huiou autou,
+    eis to einai auto pr�totokon en pollois adelphois;
+      hous de pro�risen, toutous kai ekalesen;
+      kai hous ekalesen, toutous kai edikai�sen;
+      hous de edikai�sen, toutous kai edoxasen.=
+
+    ROM. viii. 29, 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_THE ETERNAL PURPOSE._
+
+
+We enter this epistle through a magnificent gateway. The introductory
+Act of Praise, extending from verse 3 to 14, is one of the most sublime
+of inspired utterances, an overture worthy of the composition that it
+introduces. Its first sentence compels us to feel the insufficiency of
+our powers for its due rendering.
+
+The apostle surveys in this thanksgiving the entire course of the
+revelation of grace. Standing with the men of his day, the new-born
+community of the sons of God in Christ, midway between the ages past and
+to come,[26] he looks backward to the source of man's salvation when it
+lay a silent thought in the mind of God, and forward to the hour when it
+shall have accomplished its promise and achieved our redemption. In this
+grand evolution of the Divine plan three stages are marked by the
+refrain, thrice repeated, _To the praise of His glory, of the glory of
+His grace_ (vv. 6, 12, 14). St Paul's psalm is thus divided into three
+strophes, or stanzas: he sings the glory of redeeming love in its past
+designs, its present bestowments, and its future fruition. The
+paragraph, forming but one sentence and spun upon a single golden
+thread, is a piece of thought-music,--a sort of _fugue_, in which from
+eternity to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by Paul's bold and
+exulting thought.
+
+Despite the grammatical involution of the style here carried to an
+extreme, and underneath the apparatus of Greek pronouns and participles,
+there is a fine Hebraistic lilt pervading the doxology. The refrain is
+in the manner of Psalms xlii.-xliii., and xcix., where in the former
+instance "health of countenance," and in the latter "holy is He" gives
+the key-note of the poet's melody and parts his song into three balanced
+stanzas. In such poetry the strophes may be unequal in length, each
+developing its own thought freely, and yet there is harmony in their
+combination. Here the central idea, that of God's actual bounty to
+believers, fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there is a
+pause within it, at verse 10, which in effect resumes the idea of the
+first strophe and works it in as a _motif_ to the second, carrying on
+both in a full stream till they lose themselves in the third and
+culminating movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying
+expression the phrase "in Christ--in the Beloved--in Him--in whom,"
+weaving the verses into subtle continuity. The theme of the entire
+composition is given in verse 3, which does not enter into the threefold
+division we have described, but forms a prelude to it.
+
+    "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath
+        blessed us,
+    In every blessing of the spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ."
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the song of the universe, in which heaven and
+earth take responsive parts. "When the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy," this concert began, and continues
+still through the travail of creation and the sorrow and sighing of men.
+The work praises the Master. All sinless creatures, by their order and
+harmony, by the variety of their powers and beauty of their forms and
+delight of their existence, declare their Creator's glory. That praise
+to the Most High God which the lower creatures act instrumentally, it is
+man's privilege to utter in discourse of reason and music of the heart.
+Man is Nature's high priest; and above other men, the poet. Time will
+be, as it has been, when it shall be accounted the poet's honour and the
+crown of his art, that he should take the high praises of God into his
+mouth, making hymns to the glory of the Supreme Maker and giving voice
+to the dumb praise of inanimate nature and to the noblest thoughts of
+his fellows concerning the Blessed God.
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the perpetual strain of the Old Testament, from
+Melchizedek down to Daniel,--of David in his triumph, and Job in his
+misery. But not hitherto could men say, Blessed be _the God and Father
+of our Lord Jesus Christ_! He was "the Most High God, the God of
+heaven,"--"Jehovah, God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous
+things,"--"the Shepherd" and "the Rock" of His people,--"the true God,
+the living God, and an everlasting King"; and these are glorious titles,
+which have raised men's thoughts to moods of highest reverence and
+trust. But the name of _Father_, and _Father of our Lord Jesus Christ_,
+surpasses and outshines them all. With wondering love and joy
+unspeakable St Paul pronounced this _Benedictus_. God was not less to
+him the Almighty, the High and Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in
+the days of his youthful Jewish faith; but the Eternal and All-holy One
+was now his Father in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name: and let the
+whole earth be filled with His glory!
+
+The apostle's psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving to God _blessing and
+blessed_. The second clause rhythmically answers to the first. True, our
+blessing of Him is far different from His blessing of us: ours in
+thought and words; His in mighty deeds of salvation. Yet in the fruit of
+lips giving thanks to His name there is a revenue of blessing paid to
+God which He delights in, and requires. "O Thou that inhabitest the
+praises of Israel," grant us to bless Thee while we live and to lift up
+our hands in Thy name!
+
+By three qualifying adjuncts the blessing which the Father of Christ
+bestowed upon us is defined: in respect of its _nature_, its _sphere_,
+and its _personal ground_.
+
+The blessings that prompt the apostle's praise are not such as those
+conspicuous in the Old Covenant: "Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and
+in the field; in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and
+the increase of thy kine; blessed shall be thy basket, and thy
+kneading-trough" (Deut. xxviii. 3-5). The gospel pronounces beatitudes
+of another style: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed the meek, the
+merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted." St Paul had small share
+indeed in the former class of blessings,--a childless, landless,
+homeless man. Yet what happiness and wealth are his! Out of his poverty
+he is making all the ages rich! From the gloom of his prison he sheds a
+light that will guide and cheer the steps of multitudes of earth's sad
+wayfarers. Not certainly in the earthly places where he finds himself is
+Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus blessed; but "in spiritual blessing"
+and "in heavenly places" how abundantly! His own blessedness he claims
+for all who are in Christ.
+
+Blessing _spiritual_ in its nature is, in St Paul's conception of
+things, blessing in and of the Holy Spirit.[27] In His quickening our
+spirit lives; through His indwelling health, blessedness, eternal life
+are ours. In this verse justly the theologians recognize the Trinity of
+the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.--Blessing _in the heavenly
+places_ is not so much blessing coming from those places--from God the
+Father who sits there--as it is blessing which lifts us into that
+supernal region, giving to us a place and heritage in the world of God
+and of the angels. Two passages of the companion epistles interpret this
+phrase: "Your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. iii. 3); and again,
+"Our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. iii. 20).--The decisive note of St
+Paul's blessedness lies in the words "in Christ." For him all good is
+summed up there. Spiritual, heavenly, and Christian: these three are
+one. In Christ dying, risen, reigning, God the Father has raised
+believing men to a new heavenly life. From the first inception of the
+work of grace to its consummation, God thinks of men, speaks to them and
+deals with them _in Christ_. To Him, therefore, with the Father be
+eternal praise!
+
+    "As He chose us in Him before the world's foundation,
+      That we should be holy and unblemished before Him:
+    When in love He foreordained us
+      To filial adoption through Jesus Christ for Himself,
+          According to the good pleasure of His will,--
+                To the praise of the glory of His grace" (vv. 4-6a).
+
+Here is St Paul's first chapter of Genesis. _In the beginning was the
+election of grace._ There is nothing unprepared, nothing unforeseen in
+God's dealings with mankind. His wisdom and knowledge are as deep as His
+grace is wide (Rom. xi. 33). Speaking of his own vocation, the apostle
+said: "It pleased God, who set me apart from my mother's womb, to reveal
+His Son in me" (Gal. i. 15, 16). He does but generalize this conception
+and carry it two steps further back--from the origin of the individual
+to the origin of the race, and from the beginning of the race to the
+beginning of the world--when he asserts that the community of redeemed
+men was chosen in Christ before the world's foundation.
+
+"The world" is a work of time, the slow structure of innumerable yet
+finite ages. Science affirms on its own grounds that the visible
+universe had a beginning, as it has its changes and its certain end. Its
+structural plan, its unity of aim and movement, show it to be the
+creation of a vast Intelligence. Harmony and law, all that makes science
+possible is the product of thought. Reason extracts from nature what
+Reason has first put there. The longer, the more intricate and grand the
+process, the farther science pushes back the beginning in our thoughts,
+the more sublime and certain the primitive truth becomes: "In the
+beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
+
+The world is a system; it has a method and a plan, therefore a
+foundation. But before the foundation, there was _the Founder_. And man
+was in His thoughts, and the redeemed Church of Christ. While yet the
+world was not and the immensity of space stretched lampless and
+unpeopled, _we_ were in the mind of God; His thought rested with
+complacency upon His human sons, whose "name was written in the book of
+life from the foundation of the world." This amazing statement is only
+the logical consequence of St Paul's experience of Divine grace, joined
+to his conviction of the infinite wisdom and eternal being of God.
+
+When he says that God "chose us in Christ _before the foundation of the
+world_"--or _before founding the world_--this is not a mere mark of
+time. It intimates that in laying His plans for the world the Creator
+had the purpose of redeeming grace in view. The kingdom which the
+"blessed children" of the Father of Christ "inherit," is the kingdom
+"_prepared_ for them _from the foundation of the world_" (Matt. xxv.
+34). Salvation lies as deep as creation. The provision for it is
+eternal. For the universe of being was conceived, fashioned, and built
+up "in Christ." The argument of Colossians i. 13-22 lies behind these
+words. The Son of God's love, in whom and for whom the worlds were made,
+always was potentially the Redeemer of men, as He was the image of God
+(Col. i. 14, 15). He looked forward to this mission from eternity, and
+was in spirit "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev.
+xiii. 8). Creation and redemption, Nature and the Church, are parts of
+one system; and in the reconciliation of the cross all orders of being
+are concerned, "whether the things upon the earth or the things in the
+heavens."
+
+Evil existed before man appeared on the earth to be tempted and to fall.
+Through the geological record we hear the voice of creation groaning for
+long aeons in its pain.
+
+            "Dragons of the prime,
+    That tare each other in their slime,"
+
+grim prophets of man's brutal and murderous passions, 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
+God" (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing its bondage to
+corruption, God 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God "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
+God"--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 God'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--God'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. God's sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons.
+For this end "we" were elected of God in the beginning. Nay, with this
+end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to
+provide God 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 God by their own choice and will, meeting God'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 God'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] God 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 God. The ideal
+which God 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 God, 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 sanctity, is now
+pronounced by Jesus: "You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
+perfect." Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: God 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
+God 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 institution of Roman law,
+familiar to Paul as a citizen of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile
+believers their relation to the family of God. "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 assumed
+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 God, 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 passed away and all
+things became new.'"[31]
+
+This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose of God from eternity;
+but as a matter of fact it was instituted "through Jesus Christ," the
+historical Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in God'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 God
+_Father_! This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for them through
+the ages past in God'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 pronoun
+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 God 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 pronoun further; we cannot allow
+that the sonship here signified is man's natural relation to God, 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 God's redeeming love toward sinners. God'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] =eis auton=, _for Him_; not =aut�=, _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 trespasses,
+                  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.
+
+God "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 God's eternal
+thought regarding Christ. And that regard of God 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 God and brings us into fellowship with God 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 trespasses_ (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
+God 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 participate "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 trespasses.[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 trespasses as men against God'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 God and to the laws of his being. We
+cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the
+bestowments of God'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 God'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 God'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 God 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 God who is more merciful
+than the God of our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a God
+who is not righteous, a God who does not glow with fiery indignation
+against sin, is no God 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 God_,
+what will this avail us? If "the redemption through Christ's blood, the
+forgiveness of our trespasses," is no longer to us the momentous and
+glorious fact that it was to the apostles, then it is time to ask
+whether our God is in truth the same as theirs, whether He is still the
+God 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 God's benefits to men. Without
+this sentiment, we can only wonder at the passionate gratitude with
+which he receives the atonement and measures by its completeness the
+riches of God'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 associate 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 God 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 God's special favour and blessing. "I give thanks
+always for you," he writes to the Corinthians, "for the grace of God
+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 God "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 God 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 God's purpose to reconstitute 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 God'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 God. It craves to
+know _the mystery of His will_.
+
+III. Verse 11 fills up the measure of the bestowment of grace on sinful
+men. The present anticipates the future; faith and love are lifted to a
+glorious hope. "In whom also--_i.e._, in Christ--_we received our
+heritage_, predestinated [to it], according to His purpose who works all
+things according to the counsel of His will."
+
+Following Meyer and other great interpreters, we prefer in this passage
+the rendering of the English Authorized Version (_we obtained an
+inheritance_) to that of the Revised (_we were made a heritage_).[39]
+"Foreordained" carries us back to verse 5--to the phrase "foreordained
+to sonship." The believer cannot be predestinated to sonship without
+being predestinated to an inheritance.[40] "If children, then heirs"
+(Rom. viii. 17). But while in the parallel passage we are designated
+heirs _with_ Christ, we appear in this place, according to the tenor of
+the context, as heirs _in_ Him. Christ is Himself the believer's wealth,
+both in possession and hope: all his desire is to gain Christ (Phil.
+iii. 8). The apostle gives thanks here in the same strain as in
+Colossians i. 12-14, "to the Father who qualified us [by making us His
+sons] to partake of the inheritance of the saints in the light." In that
+thanksgiving we observe the same connexion as in this between our
+_forgiveness_ (ver. 7) and our _enfeoffment_, or investment with the
+forfeited rights of sons of God (vv. 5, 11).[41]
+
+The heritage of the saints in Christ is theirs already, by actual
+investiture. The liberty of sons of God, access to the Father, the
+treasures of Christ's wisdom and knowledge, the sanctifying Spirit and
+the moral strength and joy that He imparts, these form a rich estate of
+which ancient saints had but foretastes and promises. In the
+all-controlling "counsel of His will," God wrought throughout the
+course of history to convey this heritage to us. We are children of "the
+fulness of the times," heirs of all the past. For us God has been
+working from eternity. On us the ends of the world have come. Thus from
+the summit of our exaltation in Christ the apostle looks backward to the
+beginning of Divine history.
+
+From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the end. God's purpose
+embraces the ages to come with those that are past. His working will not
+cease till the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our
+inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise of infinitely
+more; and the Holy Spirit is the "earnest of our inheritance" (ver. 14).
+God intends "that we should be to the praise of His glory." As things
+are, His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. "It doth not yet
+appear what we shall be,"--and it will not appear until the unveiling of
+the sons of God (Rom. viii. 18-25). One day God's glory in us will burst
+forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and earth will then sing
+_to the praise of His glory_, when it is seen in His redeemed and
+godlike sons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 (_which He purposed ... upon the earth_) are, as we have
+said, a parenthesis or episode in the passage just reviewed. Neither in
+structure nor in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this clause
+been wanting. With the "in Him" repeated at the end of verse 10, St Paul
+resumes the main current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment
+while he dwells on "the mystery of God's will."
+
+This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he has said in
+verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He will pause for an instant to
+set forth once more the eternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the
+Church is now admitted. The communication of this mystery is, he says,
+"according to God's good pleasure which He purposed in Christ [comp.
+ver. 4], for a dispensation of the fulness of the times, intending to
+gather up again all things in the Christ--the things in the heavens, and
+the things upon the earth."
+
+God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation of His grace, in
+due time to re-unite the universe under the headship of Christ. This
+mysterious design, hitherto kept secret, He has "made known unto us."
+Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all the wisdom of
+former ages.[42] Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.
+
+The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for its interpretation.
+The _fulness of the times_, in St Paul's dialect, can only be the time
+of Christ.[43] The dispensation which God designed of old is that in
+which the apostle himself is now engaged;[44] it is the dispensation, or
+administration (_economy_), of the grace and truth that came by Jesus
+Christ, whether God be conceived as Himself the Dispenser, or through
+the stewards of His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul's Jewish
+thought the d�nouement of antecedent history. How long this age would
+continue, into what epochs it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for
+him the fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was come; the
+kingdom of God was amongst men. It was the beginning of the end. It is
+a mistake to relegate this text to the dim and distant future, to some
+far-off consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian
+reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The decisive epoch
+fell when "God sent forth His Son." All that has followed, and will
+follow, is the result of this mission. Christ is all things, and in all;
+and we are already complete in Him.
+
+What, then, signifies this _gathering-into-one_ or _summing-up_ of all
+things in the Christ? Our _recapitulate_ is the nearest equivalent of
+the Greek verb, in its etymological sense. In Romans xiii. 8, 9 the same
+word is used, where the several commands of the second table of the
+Decalogue are said to be "comprehended in this word, namely, Thou shalt
+love thy neighbour as thyself." This summing up is not a generalization
+or compendious statement of the commands of God; it signifies their
+reduction to a fundamental principle. They are unified by the discovery
+of a law that underlies them all. And while thus theoretically
+explained, they are made practically effective: "For love is the
+fulfilling of the law."
+
+Similarly, St Paul finds in Christ the fundamental principle of the
+creation. For those who think with him, God has by the Christian
+revelation already brought all things to their unity. This summing
+up--the Christian inventory and recapitulation of the universe--the
+apostle has formally stated in Colossians i. 15-20: "Christ is God's
+image and creation's firstborn. In Him, through Him, for Him all things
+were made. He is before them all; and in Him they have their basis and
+uniting bond. He is equally the Head of the Church and the new creation,
+the firstborn out of the dead, that He might hold a universal
+presidence--charged with all the fulness, so that in Him is the ground
+of the reconciliation no less than of the creation of all things in
+heaven and earth." What can we desire more comprehensive than this? It
+is the theory and programme of the world revealed to God's holy apostles
+and prophets.
+
+The "gathering into one" of this text includes the "reconciliation" of
+Colossians i. 20, and more. It signifies, beside the removal of the
+enmities which are the effect of sin (ii. 14-16), the subjection of all
+powers in heaven and earth to the rule of Christ (vv. 21, 22),[45] the
+enlightenment of the angelic magnates as to God's dealings with men
+(iii. 9, 10),--in fine, the rectification and adjustment of the several
+parts of the great whole of things, bringing them into full accord with
+each other and with their Creator's will. What St Paul looks forward to
+is, in a word, the organization of the universe upon a Christian basis.
+This reconstitution of things is provided for and is being effected "in
+the Christ." He is the rallying point of the forces of peace and
+blessing. The organic principle, the organizing Head, the creative
+nucleus of the new creation is there. The potent germ of life eternal
+has been introduced into the world's chaos; and its victory over the
+elements of disorder and death is assured.
+
+Observe that the apostle says "in _the Christ_."[46] He is not speaking
+of Christ in the abstract, considered in His own Person or as He dwells
+in heaven, but in His relations to men and to time. The Christ manifest
+in Jesus (iv. 20, 21), the Christ of prophets and apostles, the Messiah
+of the ages, the Husband of the Church (v. 23), is the author and
+finisher of this grand restoration.
+
+Christ's work is essentially a work of _restoration_. We must insist,
+with Meyer, upon the significance of the Greek preposition in Paul's
+compound verb (_ana_-, equal to _re_-in _restore_ or _resume_). The
+Christ is not simply the climax of the past--the Son of man and the
+recapitulation of humanity, as man is of the creatures below him,
+summing up human development and lifting it to a higher stage--though He
+is all that. Christ _rehabilitates_ man and the world. He re-asserts the
+original ground of our being, as that exists in God. He carries us and
+the world forward out of sin and death, by carrying us back to God's
+ideal. The new world is the old world repaired, and in its reparation
+infinitely enhanced--rich in the memories of redemption, in the fruit of
+penitence and the discipline of suffering, in the lessons of the cross.
+
+_All things_ in heaven and earth it was God's good pleasure in the
+Christ to gather again into one. Is this a general assertion concerning
+the universe as a whole, or may we apply it with distributive exactness
+to each particular thing? Is there to be, as we fain would hope, no
+single exception to the "all things"--no wanderer lost, no exile finally
+shut out from the Holy City and the tree of life? Are all evil men and
+demons, willing or against their will, to be embraced somehow and at
+last--at last--in the universal peace of God?
+
+It is impossible that the first readers should have so construed Paul's
+words (comp. v. 5). He has not forgotten the "unquenchable fire," the
+"eternal punishment"; nor dare we. "If anything is certain about the
+teaching of Christ and His apostles, it is that they warned men not to
+reject the Divine mercy and so to incur irrevocable exile from God's
+presence and joy. They assumed that some men would be guilty of this
+supreme crime, and would be doomed to this supreme woe" (Dale). There is
+nothing in this text to warrant any man in presuming on the mercy or the
+sovereignty of God, nothing to justify us in supposing that,
+deliberately refusing to be reconciled to God in Christ, we shall yet be
+reconciled in the end, despite ourselves.
+
+St Paul assures us that God and the world will be reunited, and that
+peace will reign through all realms and orders of existence. He does
+not, and he could not say that none will exclude themselves from the
+eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made it possible for them to
+contradict Him, so long as they have any being. The apostle's words have
+their note of warning, along with their boundless promise. There is no
+place in the future order of things for aught that is out of Christ.
+There is no standing-ground anywhere for the unclean and the unjust, for
+the irreconcilable rebel against God. "The Son of man shall send forth
+His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that
+offend and them that do iniquity."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] The arrangement above made of the lines of this intricate passage
+is designed to guide the eye to its elucidation. Our disposition of the
+verses has not been determined by any preconceived interpretation, but
+by the parallelism of expression and cadences of phrase. The rhythmical
+structure of the piece, it seems to us, supplies the key to its
+explanation, and reduces to order its long-drawn and heaped-up relative
+and prepositional clauses, which are grammatically so unmanageable.
+
+[34] =Chaire, kecharit�men�.= It is impossible to reproduce in English
+the beautiful assonance--the _play_ of sound and sense--in Gabriel's
+greeting, as St Luke renders it.
+
+[35] See Rom. i. 16-18, iii. 19-v. 21, vi. 7, vii. 1-6, viii. 1-4,
+31-34, x. 6-9; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 17, 56, 57; 2 Cor. v. 18-21; Gal. ii.
+14-iii. 14, vi. 12-14. The latter passages the writer has endeavoured to
+expound in Chapters X. to XII. and XXVIII. of his Commentary on
+_Galatians_ in this series.
+
+[36] It is an error to suppose, as one sometimes hears it said, that
+_trespasses_ or _transgressions_ are a light and comparatively trivial
+form of sin. Both words denote, in the language of Scripture, definite
+offences against known law, departures from known duty. Adam's sin was
+the typical "transgression" and "trespass" (Rom. v. 14, 15, etc.; comp.
+ii. 23; Gal. iii. 19).
+
+[37] Gal. iii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.
+
+[38] See _The Evangelical Revival, and other Sermons_, pp. 149-170, on
+"The Forgiveness of Sins."
+
+[39] Bishop Ellicott, who advocates the latter rendering, objects to
+Meyer's interpretation that it is "doubtful in point of usage." _Pace
+tanti viri_, we must retort this objection upon the new translation. _To
+obtain by lot, to have (a thing) allotted to one_, is the meaning
+regularly given to =kl�rousthai= in the classical dictionaries; and in
+O.T. usage the _lot_ (=kl�ros=) becomes the _inheritance_ (the thing
+_allotted_). The verb is repeatedly used by Philo with the meaning _to
+obtain_, or _receive an inheritance_; whereas there seems to be no real
+parallel to the other rendering. It is true that =kl�rousthai= in the
+sense of the A.V. requires an object; but that is virtually supplied by
+=en h�=: "we had our inheritance allotted _in Christ_." Comp. Col. i.
+12, "the lot of the saints _in the light_," which signifies not the
+locality, but the nature and content of the saints' heritage.
+
+[40] See Gal. iii. 22--iv. 7; and Chapters XV.--XVII. in the
+_Expositor's Bible_ (Galatians), on Sonship and Inheritance in St Paul.
+
+[41] Compare Acts xxvi. 18, which also speaks to this association of
+ideas in St Paul's mind, with vers. 4, 5, 7, and 11 in this chapter.
+
+[42] Vv. 8, 9, ch. iii. 4, 5; comp. Col. ii. 2, 3; 1 Cor. ii. 6-9.
+
+[43] "The fulness of the time," Gal. iv. 4; "in due season," Rom. v. 6;
+"in its own times," 1 Tim. ii. 6. These are all synonymous expressions
+for the Messianic era. Comp. Heb. i. 2, ix. 26; 1 Pet. i. 20.
+
+[44] Ch. iii. 8, 9; Col. i. 25; 1 Cor. iv. 1; 1 Tim. i. 4, i. 7; 2 Tim.
+i. 9-11; and especially Rom. xvi. 25, 26.
+
+[45] Comp. ch. v. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 24-28; Phil. ii. 9-12; Heb. ii. 8; Rev.
+i. 5, xi. 15, xvii. 14; Dan. vii. 13, 14.
+
+[46] One wonders that our Revisers, so attentive to all points of Greek
+idiom, did not think it worth while to discriminate between _Christ_ and
+_the Christ_ in such passages as this. In Ephesians this distinction is
+especially conspicuous and significant. See vv. 12, 20 iii. 17, iv. 20,
+v. 23; similarly in 1 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. xv. 3.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_THE FINAL REDEMPTION._
+
+          "[That we might be to the praise of His glory:]
+    We who had before hoped in the Christ, in whom also ye _have hoped_,
+      Since ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,--
+    In whom indeed, when ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy
+        Spirit of the promise,
+      Which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of
+        _God's_ possession,--
+                                 To the praise of His glory."
+    EPH. i. 12-14.
+
+
+When the apostle reaches the "heritage" conferred upon us in Christ
+(ver. 11), he is on the boundary between the present and the future.
+Into that future he now presses forward, gathering from it his crowning
+tribute "to the praise of God's glory." We shall find, however, that
+this heritage assumes a twofold character, as did the conception of the
+inheritance of the Lord in the Old Testament. If the saints have their
+heritage in Christ, partly possessed and partly to be possessed, God has
+likewise, and antecedently, His inheritance in them, of which He too has
+still to take full possession.[47]
+
+Opening upon this final prospect, St Paul touches on a subject of
+supreme interest to himself and that could not fail to find a place in
+his great Act of Praise--viz., _the admission of the Gentiles_ to the
+spiritual property of Israel. The thought of the heirship of believers
+and of God's previous counsel respecting it (ver. 11), brought before
+his mind the distinction between Jew and Gentile and the part assigned
+to each in the Divine plan. Hence he varies the general refrain in verse
+12 by saying significantly, "that _we_ might be to the praise of His
+glory." This emphatic _we_ is explained in the opening phrase of the
+last strophe: "that have beforehand fixed our hope on the Christ,"--the
+heirs of Israel's hope in "Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets
+did write." With this "we" of Paul's Jewish consciousness the "ye also"
+of verse 13 is set in contrast by his vocation as Gentile apostle. This
+second pronoun, by one of Paul's abrupt turns of thought, is deprived of
+its predicating verb; but that is given already by the "hoped" of the
+last clause. "The Messianic hope, Israel's ancient heirloom, in its
+fulfilment is _yours_ as much as ours."
+
+This hope of Israel pointed Israelite and Gentile believer alike to the
+completion of the Messianic era, when the mystery of God should be
+finished and His universe redeemed from the bondage of corruption (vv.
+10, 14). By the "one hope" of the Christian calling the Church is now
+made one. From this point of view the apostle in chapter ii. 12
+describes the condition in which the gospel found his Gentile readers as
+that of men cut off from Christ, strangers to the covenants of
+promise,--in a word, "having no hope"; while he and his Jewish
+fellow-believers held the priority that belonged to those whose are the
+promises. The apostle stands precisely at the juncture where the wild
+shoot of nature is grafted into the good olive tree. A generation later
+no one would have thought of writing of "the Christ in whom _you_
+(Gentiles) _also_ have found hope"; for then Christ was the established
+possession of the Gentile Church.
+
+To these Christless heathen Christ and His hope came, when they "heard
+the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation." A great light had
+sprung up for them that sat in darkness; the good tidings of salvation
+came to the lost and despairing. "To the Gentiles," St Paul declared,
+addressing the obstinate Jews of Rome, "this salvation of God was sent:
+they indeed will hear it" (Acts xxviii. 28). Such was his experience in
+Ephesus and all the Gentile cities. There were hearing ears and open
+hearts, souls longing for the word of truth and the message of hope. The
+trespass of Israel had become the riches of the world. For this on his
+readers' behalf he gives joyful thanks,--that his message proved to be
+"the gospel of _your_ salvation."
+
+Salvation, as St Paul understands it, includes our uttermost
+deliverance, the end of death itself (1 Cor. xv. 26). He renders praise
+to God for that He has sealed Gentile equally with Jewish believers with
+the stamp of His Spirit, which makes them His property and gives
+assurance of absolute redemption.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are three things to be considered in this statement: _the seal_
+itself, _the conditions_ upon which, and _the purpose_ for which it is
+affixed.
+
+I. A seal is a token of proprietorship put by the owner upon his
+property;[48] or it is the authentication of some statement or
+engagement, the official stamp that gives it validity;[49] or it is the
+pledge of inviolability guarding a treasure from profane or injurious
+hands.[50] There is the protecting seal, the ratifying seal, and the
+proprietary seal. The same seal may serve each or all of these purposes.
+Here the thought of possession predominates (comp. ver. 4); but it can
+scarcely be separated from the other two. The witness of the Holy Spirit
+marks men out as God's _purchased right_ in Christ (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20).
+In that very fact it guards them from evil and wrong (iv. 30), while it
+ratifies their Divine sonship (Gal. iv. 6) and guarantees their personal
+share in the promises of God (2 Cor. i. 20-22). It is a bond between God
+and men; a sign at once of what we are and shall be to God, and of what
+He is and will be to us. It secures, and it assures. It stamps us for
+God's possession, and His kingdom and glory as our possession.
+
+This seal is constituted by _the Holy Spirit of the promise_,--in
+contrast with the material seal, "in the flesh, wrought by hand,"[51]
+which marked the children of the Old Covenant from Abraham downwards,
+previously to the fulfilment of the promise (Gal. iii. 14). We bear it
+in the inmost part of our nature, where we are nearest to God: "The
+Spirit witnesseth to our spirit." "The Israelites also were sealed, but
+by circumcision, like cattle and irrational animals. We were sealed by
+the Spirit, as sons" (Chrysostom). The stamp of God is on the
+consciousness of His children. "We know that Christ abides in us,"
+writes St John, "from the Spirit which He gave us" (1 Ep. iii. 24).
+Under this seal is conveyed the sum of blessing comprised in our
+salvation. Jesus promised, "Your heavenly Father will give His Holy
+Spirit to them that ask" (Luke xi. 13), as if there were nothing else to
+ask. Giving us this, God gives everything, gives us Himself! In
+substance or anticipation, this one bestowment contains all good things
+of God.
+
+The apostle writes "the Spirit of the promise, _the Holy_ [Spirit],"
+with emphasis on the word of quality; for the testifying power of the
+seal lies in its character. "Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try
+the spirits, whether they are of God" (1 John iv. 1). There are false
+prophets, deceiving and deceived; there are promptings from "the spirit
+that works in the sons of disobedience," diabolical inspirations, so
+plausible and astonishing that they may deceive the very elect. It is a
+most perilous error to identify the supernatural with the Divine, to
+suppose mere miracles and communications from the invisible sphere a
+sign of the working of God. Antichrist can mimic Christ by his "lying
+wonders and deceit of unrighteousness" (2 Thess. ii. 8-12). Jesus never
+appealed to the power of His works in proof of His mission, apart from
+their ethical quality. God's Spirit works after His kind, and makes ours
+a holy spirit. There is an objective and subjective witness--the obverse
+and reverse of the medal (2 Tim. ii. 19). To be sealed by the Holy
+Spirit is, in St Paul's dialect, the same thing as to be _sanctified_;
+only, the phrase of this text brings out graphically the promissory
+aspect of sanctification, its bearing on our final redemption.[52]
+
+When the sealing Spirit is called the Spirit _of promise_, does the
+expression look backward or forward? Is the apostle thinking of the past
+promise now fulfilled, or of some promise still to be fulfilled? The
+former, undoubtedly, is true. _The_ promise (the article is
+significant[53]) is, in the words of Christ, "the promise of the
+Father." On the day of Pentecost St Peter pointed to the descent of the
+Holy Spirit as God's seal upon the Messiahship of Jesus, fulfilling what
+was promised to Israel for the last days. When this miraculous effusion
+was repeated in the household of Cornelius, the Jewish apostle saw its
+immense significance. He asked, "Can any one forbid water that these
+should be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?"
+(Acts x. 47). This was the predicted criterion of the Messianic times.
+Now it was _given_, and with an abundance beyond hope,--_poured out_, in
+the full sense of Joel's words, _upon all flesh_.
+
+Now, if God has done so much--for this is the implied argument of verses
+13, 14--He will surely accomplish the rest. The attainment of past hope
+is the warrant of present hope. He who gives us His own Spirit, will
+give us the fulness of eternal life. The earnest implies the sum. In the
+witness of the Holy Spirit there is for the Christian man the power of
+an endless life, a spring of courage and patience that can never fail.
+
+II. But there are very definite conditions, upon which this assurance
+depends. "When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
+salvation"--there is the outward condition: "when you believed"--there
+is the inward and subjective qualification for the affixing of the seal
+of God to the heart.
+
+How characteristic is this antithesis of _hearing_ and _faith_![54] St
+Paul delights to ring the changes upon these terms. The gospel he
+carried about with him was a message from God to men, the good news
+about Jesus Christ. It needs, on the one hand, to be effectively
+uttered, proclaimed so as to be heard with the understanding; and, on
+the other hand, it must be trustfully received and obeyed. Then the due
+result follows. There is salvation,--conscious, full.
+
+If they are to believe unto salvation, men must be made to _hear_ the
+word of truth. Unless the good news reaches their ears and their heart,
+it is no good news to them. "How shall they believe in Him of whom they
+have not heard? how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. x. 14).
+The light may be true, and the eyes clear and open; but there is no
+vision till both meet, till the illuminating ray falls on the sensitive
+spot and touches the responsive nerve. How many sit in darkness, groping
+and wearying for the light, ready for the message if there were any to
+speak it to them! Great would Paul's guilt have been, if when Christ
+called him to preach to the heathen, he had refused to go, if he had
+withheld the gospel of salvation from the multitudes waiting to receive
+it at his lips. Great also is our fault and blame, and heavy the
+reproach against the Church to-day, when with means in her hand to make
+Christ known to almost the whole world, she leaves vast numbers of men
+within her reach in ignorance of His message. She is not the proprietor
+of the Christian truth: it is God's gospel; and she holds it as God's
+trustee for mankind,--that through her "the message might be fully
+preached, and that all the nations might hear" (2 Tim. iv. 17). She has
+St Paul's programme in hand still to complete, and loiters over it.
+
+The nature of the message constitutes our duty to proclaim it. It is
+"the word _of truth_." If there be any doubt upon this, if our certainty
+of the Christian truth is shaken and we can no longer announce it with
+full conviction, our zeal for its propagation naturally declines.
+Scepticism chills and kills missionary fervour, as the breath of the
+frost the young growth of spring. At home and amongst our own people
+evangelistic agencies are supported by many who have no very decided
+personal faith, from secondary motives,--with a view to their social and
+reformatory benefits, out of philanthropic feeling and love to "the
+brother whom we have seen." The foreign missions of the Church, like the
+work of the Gentile apostle, gauge her real estimate of the gospel she
+believes and the Master she serves.
+
+But if we have no sure word of prophecy to speak, we had better be
+silent. Men are not saved by illusion or speculation. Christianity did
+not begin by offering to mankind a legend for a gospel, or win the ear
+of the world for a beautiful romance. When the apostles preached Jesus
+and the resurrection, they declared what they knew. To have spoken
+otherwise, to have uttered cunningly devised fables or pious phantasies
+or conjectures of their own, would have been, in their view, to bear
+false witness against God. Before the hostile scrutiny of their
+fellow-men, and in prospect of the awful judgement of God, they
+testified the facts about Jesus Christ, the things that they had "heard,
+and seen with their eyes, and which their hands had handled concerning
+the word of life." They were as sure of these things as of their own
+being. Standing upon this ground and with this weapon of truth alone in
+their hands, they denounced "the wiles of error" and the "craftiness of
+men who lie in wait to deceive" (iv. 14).
+
+And they could always speak of this word of truth, addressing whatsoever
+circle of hearers or of readers, as "the good news of _your salvation_."
+The pronoun, as we have seen, is emphatic. The glory of Paul's apostolic
+mission was its universalism. His message was to every man he met. His
+latest writings glow with delight in the world-wide destination of his
+gospel.[55] It was his consolation that the Gentiles in multitudes
+received the Divine message to which his countrymen closed their ears.
+And he rejoiced in this the more, because he foresaw that ultimately the
+gospel would return to its native home, and at last amid "the fulness of
+the Gentiles all Israel would be saved" (Rom. xi. 13-32). At present
+Israel was not prepared to seek, while the Gentiles were seeking
+righteousness by the way of faith (Rom. ix. 30-33).
+
+For it is upon this question of _faith_ that the whole issue turns.
+Hearing is much, when one hears the word of truth and news of salvation.
+But faith is the point at which salvation becomes ours--no longer a
+possibility, an opportunity, but a fact: "in whom indeed, _when you
+believed_, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit." So characteristic is
+this act of the new life to which it admits, that St Paul is in the
+habit of calling Christians, without further qualification, simply
+_believers_ ("those who believe," or "who believed"). Faith and the gift
+of the Holy Spirit are associated in his thoughts, as closely as Faith
+and Justification. "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?"
+was the question he put to the Baptist's disciples whom he found at
+Ephesus on first arriving there (Acts xix. 2). This was the test of the
+adequacy of their faith. He reminds the Galatians that they "received
+the Spirit from the hearing of faith," and tells them that in this way
+the blessing and the promise of Abraham were theirs already (Gal. iii.
+2, 7, 14). Faith in the word of Christ admits the Spirit of Christ, who
+is in the word waiting to enter. Faith is the trustful surrender and
+expectancy of the soul towards God; it sets the heart's door open for
+Christ's incoming through the Spirit This was the order of things from
+the beginning of the new dispensation. "God gave to them," says St Peter
+of the first baptized Gentiles, "the like gift as He did also unto us,
+when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost fell on them,
+as on us at the beginning" (Acts xi. 15-18). Upon our faith in Jesus
+Christ, the Holy Spirit enters the soul and announces Himself by His
+message of adoption, crying in us to God, _Abba, Father_ (Gal. iv. 6,
+7).
+
+In the chamber of our spirit, while we abide in faith, the Spirit of the
+Father and the Son dwells with us, witnessing to us of the love of God
+and leading us into all truth and duty and divine joy, instilling a deep
+and restful peace, breathing an energy that is a fire and fountain of
+life within the breast, which pours out itself in prayer and labour for
+the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is no mere gift to receive, or
+comfort to enjoy; He is an almighty Force in the believing soul and the
+faithful Church.
+
+III. The end for which the seal of God was affixed to Paul's Gentile
+readers, along with their Jewish brethren in Christ, appears in the
+last verse, with which the Act of Praise terminates: "sealed," he says,
+"with the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest of our inheritance, _until
+the redemption of the possession_."
+
+The last of these words is the equivalent of the Old Testament phrase
+rendered in Exodus xix. 5, and elsewhere, "_a peculiar treasure_ unto
+me"; in Deuteronomy vii. 6, etc., "a _peculiar_ people" (_i.e._, people
+of _possession_). The same Greek term is employed by the Septuagint
+translators in Malachi iii. 17, where our Revisers have substituted "a
+peculiar treasure" for the familiar, but misleading "jewels" of the
+older Version. St Peter in his first epistle (ii. 9, 10) transfers the
+title from the Jewish people to the new Israel of God, who are "an elect
+race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people _for God's own
+possession_." In that passage, as in this, the Revisers have inserted
+the word _God's_ in order to signify whose possession the term signifies
+in Biblical use. In the other places in the New Testament where the same
+Greek noun occurs,[56] it retains its primary active force, and denotes
+"_obtaining_ of the glory," etc., "_saving_ of the soul." The word
+signifies not the possessing so much as the _acquiring_ or _securing_ of
+its object. The Latin Vulgate suitably renders this phrase, _in
+redemptionem acquisitions_,--"till the redemption of the acquisition."
+
+God has "redeemed unto Himself a people"; He has "bought us with a
+price." His rights in us are both natural and _acquired_; they are
+redemptional rights, the recovered rights of the infinite love which in
+Jesus Christ saved mankind by extreme sacrifice from the doom of death
+eternal. This redemption "we have, in the remission of our trespasses"
+(ver. 7). But this is only the beginning. Those whose sin is cancelled
+and on whom God now looks with favour in Christ, are thereby redeemed
+and saved (ii. 5, 8).[57] They are within the kingdom of grace; they
+have passed out of death into life. They have but to persist in the
+grace into which they have entered, and all will be well. "Now," says
+the apostle to the Romans, "you are made free from sin and made servants
+to God; you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life."
+
+Our salvation is come; but, after all, it is still to come. We find the
+apostle using the words "save" and "redeem" in this twofold sense,
+applying them both to the commencement and the consummation of the new
+life.[58] The last act, in Romans viii. 23, he calls "the redemption of
+the body." This will reinstate the man in the integrity of his twofold
+being as a son of God. Hence our bodily redemption is there called an
+_adoption_. For as Jesus Christ by His resurrection was "marked out
+[_or_ instated] as Son of God in power" (Rom. i. 4), not otherwise will
+it be with His many brethren. Their reappearance in the new "body of
+glory" will be a "revelation" to the universe "of the sons of God."
+
+But this last redemption--or rather this last act of the one
+redemption--like the first, is through the blood of the cross. Christ
+has borne for us in His death the entire penalty of sin; the remission
+of that penalty comes to us in two distinct stages. The shadow of death
+is lifted off from our spirits now, in the moment of forgiveness. But
+for reasons of discipline it remains resting upon our bodily frame.
+Death is a usurper and trespasser in the bounds of God's heritage.
+Virtually and in principle, he is abolished; but not in effect. "I will
+ransom them from the power of the grave,"[59] the Lord said of His
+Israel, with a meaning deeper than His prophet knew. When that is done,
+then God will have redeemed, in point of fact, those possessions in
+humanity which He so much prizes, that for their recovery He spared not
+His Son.
+
+So long as mortality afflicts us, God cannot be satisfied on our
+account. His children are suffering and tortured; His people mourn under
+the oppression of the enemy. They sigh, and creation with them, under
+the burdensome and infirm tabernacle of the flesh, this body of our
+humiliation for which the hungry grave clamours. God's new estate in us
+is still encumbered with the liabilities in which the sin of the race
+involved us, with the "ills that flesh is heir to." But this
+mortgage--that we call, with a touching euphemism, _the debt of
+nature_--will at last be discharged. Soon shall we be free for ever from
+the law of sin and death. "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and
+come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their
+heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall
+flee away."
+
+To God, as He looks down upon men, the seal of His Spirit upon their
+hearts anticipates this full emancipation. He sees already in the
+redeemed spirit of His children what will be manifest in their glorious
+heavenly form. The same token is to ourselves as believing men the
+"earnest of our inheritance." Note that at this point the apostle drops
+the "you" by which he has for several sentences distinguished between
+Jewish and Gentile brethren. He identifies them with himself and speaks
+of "_our_ inheritance." This sudden resumption of the first person, the
+self-assertion of the filial consciousness in the writer breaking
+through the grammatical order, is a fine trait of the Pauline
+manner.[60]
+
+_Arrhabon_, the _earnest_ (_fastening penny_), is a Phoenician word of
+the market, which passed into Greek and Latin,--a monument of the daring
+pioneers of Mediterranean commerce. It denotes the part of the price
+given by a purchaser in making a bargain, or of the wages given by the
+hirer concluding a contract of service, by way of assurance that the
+stipulated sum will be forthcoming. Such pledge of future payment is at
+the same time a bond between those concerned, engaging each to his part
+in the transaction.
+
+The earnest is the seal, and something more. It is an instalment, a
+_token in kind_, a foretaste of the feast to come. In the parallel
+passage, Romans viii. 23, the same earnest is called "the firstfruit of
+the Spirit." What the earliest sheaf is to the harvest, that the
+entrance of the Spirit of God into a human soul is to the glory of its
+ultimate salvation. The sanctity, the joy, the sense of recovered life
+is the same in kind then and now, differing only in degree and
+expression.
+
+Of the "earnest of the Spirit" St Paul has spoken twice already, in 2
+Corinthians i. 22 and v. 5, where he cites this inner witness to assure
+us, in the first instance, that God will fulfil to us His promises, "how
+many soever they be"; and in the second, that our mortal nature shall be
+"swallowed up of life"--assimilated to the living spirit to which it
+belongs--and that "God has wrought us for this very thing." These
+earlier sayings explain the apostle's meaning here. God has made us His
+sons, in accordance with His purpose formed in the depths of eternity
+(ver. 5). As sons, we are His heirs in fellowship with Christ, and
+already have received rich blessings out of this heritage (ver. 11). But
+the richest part of it, including that which concerns the bodily form of
+our life, is still unredeemed, notwithstanding that the price of its
+redemption is paid.
+
+For this we wait till the time appointed of the Father,--the time when
+He will reclaim His heritage in us, and give us full possession of our
+heritage in Christ. We do not wait, as did the saints of former ages,
+ignorant of the Father's purpose for our future lot. "Life and
+immortality are brought to light through the gospel." We see beyond the
+chasm of death. We enjoy in the testimony of the Holy Spirit the
+foretaste of an eternal and glorious life for all the children of
+God--nay, the pledge that the reign of evil and death shall end
+throughout the universe.
+
+With this hope swelling their hearts, the apostle's readers once more
+triumphantly join in the refrain: TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORY.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] Exod. xix. 3-6; Deut. iv. 20, 21; 1 Kings viii. 51, 53; Ps.
+lxxviii. 71, etc. With the above comp. Gen. xv. 8; Numb. xviii. 20; Jos.
+xiii. 33; Ps. xvi. 5.
+
+[48] Ch. iv. 30. The "seal" of 2 Tim. ii. 19 has both the first and
+third of these meanings.
+
+[49] Rom. iv. 11; 1 Cor. ix. 2; John iii. 33, vi. 27.
+
+[50] Matt. xxvii. 66; Rev. v. 1, etc.
+
+[51] Ch. ii. 11; comp. Rom. i. 28, 29; Gal. v, 5, 6; Phil. iii. 2, 3.
+
+[52] Comp. Rom. viii. 9-11; 2 Cor. v. 1-5.
+
+[53] Acts i. 4, ii. 33, 39, xiii. 32, xxvi. 6; Rom. iv. 13-20; Gal. iii.
+14-29.
+
+[54] See Rom. x. 14-18; Gal. iii. 2, 5; Col. i. 6, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 13;
+2 Tim. i. 13.
+
+[55] 1 Tim. ii. 1-7, iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11.
+
+[56] 1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. ii. 14; Heb. x. 39.
+
+[57] Comp. Chapter VIII.
+
+[58] For the former usage see, along with ver. 7 and ch. ii. 5, 8; Rom.
+iii, 24, x. 9; Titus iii. 5; 2 Tim. i. 9; Col. i. 14; Heb. ix. 15; for
+the latter, ch. iv. 30; Luke xxi. 28; Rom. v. 9, 10, viii. 23; Phil. ii.
+12; 1 Thess. v. 8, 9; 2 Tim. ii. 10, iv. 18. It may be doubted whether
+St Paul ever uses these terms to denote present salvation or redemption
+without the final issue being also in his thoughts. Perhaps he would
+have called the redemption of ver. 7, in contrast with that of Rom.
+viii. 23, "the redemption of the spirit."
+
+[59] Hosea xiii. 14; Isa. xxv. 8.
+
+[60] The same incoherence occurs in Gal. iv. 5-7: "that _we_ might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because _ye_ are sons, God sent forth
+the Spirit of His Son into _our_ hearts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART._
+
+    "For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
+    which is among you, and which _ye shew_ toward all the saints, cease
+    not to give thanks for you, making mention _of you_ in my prayers:
+
+    "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
+    give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
+    Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know
+    what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His
+    inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His
+    power toward us who believe, according to that working of the might
+    of His strength, which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him
+    from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly
+    _places_."--EPH. i. 15-20.
+
+
+_Because of this_: because you have heard the glad tidings, and
+believing it have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (vv. 13, 14). _I
+too_: I your apostle, with so great an interest in your salvation, in
+return give thanks for you. Thus St Paul, having extolled to the
+uttermost God's counsel of redemption unfolded through the ages, claims
+to offer especial thanksgiving for the faith of those who belong to his
+Gentile province and are, directly or indirectly, the fruit of his own
+ministry (iii. 1-13).
+
+The intermediate clause of verse 15, describing the readers' faith, is
+obscure. This form of expression occurs nowhere else in St Paul; but the
+construction is used by St Luke,--_e.g._, in Acts xxi. 21: "All the
+Jews _which are among_ the Gentiles," where it implies diffusion over a
+wide area. This being a circular letter, addressed to a number of
+Churches scattered through the province of Asia, of whose faith in many
+cases St Paul knew only by report, we can understand how he writes:
+"having heard of the faith that is [spread] amongst you."--_The love_,
+completing _faith_ in the ordinary text (as in Col. i. 4), is relegated
+by the Revisers to the margin, upon evidence that seems conclusive.[61]
+The commentators, however, feel so strongly the harshness of this
+ellipsis that, in spite of the ancient witnesses, they read, almost with
+one consent,[62] "_your love_ toward all the saints." The variation of
+the former clause prepares us, however, for something peculiar in this.
+In verse 13 we found St Paul's thought fixed on the decisive fact of his
+readers' _faith_. On this he still dwells lingeringly. The grammatical
+link needed between "faith" and "unto all the saints" is supplied in the
+Revised Version by _ye show_, after the analogy of Philemon 5. Perhaps
+it might be supplied as grammatically, and in a sense better suiting the
+situation, by _is come_. Then the co-ordinate prepositional phrases
+qualifying "faith" have both alike a local reference, and we paraphrase
+the clause thus: "since I heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is
+spread amongst you, and whose report has reached all the saints."
+
+We are reminded of the thanksgiving for the Roman Church, "that your
+faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world."[63] The success of the
+gospel in Asia gave encouragement to believers in Christ everywhere. St
+Paul loves in this way to link Church to Church, to knit the bonds of
+faith between land and land: in this letter most of all; for it is his
+catholic epistle, the epistle of the Church oecumenical.
+
+In verse 16 we pass from praise to prayer. God is invoked by a double
+title peculiar to this passage, as "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+the Father of glory." The former expression is in no way difficult. The
+apostle often speaks, as in verse 3, of "the God and Father of our Lord
+Jesus Christ": intending to qualify the Divine Fatherhood by another
+epithet, he writes for once simply of "_the God_ of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." This reminds us of the dependence of the Lord Jesus upon the
+eternal Father, and accentuates the Divine sovereignty so conspicuous in
+the foregoing Act of Praise. Christ's constant attitude towards the
+Father was that of His cry of anguish on the cross, "My God, my God!"
+Yet He never speaks to men of _our_ God. To us God is "the God of our
+Lord Jesus Christ," as He was to the men of old time "the God of Abraham
+and of Isaac and of Jacob."
+
+The key to the designation _Father of glory_ is in Romans vi. 4: "Christ
+was raised from the dead through _the glory of the Father_." In the
+light of this august manifestation of God's power to save His lost sons
+in Christ, we are called to see light (vv. 19, 20). Its glory shines
+already about God's blessed name of Father, thrice glorified in the
+apostle's praise (vv. 3-14). The title is the counterpart of "the Father
+of compassions" in 2 Corinthians i. 3.
+
+And now, what has the apostle to ask of the Father of men under these
+glorious appellations? He asks "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
+full-knowledge[64] of Him,--the eyes of your heart enlightened, in order
+that you may know," etc. This recalls the emphasis with which in verses
+8 and 9 he set "wisdom and intelligence" amongst the first blessings
+bestowed by Divine grace upon the Church. It was the gift which the
+Asian Churches at the present juncture most needed; this is just now the
+burden of the apostle's prayers for his people.
+
+The _spirit of wisdom and revelation_ desired will proceed from the Holy
+Spirit dwelling in these Gentile believers (ver. 13). But it must belong
+to their own spirit and direct their personal mental activity, the
+spirit of revelation becoming "the spirit of their mind" (iv. 23). When
+St Paul asks for "a spirit of wisdom and _revelation_," he desires that
+his readers may have amongst themselves a fountain of inspiration and
+share in the prophetic gifts diffused through the Church.[65] And "the
+knowledge--the full, deep knowledge of God" is the sphere "in" which
+this richer inspiration and spiritual wisdom are exercised and
+nourished. "Philosophy, taking man for its centre, says, _Know thyself_:
+only the inspired word, which proceeds from God, has been able to say,
+_Know God_."[66]
+
+The connexion of the first clause of verse 18 with the last of verse 17
+is not very clear in St Paul's Greek; there is a characteristic
+incoherence of structure. The continuity of thought is unmistakable. He
+prays that through this inspired wisdom his readers may have their
+reason enlightened to see the grandeur and wealth of their religion.
+This is a vision for "the eyes of the heart." It is disclosed to the eye
+behind the eye, to the heart which is the true discerner.
+
+                  "The seeing eyes
+    See best by the light in the heart that lies."
+
+Yonder is an ox grazing in the meadow on a bright summer's day. Round
+him is spread the fairest landscape,--a broad stretch of herbage
+embroidered with flowers, the river gleaming in and out amongst the
+distant trees, the hills on both sides bounding the quiet valley,
+sunshine and shadows chasing each other as they leap from height to
+height. But of all this what sees the grazing ox? So much lush pasture
+and cool shade and clear water where his feet may plash when he has done
+feeding. In the same meadow there stands a poet musing, or a painter
+busy at his easel; and on the soul of that gifted man there descends,
+through eyes outwardly discerning no more than those of the beast at his
+side, a vision of wonder and beauty which will make all time richer. The
+eyes of the man's heart are opened, and the spirit of wisdom and
+revelation is given him in the knowledge of God's work in nature.
+
+Like differences exist amongst men in regard to the things of religion.
+"So foolish was I and ignorant," says the Psalmist, speaking of his
+former dejection and unbelief, "I was as a beast before Thee!" There
+shall be two men sitting side by side in the same house of prayer, at
+the same gate of heaven. The one sees heaven opened; he hears the
+eternal song; his spirit is a temple filled with the glory of God. The
+other sees the place and the aspect of his fellow-worshippers; he hears
+the music of organ and choir, and the sound of some preacher's voice.
+But as for anything besides, any influence from another world, it is no
+more to him at that moment than is the music in the poet's soul or the
+colours on the painter's canvas to the ox that eateth grass.
+
+It is not the strangeness and distance of Divine things alone that cause
+insensibility; their familiarity has the same effect. We know all this
+gospel so well. We have read it, listened to it, gone over its points of
+doctrine a hundred times. It is trite and easy to us as a worn glove. We
+discuss without a tremor of emotion truths the first whisper and dim
+promise of which once lifted men's souls into ecstasy, or cast them down
+into depths of shame and bewilderment so that they forgot to eat their
+bread. The awe of things eternal, the mystery of our faith, the Spirit
+of glory and of God rest on us no longer. So there come to be, as one
+hears it said, _gospel-hardened_ hearers--and gospel-hardened preachers!
+The eyes see--and see not; the ears hear--and hear not; the lips speak
+without feeling; _the heart is waxen fat_. This is the nemesis of grace
+abused. It is the result that follows by an inevitable psychological
+law, where outward contact with spiritual truth is not attended with an
+inward apprehension and response. How do we need to pray, in handling
+these dread themes, for a true sense and savour of Divine things,--that
+there may be given, and ever given afresh to us "a spirit of wisdom and
+revelation in the knowledge of God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three things the apostle desires that his readers may see with the
+heart's enlightened eyes: the _hope to which God calls them_, the
+_wealth that He possesses in them,_ and the _power which He is prepared
+to exert upon them as believing men_.
+
+I. What, then, is our _hope_ in God? What is the ideal of our faith? For
+what purpose has God called us into the fellowship of His Son? What is
+our religion going to do for us and to make of us?
+
+It will bring us safe home to heaven. It will deliver us from the
+present evil world, and preserve us unto Christ's heavenly kingdom. God
+forbid that we should make light of "the hope laid up for us in the
+heavens," or cast it aside. It is an anchor of the soul, both sure and
+steadfast. But is it _the_ hope of our calling? Is this what St Paul
+here chiefly signifies? We are very sure that it is not. But it is the
+one thing which stands for the hope of the gospel in many minds. "We
+trust that our sins are forgiven: we hope that we shall get to heaven!"
+The experience of how many Christian believers begins and ends there. We
+make of our religion a harbour of refuge, a soothing anodyne, an escape
+from the anguish of guilt and the fear of death; not a life-vocation, a
+grand pursuit. The definition we have quoted may suffice for the
+beginning and the end; but we need something to fill out that formula,
+to give body and substance, meaning and movement to the life of faith.
+
+Let the apostle tell us what he regarded, for himself, as the end of
+religion, what was the object of his ambition and pursuit. "One thing I
+do," he writes to the Philippians, opening to them all his heart,--"One
+thing I do. I press towards the mark for the prize of my high calling of
+God in Christ Jesus." And what, pray, was that mark?--"that I may gain
+Christ and be found in Him!--that I may know Him, and the power of His
+resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to
+His death, if by any means I may attain unto the final resurrection from
+the dead." Yes, Paul hopes for heaven; but he hopes for something else
+first, and most. It is through Christ that he sees heaven. To know
+Christ, to love Christ, to serve Christ, to follow Christ, to be like
+Christ, to be with Christ for ever!--that is what St Paul lived for.
+Whatever aim he pursues or affection he cherishes, Christ lies in it and
+reaches beyond it. In doing or in suffering, in his intellect and his
+heart, in his thoughts for himself or for others, Christ is all things
+to him and in all. When life is thus filled with Christ, heaven becomes,
+as one may say, a mere circumstance, and death but an incident upon the
+way,--in the soul's everlasting pursuit of Christ.
+
+Behold, then, brethren, the hope of our calling. God could not call us
+to any destiny less or lower than this. It would have been unworthy of
+Him,--and may we not say, unworthy of ourselves, if we are in truth His
+sons? From eternity the Father of spirits has predestined you and me to
+be holy and without blemish before Him,--in a word, to be conformed to
+the image of His Son. Every other hope is dross compared to this.
+
+II. Another vision for the heart's eyes, still more amazing than that we
+have seen: "what is," St Paul writes, "the riches of the glory of God's
+inheritance in the saints."
+
+We saw, in considering the eleventh and fourteenth verses, how the
+apostle, in characteristic fashion, plays upon the double aspect of the
+_inheritance_, regarding it now as the heritage of the saints in God and
+again as His heritage in them. The former side of this relationship was
+indicated in the "hope of the Divine calling,"--which we live and strive
+for as it is promised us by God; and the latter comes out, by way of
+contrast, in this second clause. Verse 18 repeats in another way the
+antithesis of verse 14 between our inheritance and God's acquisition. We
+must understand that God sets great store by us His human children, and
+counts Himself rich in our affection and our service. How deeply it must
+affect us to know this, and to see the glory that in God's eyes belongs
+to His possession in believing men.
+
+What presumption is all this, some one says. How preposterous to imagine
+that the Maker of the worlds interests Himself in atoms like
+ourselves,--in the ephemera of this insignificant planet! But moral
+magnitudes are not to be measured by a foot-rule. The mind which can
+traverse the immensities of space and hold them in its grasp, transcends
+the things it counts and weighs. As it is amongst earthly powers, so the
+law may hold betwixt sphere and sphere in the system of worlds, in the
+relations of bodies terrestrial and celestial to each other, that "God
+has chosen the weak things to put to shame the mighty, and the things
+that are not to bring to nought the things that are." Through the Church
+He is "making known to the potentates in the heavenly places His
+manifold wisdom" (iii, 10). The lowly can sing evermore with Mary in the
+Magnificat: "He that is mighty hath magnified me." If it be true that
+God spared not His Son for our salvation and has sealed us with the seal
+of His Spirit, if He chose us before the world's foundation to be His
+saints, He must set upon those saints an infinite value. We may despise
+ourselves; but He thinks great things of us.
+
+And is this, after all, so hard to understand? If the alternative were
+put to some owner of wide lands and houses full of treasure: "Now, you
+must lose that fine estate, or see your own son lost and ruined! You
+must part with a hundred thousand pounds--or with your best friend!"
+there could be no doubt in such a case what the choice would be of a man
+of sense and worth, one who sees with the eyes of the heart. Shall we
+think less nobly of God than of a right-minded man amongst
+ourselves?--Suppose, again, that one of our great cities were so full of
+wealth that the poorest were housed in palaces and fared sumptuously
+every day, though its citizens were profligates and thieves and cowards!
+What would its opulence and luxury be worth? Is it not evident that
+_character_ is the only possession of intrinsic value, and that this
+alone gives worth and weight to other properties? "The saints that are
+in the earth and the excellent" are earth's riches.
+
+So far as we can judge of His ways, the great God who made us cares
+comparatively little about the upholstery and machinery of the universe;
+but He cares immensely about men, about the character and destiny of
+men. There is nothing in all that physical science discloses for God to
+_love_, nothing kindred to Himself. "Hast thou considered my servant
+Job?" the Hebrew poet pictures Him saying before heaven and hell!--"Hast
+thou considered my servant Job?--a perfect man and upright: there is
+none like him in the earth." How proud God is of a man like that, in a
+world like this. Who can tell the value that the Father of glory sets
+upon the tried fidelity of His humblest servant here on earth; the
+intensity with which He reciprocates the confidence of one timid,
+trembling human heart, or the simple reverence of one little child that
+lisps His awful name? "He _taketh pleasure_ in them that fear Him, in
+those that hope in His mercy!" Beneath His feet all the worlds lie
+spread in their starry splendour, our sun with its train of planets no
+more than one glimmering spot of light amongst ten thousand. But amidst
+this magnificence, what is the sight that wins His tender fatherly
+regard? "To that man will I look, that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
+and that trembles at my word." Thus saith the High and Lofty One that
+inhabiteth eternity. The Creator rejoices in His works as at the
+beginning, the Lord of heaven and earth in His dominion. But these are
+not His "inheritance." That is in the love of His children, in the
+character and number of His saints. _We_ are to be the praise of His
+glory.
+
+Let us learn, then, to respect ourselves. Let us not take the world's
+tinsel for wealth, and spend our time, like the man in Bunyan's dream,
+scraping with "the muck-rake" while the crown of life shines above our
+head. The riches of a Church--nay, of any human community--lies not in
+its moneyed resources, but in the men and women that compose it, in
+their godlike attributes of mind and heart, in their knowledge, their
+zeal, their love to God and man, in the purity, the gentleness, the
+truthfulness and courage and fidelity that are found amongst them. These
+are the qualities which give distinction to human life, and are
+beautiful in the eyes of God and holy angels. "Man that is in honour and
+understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish."
+
+III. One thing more we need to understand, or what we have seen already
+will be of little practical avail. We may see glorious visions, we may
+cherish high aspirations; and they may prove to be but the dreams of
+vanity. Nay, it is conceivable that God Himself might have wealth
+invested in our nature, a treasure beyond price, shipwrecked and sunk
+irrecoverably through our sin. What means exist for realizing this
+inheritance? what power is there at work to recover these forfeited
+hopes, and that glory of God of which we have come so miserably short?
+
+The answer lies in the apostle's words: "That ye may know what is the
+exceeding greatness of His power toward us that believe,"--a power
+measured by "the energy of the might of His strength[67] which He
+wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at
+His right hand in the heavenly places." This is the power that we have
+to count upon, the force that is yoked to the world's salvation and is
+at the service of our faith. Its energy has turned the tide and reversed
+the stream of nature--in the person of Jesus Christ and in the course of
+human history. It has changed death to life. Above all, it certifies the
+forgiveness of sin and releases us from its liabilities; it transforms
+the law of sin and death into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus.
+
+We preachers hear it said sometimes: "You live in a speculative world.
+Your doctrines are ideal and visionary,--altogether too high for men as
+they are and the world as we find it. Human nature and experience, the
+coarse realities of life are all against you."
+
+What would our objectors have said at the grave-side of Jesus? "The
+beautiful dreamer, the sublime idealist! He was too good for a world
+such as ours. It was sure to end like this. His ideas of life were
+utterly impracticable." So they would have moralized. "And the good
+prophet talked--strangest fanaticism of all--of rising again on the
+third day! One thing at least we know, that the dead are dead and gone
+from us. No, we shall never see Jesus or His like again. Purity cannot
+live in this infected air. The grave ends all hope for men." But,
+despite human nature and human experience, He has risen again, He lives
+for ever! That is the apostle's message and testimony to the world. For
+those "who believe" it, all things are possible. A life is within our
+reach that seemed far off as earth from heaven. _You_ may become a
+perfect saint.
+
+From His open grave Christ breathed on His disciples, and through them
+on all mankind, the Holy Spirit. This is the efficient cause of
+Christianity,--the Spirit that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. The
+limit to its efficacy lies in the defects of our faith, in our failure
+to comprehend what God gave us in His Son. Is anything now too hard for
+the Lord? Shall anything be called impossible, in the line of God's
+promise and man's spiritual need? Can we put an arrest upon the working
+of this mysterious force, upon the Spirit of the new life, and say to
+it: Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?
+
+Look at Jesus where He was--the poor, tortured, wounded body, slain by
+our sins, lying cold and still in Joseph's grave: then lift up your eyes
+and see Him _where He is_,--enthroned in the worship and wonder of
+heaven! Measure by that distance, by the sweep and lift of that almighty
+Arm, the strength of the forces engaged to your salvation, the might of
+the powers at work through the ages for the redemption of humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] See Westcott and Hort's _New Testament in Greek_, vol. ii., pp.
+124, 125.
+
+[62] Dr. Beet abides by the critical text. He solves the difficulty by
+giving =pistis= a double sense: "the faith among you in the Lord Jesus,
+and the _faithfulness_ towards all the saints." See his Commentary on
+_Ephesians, etc._, pp. 284-6.
+
+[63] In 1 Thess. i. 7-9; 2 Thess. i. 4, the same thought enters into
+Paul's thanksgiving; comp. 2 Cor. ix. 2.
+
+[64] This is the emphatic =epign�sis=, so frequent in the later
+epistles. See Lightfoot's _note_ on Col. i. 9; or Cremer's _Lexicon to
+N.T. Greek_.
+
+[65] See ch. iii. 3-5, iv. 11; and comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 26-40, etc.
+
+[66] Adolphe Monod: _Explication de l'�p�tre de S. Paul aux �ph�siens_.
+A deeply spiritual and suggestive Commentary.
+
+[67] In this amplitude of expression there is no idle heaping up of
+words. The four synonyms for _power_ have each a distinct force in the
+sentence. =Dynamis= is _power_ in general, as that which is able to
+effect some purpose; =energeia= is _energy_, power in effective action
+and operation; =kratos= is _might_, _mastery_, sovereign power,--in the
+New Testament used chiefly of the power of God; =ischys= is _force_,
+_strength_, power resident in some person and belonging to him. This is
+the order in which the words follow each other. Compare vi. 10 in the
+Greek.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTRINE.
+
+CHAPTER i. 20-iii. 13.
+
+    =Hyps�l�n sphodra gemei t�n no�mat�n kai hyperonk�n. Ha gar m�damou
+    schedon ephthenxato, tauta entautha ph�sin.=
+
+    JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: _In epistolam ad Ephesios._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST._
+
+    "He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand
+    in the heavenly _places_, far above all rule, and authority, and
+    power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
+    world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in
+    subjection under His feet, and Him He gave--the head over all
+    things--to the Church which is His body,--the fulness of Him that
+    filleth all in all."--EPH. i. 20-23.
+
+
+The division that we make at verse 20, marking off at this point the
+commencement of the Doctrine of the epistle, may appear somewhat forced.
+The great doxology of the first half of the chapter is intensely
+theological; and the prayer which follows it, like that of the letter to
+the Colossians, melts into doctrine imperceptibly. The apostle teaches
+upon his knees. The things he has to tell his readers, and the things he
+has asked on their behalf from God, are to a great extent the same.
+Still the writer's attitude in the second chapter is manifestly that of
+teaching; and his doctrine there is so directly based upon the
+concluding sentences of his prayer, that it is necessary for logical
+arrangement to place these verses within the doctrinal section of the
+epistle.
+
+The resurrection of Christ made men sensible that a new force of life
+had come into the world, of incalculable potency. This power was in
+existence before. In prelusive ways, it has wrought in the world from
+its foundation, and since the fall of man. By the incarnation of the Son
+of God it took possession of human flesh; by His sacrificial death it
+won its decisive triumph. But the virtue of these acts of Divine grace
+lay in their hiding of power, in the self-abnegation of the Son of God
+who emptied Himself and took a servant's form, and became obedient unto
+death.
+
+With what a rebound did the "energy of the might of God's strength" put
+forth itself in Him, when once this sacrifice was accomplished! Even His
+disciples who had seen Jesus still the tempest and feed the multitude
+from a handful of bread and call back the spirit to its mortal frame,
+had not dreamed of the might of Godhead latent in Him, until they beheld
+Him risen from the dead. He had promised this in words; but they
+understood His words only when they saw the fact, when He actually stood
+before them "alive after His passion." The scene of Calvary--the cruel
+sufferings of their Master, His helpless ignominy and abandonment by
+God, the malignant triumph of his enemies--gave to this revelation an
+effect beyond measure astonishing and profound in its impression. From
+the stupor of grief and despair they were raised to a boundless hope, as
+Jesus rose from the death of the cross to glorious life and Godhead.
+
+Of the same nature was the effect produced by His manifestation to Paul
+himself. The Nazarene prophet known to Saul by report as an attractive
+teacher and worker of miracles, had made enormous pretensions,
+blasphemous if they were not true. He put Himself forward as the Messiah
+and the very Son of God! But when brought to the test, His power utterly
+failed. God disowned and forsook Him; and He "was crucified of
+weakness." His followers declared, indeed, that He had returned from the
+grave. But who could believe them, a handful of Galilean enthusiasts,
+desperately clinging to the name of their disgraced leader! If He has
+risen, why does He not show Himself to others? Who can accept a
+crucified Messiah? The new faith is a madness, and an insult to our
+common Judaism! Such were Saul's former thoughts of the Christ. But when
+his challenge was met and the Risen One confronted him in the way to
+Damascus, when from that Form of insufferable glory there came a voice
+saying, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest!" it was enough. Instantly
+the conviction penetrated his soul, "He liveth by the power of God."
+Saul's previous reasonings against the Messiahship of Jesus by the same
+rigorous logic were now turned into arguments for Him.
+
+It is "_the_ Christ," let us observe, in whom God "wrought raising Him
+from the dead": the Christ of Jewish hope (ver. 12), the centre and sum
+of the Divine counsel for the world (ver. 10),[68] the Christ whom in
+that moment never to be forgotten the humbled Saul recognized in the
+crucified Nazarene.
+
+The demonstration of the power of Christianity Paul had found in the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ. The power which raised Him from the dead
+is the working energy of our faith. Let us see what this mysterious
+power wrought in the Redeemer Himself; and then we will consider how it
+bears upon us. There are two steps indicated in Christ's exaltation: He
+was raised _from the death of the cross to new life amongst men_; and
+again from the world of men He was raised _to the throne of God in
+heaven_. In the enthronement of Jesus Christ at the Father's right
+hand, verses 22, 23 further distinguish two separate acts: there was
+conferred on Him _a universal Lordship_; and He was made specifically
+_Head of the Church_, being given to her for her Lord and Life, He who
+contains the fulness of the Godhead. Such is the line of thought marked
+out for us.
+
+
+I. _God raised the Christ from the dead._
+
+This assertion is the corner-stone of St Paul's life and doctrine, and
+of the existence of Christendom. Did the event really take place? There
+were Christians at Corinth who affirmed, "There is no resurrection of
+the dead." And there are followers of Jesus now who with deep sadness
+confess, like the author of _Obermann once more_:
+
+    "Now He is dead! Far hence He lies
+      In the lorn Syrian town;
+    And on His grave, with shining eyes,
+      The Syrian stars look down."
+
+If we are driven to this surrender, compelled to think that it was an
+apparition, a creation of their own passionate longing and heated fancy
+that the disciples saw and conversed with during those forty days, an
+apparition sprung from his fevered remorse that arrested Saul on the
+Damascus road--if we no longer believe in Jesus and the resurrection, it
+is in vain that we still call ourselves Christians. The foundation of
+the Christian creed is struck away from under our feet. Its spell is
+broken; its energy is gone.
+
+Individual men may and do continue to believe in Christ, with no faith
+in the supernatural, men who are sceptics in regard to His resurrection
+and miracles. They believe in Himself, they say, not in His legendary
+wonders; in His character and teaching, in His beneficent influence--in
+the _spiritual_ Christ, whom no physical marvel can exalt above His
+intrinsic greatness. And such trust in Him, where it is sincere, He
+accepts for all that it is worth, from the believer's heart. But this is
+not the faith that saved Paul, and built the Church. It is not the faith
+which will save the world. It is the faith of compromise and transition,
+the faith of those whose conscience and heart cling to Christ while
+their reason gives its verdict against Him. Such belief may hold good
+for the individuals who profess it; but it must die with them. No skill
+of reasoning or grace of sentiment will for long conceal its
+inconsistency. The plain, blunt sense of mankind will decide again, as
+it has done already, that Jesus Christ was either a blasphemer, or He
+was the Son of the eternal God; either He rose from the dead in very
+truth, or His religion is a fable. Christianity is not bound up with the
+infallibility of the Church, whether in Pope or Councils, nor with the
+inerrancy of the letter of Scripture: it stands or falls with the
+reality of the facts of the gospel, with the risen life of Christ and
+His presence in the Spirit amongst men.
+
+The fact of Christ's resurrection is one upon which modern science has
+nothing new to say. The law of death is not a recent discovery. Men were
+as well aware of its universality in the first century as they are in
+the nineteenth, and as little disposed as we are ourselves to believe in
+the return of the dead to bodily life. The stark reality of death makes
+us all sceptics. Nothing is clearer from the narratives than the utter
+surprise of the friends of Jesus at His reappearance, and their complete
+unpreparedness for the event. They were not eager, but "_slow_ of heart
+to believe." Their very love to the Master, as in the case of Thomas,
+made them fearful of self-deception. It is a shallow and an unjust
+criticism that dismisses the disciples as interested witnesses and
+predisposed to faith in the resurrection of their dead Master. Should we
+be thus credulous in the case of our best-beloved dead? The instinctive
+feeling that meets any thought of the kind, after the fact of death is
+once certain, is rather that of deprecation and aversion, such as Martha
+expressed when Jesus went to call her brother from his grave. In all the
+long record of human imposture and illusion, no resurrection story has
+ever found general credence outside of the Biblical revelation. No
+system of faith except our own has ever been built on the allegation
+that a dead man rose from the grave.
+
+Christ's was not the only resurrection; but it is the only _final_
+resurrection. Lazarus of Bethany left his tomb at the word of Jesus, a
+living man; but he was still a mortal man, doomed to see corruption. He
+returned from the grave on this side, as he had entered it, "bound hand
+and foot with grave-clothes." Not so with the Christ. He passed through
+the region of death and issued on the immortal side, escaped from the
+bondage of corruption. Therefore He is called the "firstfruits" and "the
+firstborn _out of_ the dead."[69] Hence the alteration manifest in the
+risen form of Jesus. He was "changed," as St Paul conceives those will
+be who await on earth their Lord's return (1 Cor. xv. 51). The mortal in
+Him was swallowed up of life. The corpse that was laid in Joseph's tomb
+was there no longer. From it another body has issued, recognized for the
+same person by look and voice and movement, but indescribably
+transfigured. Visible and tangible as the body of the Risen One
+was--"Handle me, and see," He said--it was superior to material
+limitations; it belonged to a state whose laws transcend the range of
+our experience, in which the body is the pliant instrument of the
+animating spirit. From the Person of the risen Saviour the apostle
+formed his conception of the "spiritual body," the "house from heaven"
+with which, as he teaches, each of the saints will be clothed--the
+wasted form that we lay down in the grave being transformed into the
+semblance of His "body of glory, according to the mighty working whereby
+He is able to subdue all things to Himself" (Phil. iii. 20, 21).
+
+The resurrection of the Christ inaugurated a new order of things. It was
+like the appearance of the first living organism amidst dead matter, or
+of the first rational consciousness in the unconscious world. He "is,"
+says the apostle, the "beginning, first-begotten out of the dead" (Col.
+i. 18). With the harvest filling our granaries, we cease to wonder at
+the firstfruits; and in the new heavens and earth Christ's resurrection
+will seem an entirely natural thing. Immortality will then be the normal
+condition of human existence.
+
+That resurrection, nevertheless, did homage to the fundamental law of
+science and of reason, that every occurrence, ordinary or extraordinary,
+shall have an adequate cause. The event was not more singular and unique
+than the nature of Him to whom it befell. Looking back over the Divine
+life and deeds of Jesus, St Peter said: "It was not possible that He
+should be holden of death." How unfitting and repugnant to thought, that
+the common death of all men should come upon Jesus Christ! There was
+that in His Person, in its absolute purity and godlikeness, which
+repelled the touch of corruption. He was "marked out," writes our
+apostle, "as Son of God, _according to His spirit of holiness_, by His
+resurrection from the dead" (Rom. i. 4). These two signs of Godhead
+agree in Jesus; and the second is no more superhuman than the first. For
+Him the supernatural was natural. There was a mighty working of the
+being of God latent in Him, which transcended and subdued to itself the
+laws of our physical frame, even more completely than they do the laws
+and conditions of the lower realms of nature.
+
+II. The power which raised Jesus our Lord from the dead could not leave
+Him in the world of sin and death. Lifting Him from hades to earth, by
+another step it exalted the risen Saviour above the clouds, and _seated
+Him at God's right hand in the heavens_.
+
+The forty days were a halt by the way, a condescending pause in the
+operation of the almighty power that raised Him. "I ascend," He said to
+the first that saw Him,--"I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my
+God and your God." He must see His own in the world again; He must "show
+Himself alive after His passion by infallible proofs," that their hearts
+may be comforted and knit together in the assurance of faith, that they
+may be prepared to receive His Spirit and to bear their witness to the
+world. Then He will ascend up where He was before, returning to the
+Father's bosom. It was impossible that a spiritual body should tarry in
+a mortal dwelling; impossible that the familiar relations of
+discipleship should be resumed. No new follower can now ask of Him,
+"Rabbi, where dwellest Thou," under what roof amid the homes of men? For
+He dwells with those that love Him always and everywhere, like the
+Father (John xiv. 23). From this time Christ will not be known after the
+flesh, but as the "Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+"In the heavenlies" now abides the Risen One. This expression, so
+frequent in the epistle as to be characteristic of it,[70] denotes not
+locality so much as condition and sphere. It speaks of the bright and
+deathless world of God and the angels, of which the sky has always been
+to men the symbol. Thither Christ ascended in the eyes of His apostles
+on the fortieth day from His rising. Once before His death its
+brightness for a moment had irradiated His form upon the Mount of
+Transfiguration. Clad in the like celestial splendour He showed Himself
+to His future apostle Paul, as to one born out of due time, to make him
+His minister and witness. Since then, of all the multitudes that have
+loved His appearing, no other has looked upon Him with bodily eyes. He
+dwells with the Father in light unapproachable.
+
+But rest and felicity are not enough for Him. Christ sits at the right
+hand of power, that He may _rule_. In those heavenly places, it seems,
+there are thrones higher and lower, names more or less eminent, but His
+stands clear above them all. In the realms of space, in the epochs of
+eternity there is none to rival our Lord Jesus, no power that does not
+owe Him tribute. God "hath put all things under His feet." _The Christ_,
+who died on the cross, who rose in human form from the grave, is exalted
+to share the Father's glory and dominion, is filled with God's own
+fulness, and made without limitation or exception "Head over all
+things."
+
+In his enumeration of the angelic orders in verse 21, the apostle
+follows the phraseology current at the time, without giving any precise
+dogmatic sanction to it. The epistle to the Colossians furnishes a
+somewhat different list (ch. i. 16); and in 1 Corinthians xv. 24 we find
+the "principality, dominion, and power" without the "lordship." As
+Lightfoot says,[71] St Paul "brushes away all these speculations" about
+the ranks and titles of the angels, "without inquiring how much or how
+little truth there may be in them.... His language shows a spirit of
+impatience with this elaborate angelology." There is, perhaps, a passing
+reproof conveyed by this sentence to the "worshipping of the angels"
+inculcated at the present time in Colossae, to which other Asian Churches
+may have been drawn. "Paul's faith saw the Risen and Rising One passing
+through and beyond and above successive ranks of angelic powers, until
+there was in heaven no grandeur which He had not left behind. Then,
+after naming heavenly powers known to him, he uses a universal phrase
+covering 'not only' those known by men living on earth 'in the' present
+'age, but also' those names which will be needed and used to describe
+men and angels throughout the eternal future" (Beet).
+
+The apostle appropriates here two sentences of Messianic prophecy, from
+Psalms cx. and viii. The former was addressed to the Lord's Anointed,
+the King-Priest enthroned in Zion: "Sit thou on my right hand, until I
+make thine enemies thy footstool!" The latter text describes man in his
+pristine glory, as God formed him after His likeness and set him in
+command over His creation. This saying St Paul applies, with an
+unbounded scope, to the God-man raised from the dead, Founder of the new
+creation: "Thou madest Him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
+Thou hast put all things under His feet." To the former of these
+passages St Paul repeatedly alludes; indeed, since our Lord quoted it in
+this sense, it became the standing designation of His heavenly
+dignity.[72] The words of Psalm viii. are brought in evidence again in
+Hebrews ii. 5-10, and expounded from a somewhat different standpoint. As
+the writer of the other epistle shows, this coronation belongs to the
+human race, and it falls to the Son of man to win it. St Paul in quoting
+the same Psalm is not insensible of its human reference. It was a
+prophecy for Jesus and His brethren, for Christ and the Church. So it
+forms a natural transition from the thought of Christ's dominion over
+the universe (ver. 21) to that of His union with the Church (ver.
+22_b_).
+
+III. The second clause of verse 22 begins with an emphasis upon the
+_object_ which the English Version fails to recognize: "and _Him_ He
+gave"--the Christ exalted to universal authority--"_Him_ God gave, Head
+over all things [as He is], to the Church which is His body,--the
+fulness of Him who fills all things in all."
+
+At the topmost height of His glory, with thrones and princedoms beneath
+His feet, _Christ is given to the Church_! The Head over all things, the
+Lord of the created universe, He--and none less or lower--is the Head of
+redeemed humanity. For the Church "is His body" (this clause is
+interjected by way of explanation): she is the vessel of His Spirit, the
+organic instrument of His Divine-human life. As the spirit belongs to
+its body, by the like fitness the Christ in His surpassing glory is the
+possession of the community of believing men. The body claims its head,
+the wife her husband. No matter where Christ is, however high in heaven,
+He belongs to us. Though the Bride is lowly and of poor estate, He is
+hers! and she knows it, and holds fast His heart. She recks little of
+the people's ignorance and scorn, if their Master is her affianced Lord,
+and she the best-beloved in His eyes.
+
+How rich is this gift of the Father to the Church in the Son of His
+love, the concluding words of the paragraph declare: "Him He gave ... to
+the Church ... [gave] the fulness of Him that fills all in all." In the
+risen and enthroned Christ God bestowed on men a gift in which the
+Divine plenitude that fills creation is embraced. For this last clause,
+it is clear to us, does not qualify "the Church which is His body," and
+expositors have needlessly taxed their ingenuity with the incongruous
+apposition of "body" and "fulness"; it belongs to the grand Object of
+the foregoing description, to "the Christ" whom God raised from the dead
+and invested with His own prerogatives. The two separate designations,
+"Head over all things" and "Fulness of the All-filler," are parallel,
+and alike point back to _Him_ who stands with a weight of gathered
+emphasis--heaped up from verse 19 onwards--at the front of this last
+sentence (ver. 22_b_). There has been nothing to prepare the reader to
+ascribe the august title of the _pleroma_, the Divine fulness, to the
+Church--enough for her, surely, if she is His body and He God's gift to
+her--but there has been everything to prepare us to crown the Lord Jesus
+with this glory. To that which God had wrought in Him and bestowed on
+Him, as previously related, verse 23 adds something more and greater
+still; for it shows what God makes the Christ to be, not to the
+creatures, to the angels, to the Church, _but to God Himself_![73]
+
+Our text is in strict agreement with the sayings about "the fulness" in
+Colossians i. 15-20 and ii. 9, 10; as well as with the later references
+of this epistle, in chapter iii. 19, iv. 13; and with John i. 16. This
+title belongs to Christ as God is in Him and communicates to Him all
+Divine powers. It was, in the apostle's view, a new and distinct act by
+which the Father bestowed on the incarnate Son, raised by His power from
+the dead, the functions of Deity. Of this glory Christ had of His own
+accord "emptied Himself" in becoming man for our salvation (Phil. ii. 6,
+7). Therefore when the sacrifice was effected and the time of
+humiliation past, it "was the Father's pleasure that all the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him" (Col. i. 19). At no point did Christ
+exalt Himself, or arrogate the glory once renounced. He prayed, when the
+hour was come: "Now, Father, _glorify Thou me_ with Thine own self, with
+the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." It was for the
+Father to say, as He raised and enthroned Him: "Thou art my Son; I
+to-day have begotten Thee!" (Acts xiii. 33).
+
+Again there was poured into the empty, humbled and impoverished form of
+the Son of God the brightness of the Father's glory and the infinitude
+of the Father's authority and power. The majesty that He had foregone
+was restored to Him in undiminished measure. But how great a change
+meanwhile in Him who received it! This plenitude devolves not now on the
+eternal Son in His pure Godhead, but on the Christ, the Head and
+Redeemer of mankind. God who fills the universe with His presence, with
+His cherishing love and sustaining power, has conferred the fulness of
+all that He is upon our Christ. He has given Him, so replenished and
+perfected, to the body of His saints, that He may dwell and work in them
+for ever.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[68] See the note upon this definite article on p. 47.
+
+[69] =Pr�totokos ek t�n nekr�n=, Col. i. 18: comp. Rom. vi. 13, x. 7,
+for the force of the preposition. Hence the peculiar =exanastasin t� ek
+nekr�n= of Phil. iii. 10, 11,--the _out-and-out_ resurrection, which
+will utterly remove us from the sphere of death.
+
+[70] Ver. 3, ch. ii. 6, iii. 10, vi. 12; nowhere else in the New
+Testament. Comp., however, 1 Cor. xv. 40, 48; Phil. ii. 10; Heb. viii.
+5, ix. 23, xi. 16, xii. 22, where the adjective has the same kind of
+use.
+
+[71] _Note_ on Col. i. 16.
+
+[72] Matt. xxii. 41-46, also in Mark and Luke; Acts ii. 34, 35; Rom.
+viii. 34; Col. iii. 1; Heb. i. 13; 1 Peter iii. 22, etc.
+
+[73] The reader of the Old Testament, unless otherwise advertized, must
+inevitably have referred the words _who filleth all things in all_ to
+the Supreme God. See Jer. xxiii. 24; Isai. vi. 1, 3; Hag. ii. 7; Ps.
+xxxiii. 5, etc.; Exod. xxxi. 3. "That filleth all in all" is an
+attribute belonging to "the same God, that worketh all in all" (1 Cor.
+xii. 6). Comp. iv. 6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_FROM DEATH TO LIFE._
+
+    "And you _did He quicken_, when ye were dead through your trespasses
+    and sins, wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of
+    this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the
+    spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we
+    also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of
+    the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
+    even as the rest:--but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love
+    wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our
+    trespasses, quickened us together with the Christ (by grace have ye
+    been saved), and raised us up together and made us to sit together
+    in the heavenly _places_ in Christ Jesus."--EPH. ii. 1-6.
+
+
+We pass by a sudden transition, just as in Colossians i. 21, 22, from
+the thought of that which God wrought in Christ Himself to that which He
+works through Christ in believing men. So God raised, exalted, and
+glorified His Son Jesus Christ (i. 19-23)--_and you_! The finely woven
+threads of the apostle's thought are frequently severed, and awkward
+chasms made in the highway of his argument by our chapter and verse
+divisions. The words inserted in our Version (_did He quicken_) are
+borrowed by anticipation from verse 5; but they are more than supplied
+already in the foregoing context. "The same almighty Hand that was laid
+upon the body of the dead Christ and lifted Him from Joseph's grave to
+the highest seat in heaven, is now laid upon your soul. It has raised
+_you_ from the grave and death of sin to share by faith His celestial
+life."
+
+The apostle, in verse 3, pointedly includes amongst the "dead in
+trespasses and sins" himself and his Jewish fellow-believers as they
+"once lived," when they obeyed the motions and "volitions of the flesh,"
+and so were "by birth" not children of favour, as Jews presumed, but
+"children of anger, even as the rest."[74]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This passage gives us a sublime view of the event of our conversion. It
+associates that change in us with the stupendous miracle which took
+place in our Redeemer. The one act is a continuation of the other. There
+is an acting over again in us of Christ's crucifixion, resurrection and
+ascension, when we realize through faith that which was done for mankind
+in Him. At the same time, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus is no
+mere legacy, to be received or declined; it is not something done once
+for all, and left to be appropriated passively by our individual will.
+It is a "_power_ of God unto salvation," unceasingly operative and
+effective, that works "of faith and _unto faith_" that summons men to
+faith, challenging human confidence wherever its message travels and
+awakening the spiritual possibilities dormant in our nature.
+
+It is a supernatural force, then, which is at work upon us in the word
+of Christ. It is a resurrection-power, that turns death into life. And
+it is a power instinct with love. The love which went out towards the
+slain and buried Jesus when the Father stooped to raise Him from the
+dead, bends over us as we lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts
+itself with a might no less transcendent, that it may raise us from the
+dust of death to sit with Him in the heavenly places (vv. 4-6).
+
+Let us look at the two sides of the change effected in men by the
+gospel--at the death they leave, and the life into which they enter. Let
+us contemplate the task to which this unmatched power has set itself.
+
+I. _You that were dead_, the apostle says.
+
+Jesus Christ came into a dead world--He the one living man, alive in
+body, soul, and spirit--alive to God in the world. He was, like none
+besides, aware of God and of God's love, breathing in His Spirit,
+"living not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from His
+mouth." "This," He said, "is life eternal." If His definition was
+correct, if it be life to know God, then the world into which Christ
+entered by His human birth, the world of heathendom and Judaism, was
+veritably dying or dead--"dead indeed unto God."
+
+Its condition was visible to discerning eyes. It was a world rotting in
+its corruption, mouldering in its decay, and which to His pure sense had
+the moral aspect and odour of the charnel-house. We realize very
+imperfectly the distress, the inward nausea, the conflict of disgust and
+pity which the fact of being in such a world as this and belonging to it
+caused in the nature of Jesus Christ, in a soul that was in perfect
+sympathy with God. Never was there loneliness such as His, the solitude
+of life in a region peopled with the dead. The joy which Christ had in
+His little flock, in those whom the Father had given Him out of the
+world, was proportionately great. In them He found companionship,
+teachableness, signs of a heart awakening towards God--men to whom life
+was in some degree what it was to Him. He had come, as the prophet in
+his vision, into "the valley full of dry bones," and He "prophesied to
+these slain, that they might live." What a comfort to see, at His first
+words, a shaking in the valley,--to see some who stirred at His voice,
+who stood upon their feet and gathered round Him--not yet a great army,
+but a band of living men! In their breasts, inspired from His, was the
+life of the future. "I am come," He said, "that they might have life."
+It was the work of Jesus Christ to breathe His vital spirit into the
+corpse of humanity, to reanimate the world.
+
+When St Paul speaks of his readers in their heathen condition as "dead,"
+it is not a figure of speech. He does not mean that they were like dead
+men, that their state resembled death; "nor only that they were in peril
+of death; but he signifies a real and present death" (Calvin). They
+were, in the inmost sense and truth of things, _dead men_. We are
+twofold creatures, two-lived,--spirits cased in flesh. Our human nature
+is capable, therefore, of strange duplicities. It is possible for us to
+be alive and flourishing upon one side of our being, while we are
+paralyzed or lifeless upon the other. As our bodies live in commerce
+with the light and air, in the environment of house and food and daily
+exercise of the limbs and senses under the economy of material nature,
+so our spirits live by the breath of prayer, by faith and love towards
+God, by reverence and filial submission, by communion with things unseen
+and eternal. "With Thee," says the Psalmist to his God, "is the fountain
+of life: in Thy light we see light." We must daily resort to that
+fountain and drink of its pure stream, we must faithfully walk in that
+light, or there is no such life for us. The soul that wants a true faith
+in God, wants the proper spring and principle of its being. It sees not
+the light, it bears not the voices, it breathes not the air of that
+higher world where its origin and its destiny lie.
+
+The man who walks the earth a sinner against God, becomes by the act and
+fact of his transgression a dead man. He has imbibed the fatal poison;
+it runs in his veins. The doom of sin lies on his unforgiven spirit. He
+carries death and judgement about with him. They lie down with him at
+night and wake with him in the morning; they take part in his
+transactions; they sit by his side in the feast of life. His works are
+"dead works"; his joys and hopes are all shadowed and tainted. Within
+his living frame he bears a coffined soul. With the machinery of life,
+with the faculties and possibilities of a spiritual being, the man lies
+crushed under the activity of the senses, wasted and decaying for want
+of the breath of the Spirit of God. In its coldness and
+powerlessness--too often in its visible corruption--his nature shows the
+symptoms of advancing death. It is dead as the tree is dead, cut off
+from its root; as the fire is dead, when the spark is gone out; dead as
+a man is dead, when the heart stops.
+
+As it is with the departed saints sleeping in Christ,--"put to death,
+indeed, in the flesh, but living in the spirit,"--so by a terrible
+inversion with the wicked in this life. They are put to death, indeed,
+in the spirit, while they live in the flesh. They may be and often are
+powerfully alive and active in their relations to the world of sense,
+while on the unseen and Godward side utterly paralyzed. Ask such a man
+about his business or family concerns; touch on affairs of politics or
+trade,--and you deal with a living mind, its powers and susceptibilities
+awake and alert. But let the conversation pass to other themes; sound
+him on questions of the inner life; ask him what he thinks of Christ,
+how he stands towards God, how he fares in the spiritual conflict,--and
+you strike a note to which there is no response. You have taken him out
+of his element. He is a practical man, he tells you; he does not live in
+the clouds, or hunt after shadows; he believes in hard facts, in things
+that he can grasp and handle. "The natural man perceiveth not the things
+of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him." They are pictures to
+the eye of the blind, heavenly music to the stone-deaf.
+
+And yet that hardened man of the world--starve and ignore his own spirit
+and shut up its mystic chambers as he will--cannot easily destroy
+himself. He has not extirpated his religious nature, nor crushed out,
+though he has suppressed, the craving for God in his breast. And when
+the callous surface of his life is broken through, under some unusual
+stress, some heavy loss or the shock of a great bereavement, one may
+catch a glimpse of the deeper world within of which the man himself was
+so little conscious. And what is to be seen there? Haunting memories of
+past sin, fears of a conscience fretted already by the undying worm,
+forms of weird and ghostly dread flitting amid the gloom and dust of
+death through that closed house of the spirit,--
+
+    "The bat and owl inhabit here:
+      The snake nests on the altar stone:
+    The sacred vessels moulder near:
+      The image of the God is gone!"
+
+In this condition of death the word of life comes to men. It is the
+state not of heathendom alone; but of those also, favoured with the
+light of revelation, who have not opened to it the eyes of the heart, of
+all who are "doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts"--who are
+governed by their own impulses and ideas and serve no will above the
+world of sense.[75] Without distinction of birth or formal religious
+standing, "all" who thus live and walk are dead while they live. Their
+_trespasses and sins_ have killed them. From first to last Scripture
+testifies: "Your sins have separated between you and your God." We find
+a hundred excuses for our irreligion: there is the cause. There is
+nothing in the universe to separate any one of us from the love and
+fellowship of his Maker but his own unforsaken sin.
+
+It is true, there are other hindrances to faith, intellectual
+difficulties of great weight and seriousness, that press upon many
+minds. For such men Christ has all possible sympathy and patience. There
+is a real, though hidden faith that "lives in honest doubt." Some men
+have more faith than they suppose, while others certainly have much
+less. One has a name to live, and yet is dead; another, perchance, has a
+name to die, and yet is alive to God through Jesus Christ. There are
+endless complications, self-contradictions, and misunderstandings in
+human nature. "Many are first" in the ranks of religious profession and
+notoriety, "which shall be last, and the last first." We make the
+largest allowance for this element of uncertainty in the line that
+bounds faith from unfaith; "The Lord knoweth them that are His." No
+intellectual difficulty, no mere misunderstanding, will ultimately or
+for long separate between God and the soul that He has made.
+
+It is _antipathy_ that separates. "They did not like to retain God in
+their knowledge"; that is Paul's explanation of the ungodliness and vice
+of the ancient world. And it holds good still in countless instances.
+"Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion in order to
+encourage each other in sin, because they need encouragement. They know
+that they ought to be other than they are; but are glad to avail
+themselves of anything that looks like argument, to overcome their
+consciences withal" (Newman). The fashionable scepticism of the day too
+often conceals an inner revolt against the moral demands of the
+Christian life; it is the pretext of a carnal mind, which is "enmity
+against God, because it is not subject to His law." Christ's sentence
+upon unbelief as He knew it was this: "Light is come into the world; and
+men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." So
+said the keenest and the kindest judge of men. If we are refusing Him
+our faith, let us be very sure that this condemnation does not touch
+ourselves. Is there no passion that bribes and suborns the intellect? no
+desire in the soul that dreads His entrance? no evil deeds that shelter
+themselves from His accusing light?
+
+When the apostle says of his Gentile readers that they "once walked in
+the way of the age, according to the course of this world,[76] according
+to the prince of the power of the air," the former part of his statement
+is clear enough. The age in which he lived was godless to the last
+degree; the stream of the world's life ran in turbid course toward moral
+ruin. But the second clause is obscure. The "prince" (or "ruler") who
+guides the world along its career of rebellion is manifestly Satan, the
+spirit of darkness and hate whom St Paul entitles "the god of this
+world" (2 Cor. iv. 4), and in whom Jesus recognized, under the name of
+"the prince of the world," His great antagonist (John xiv. 30).
+
+But what has this spirit of evil to do with "the air"? The Jewish rabbis
+supposed that the terrestrial atmosphere was Satan's abode, that it was
+peopled by demons flitting about invisibly in the encompassing element.
+But this is a notion foreign to Scripture--certainly not contained in
+chapter vi. 12--and, in its bare physical sense, without point or
+relevance to this passage. There follows in immediate apposition to "the
+domain of the air, _the spirit_ that now works in the sons of
+disobedience." Surely, _the air_ here partakes (if it be only here) of
+the figurative significance of _spirit_ (i.e. _breath_). St Paul refines
+the Jewish idea of evil spirits dwelling in the surrounding atmosphere
+into an ethical conception of _the atmosphere of the world_, as that
+from which the sons of disobedience draw their breath and receive the
+spirit that inspires them. Here lies, in truth, the dominion of Satan.
+In other words, Satan constituted the _Zeitgeist_.
+
+As Beck profoundly remarks upon this text:[77] "The Power of the air is
+a fitting designation for the prevailing spirit of the times, whose
+influence spreads itself like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of
+the world. It manifests itself as a contagious nature-power; and a
+_spiritus rector_ works within it, which takes possession of the world
+of men, alike in individuals and in society, and assumes the direction
+of it. The form of expression here employed is based on the conception
+of evil peculiar to Scripture. In Scripture, evil and the principle of
+evil are not conceived in a purely spiritual way; nor could this be the
+case in a world of fleshly constitution, where the spiritual has the
+sensuous for its basis and its vehicle. Spiritual evil exists as a power
+immanent in cosmical nature."[78] Concerning great tracts of the earth,
+and large sections even of Christianized communities, we must still
+confess with St John: "The world lieth in the Evil One." The air is
+impregnated with the infection of sin;[79] its germs float about us
+constantly, and wherever they find lodgement they set up their deadly
+fever. Sin is the malarial poison native to our soil; it is an epidemic
+that runs its course through the entire "age of this world."
+
+Above this feverous, sin-laden atmosphere the apostle sees God's anger
+brooding in threatening clouds. For our trespasses and sins are, after
+all, not forced on us by our environment. Those offences by which we
+provoke God, lie in our nature; they are no mere casual acts, they
+belong to our bias and disposition. Sin is a constitutional malady.
+There exists a bad element in our human nature, which corresponds but
+too truly to the course and current of the world around us. This the
+apostle acknowledges for himself and his law-honouring Jewish kindred:
+"We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." So he wrote in
+the sad confession of Romans vii. 14-23: "I see a different law in my
+members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into
+captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
+
+It is upon this "other law," the contradiction of His own, upon the
+sinfulness beneath the sin, that God's displeasure rests. Human law
+notes the overt act: "the Lord looketh upon the heart." There is
+nothing more bitter and humiliating to a conscientious man than the
+conviction of this penetrating Divine insight, this detection to himself
+of his incurable sin and the hollowness of his righteousness before God.
+How it confounds the proud Pharisee to learn that he _is_ as other men
+are,--and even as this publican!
+
+"The sons of disobedience" must needs be "children of wrath." All sin,
+whether in nature or practice, is the object of God's fixed displeasure.
+It cannot be matter of indifference to our Father in heaven that His
+human children are disobedient toward Himself. Children of His favour or
+anger we are each one of us, and at every moment. We "keep His
+commandments, and abide in His love"; or we do not keep them, and are
+excluded. It is His smile or frown that makes the sunshine or the gloom
+of our inner life. How strange that men should argue that God's love
+forbids His wrath! It is, in truth, the cause of it. I could neither
+love nor fear a God who did not care enough about me to be angry with me
+when I sin. If my child does wilful wrong, if by some act of greed or
+passion he imperils his moral future and destroys the peace and
+well-being of the house, shall I not be grieved with him, with an anger
+proportioned to the love I bear him? How much more shall your heavenly
+Father--how much more justly and wisely and mercifully!
+
+St Paul feels no contradiction between the words of verse 3 and those
+that follow. The same God whose wrath burns against the sons of
+disobedience while they so continue, is "rich in mercy" and "loved us
+even when we were dead in our trespasses!" He pities evil men, and to
+save them spared not His Son from death; but Almighty God, the Father of
+glory, hates and loathes the evil that is in them, and has determined
+that if they will not let it go they shall perish with it.
+
+II. Such was the death in which Paul and his readers once had lain. But
+God in His "great love" has "_made them to live_ along with the Christ."
+
+How wonderful to have witnessed a resurrection: to see the pale cheek of
+the little maid, Jairus' daughter, flush again with the tints of life,
+and the still frame begin to stir, and the eyes softly open--and she
+looks upon the face of Jesus! or to watch Lazarus, four days dead,
+coming out of his tomb, slowly, and as one dreaming, with hands and feet
+bound in the grave-clothes. Still more marvellous to have beheld the
+Prince of Life at the dawn of the third day issue from Joseph's grave,
+bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen glory as one
+refreshed from slumber.
+
+But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for their marvel, that
+take place upon this earth day by day. When a human soul awakes from its
+trespasses and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart that
+was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God breathes into a spirit lying
+powerless and buried in the flesh, there is as true a rising from the
+dead as when Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was of this
+spiritual resurrection that He said: "The hour cometh, and now is, when
+the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
+shall live." Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily
+resurrection of mankind: "Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in
+which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come
+forth!" The second wonder only matches and consummates the first (John
+v. 24-28).
+
+"This is life eternal, to know God the Father,"--the life, as the
+apostle elsewhere calls it, that is "life indeed." It came to St Paul by
+a new creation, when, as he describes it, "God who said, Light shall
+shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
+knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ." We are born
+again--the God-consciousness is born within us: an hour mysterious and
+decisive as that in which our personal consciousness first emerged and
+the soul knew itself. Now it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: "I
+have seen God face to face; and my life is preserved." God and the soul
+have met in Christ--and are reconciled.
+
+The words the apostle uses--_gave us life_--_raised us up_--_seated us
+in the heavenly places_--embrace the whole range of salvation. "Those
+united with Christ are through grace delivered from their state of
+death, not only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation of
+Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed to them; but by the
+life-giving energy of God they are brought out of their condition of
+death into a new and actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of
+the Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration" (Beck).
+This comprehensive action of the Divine grace upon believing men takes
+place by a constant and constantly deepening union of the soul with
+Christ. This is well expressed by A. Monod: "The entire history of the
+Son of man is reproduced in the man who believes in Him, not by a simple
+moral analogy, but by a spiritual communication which is the true secret
+of our justification as well as of our sanctification, and indeed of our
+whole salvation."
+
+There is no repetition in the three verbs employed, which are alike
+extended by the Greek preposition _with_ (_syn_). The first sentence
+(raised us up _with the Christ_) virtually includes everything; it shows
+us one with Christ who lives evermore to God. The second sentence
+gathers into its scope all believers--the _you_ of verse 1 and the _we_
+of verse 3: "He raised us up together, and together made us sit in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Nothing is more characteristic of our
+epistle than this turn of thought. To the conception of our _union with
+Christ_ in His celestial life, it adds that of our _union with each
+other in Christ_ as sharers in common of that life. Christ "reconciles
+us in one body unto God" (ver. 16). We sit not alone, but together in
+the heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this completes our
+salvation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[74] For the antithesis of "you" and "we," comp. vv. 11-18, ch. i, 12,
+13; also Rom. iii. 19, 23 (_For there is no distinction_), Gal. ii. 15.
+
+[75] =Poiountes ta thel�mata t�s sarkos kai t�n dianoi�n= (ver. 3).
+
+[76] Perhaps this double rendering may bring out the force of =kata to
+ai�na tou kosmou toutou=.
+
+[77] In the posthumous _Erkl�rung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser_--a
+valuable exposition, marked by Beck's theological acumen and lucidity.
+
+[78] The =physei= of verse 3 thus corresponds to the =exousia tou aeros=
+of verse 2. "Sin entered into _the world_" (=kosmos=), Rom. v. 12, which
+signifies more than the nature of individual men.
+
+[79] I John iii. 8; comp. John viii. 41-44.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_SAVED FOR AN END._
+
+    "That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
+    grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye
+    been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, _it is_ the
+    gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His
+    workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
+    prepared that we should walk in them."--EPH. ii. 7-10.
+
+
+The plan which God has formed for men in Christ is of great dimensions
+every way,--in its length no less than in its breadth and height. He
+"raised us up and seated us together [Gentiles with Jews] in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that _in the ages which are coming on_
+He might show the surpassing riches of His grace." All the races of
+mankind and all future ages are embraced in the redeeming purpose, and
+are to share in its boundless wealth. Nor are the ages past excluded
+from its operations. God "afore prepared the good works in which" He
+summons us to walk. The highway of the new life has been in building
+since time began.
+
+Thus large and limitless is the range of "the purpose and grace given us
+in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (2 Tim. i. 9). But what strikes us
+most in this passage is the exuberance of the grace itself. Twice over
+the apostle exclaims, "By grace you are saved": once in verse 5, in an
+eager, almost jealous parenthesis, where he hastens to assure the
+readers of their deliverance from the fearful condition just described
+(vv. 1-3, 5). Again, deliberately and with full definition he states the
+same fact, in verse 8: "For by grace you are saved, through faith; and
+this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It does not come of
+works, to the end that none may boast."
+
+These words place us on familiar ground. We recognize the Paul of
+Galatians and Romans, the dialect and accent of the apostle of salvation
+by faith. But scarcely anywhere do we find this wonder-working grace so
+affluently described. "God being rich in mercy, for the great love
+wherewith He loved us--the exceeding riches of His grace, shown in
+kindness toward us--the gift of God." _Mercy_, _love_, _kindness_,
+_grace_, _gift_: what a constellation is here! These terms present the
+character of God in the gospel under the most delightful aspects, and in
+vivid contrast to the picture of our human state outlined in the
+beginning of the chapter.
+
+_Mercy_ denotes the Divine pitifulness towards feeble, suffering men,
+akin to those "compassions of God" to which the apostle repeatedly
+appeals.[80] It is a constant attribute of God in the Old Testament, and
+fills much the same place there that grace does in the New. "Of mercy
+and judgement" do the Psalmists sing--of mercy most. Out of the thunder
+and smoke of Sinai He declared His name: "Jehovah, a God full of
+compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and
+truth, keeping mercy for thousands." The dread of God's justice, the
+sense of His dazzling holiness and almightiness threw His mercy into
+bright relief and gave to it an infinite preciousness. It is the
+contrast which brings in "mercy" here, in verse 4, by antithesis to
+"wrath" (ver. 3).[81] These qualities are complementary. The sternest
+and strongest natures are the most compassionate. God is "_rich_ in
+mercy." The wealth of His Being pours itself out in the exquisite
+tendernesses, the unwearied forbearance and forgivingness of His
+compassion towards men. The Judge of all the earth, whose hate of evil
+is the fire of hell, is gentler than the softest-hearted mother,--rich
+in mercy as He is grand and terrible in wrath.
+
+God's mercy regards us as we are weak and miserable: His _love_ regards
+us as we are, in spite of trespass and offence, His offspring,--objects
+of "much love" amid much displeasure, "even when we were dead through
+our trespasses." What does the story of the prodigal son mean but this?
+and what Christ's great word to Nicodemus (John iii. 16)?--_Grace_ and
+_kindness_ are love's executive. Grace is love in administration, love
+counteracting sin and seeking our salvation. Christ is the embodiment of
+grace; the cross its supreme expression; the gospel its message to
+mankind; and Paul himself its trophy and witness.[82] The "overpassing
+riches" of grace is that affluence of wealth in which through Christ it
+"superabounded" to the apostolic age and has outdone the magnitude of
+sin (Rom. v. 20), in such measure that St Paul sees future ages gazing
+with wonder at its benefactions to himself and his fellow-believers.
+Shown "in _kindness_ toward us," he says,--in a condescending
+fatherliness, that forgets its anger and softens its old severity into
+comfort and endearment. God's kindness is the touch of His hand, the
+accent of His voice, the cherishing breath of His Spirit. Finally, this
+generosity of the Divine grace, this infinite goodwill of God toward
+men, takes expression in _the gift_--the gift of Christ, the gift of
+righteousness (Rom. v. 15-18), the gift of eternal life (Rom. vi. 23);
+or--regarded, as it is here, in the light of experience and
+possession--_the gift of salvation_.
+
+The opposition of _gift_ and _debt_, of gratuitous salvation through
+faith to salvation earned by works of law, belongs to the marrow of St
+Paul's divinity. The teaching of the great evangelical epistles is
+condensed into the brief words of verses 8 and 9. The reason here
+assigned for God's dealing with men by way of gift and making them
+absolutely debtors--"lest any one should boast"--was forced upon the
+apostle's mind by the stubborn pride of legalism; it is stated in terms
+identical with those of the earlier letters. Men will glory in their
+virtues before God; they flaunt the rags of their own righteousness, if
+any such pretext, even the slightest, remains to them. We sinners are a
+proud race, and our pride is oftentimes the worst of our sins. Therefore
+God humbles us by His compassion. He makes to us a free gift of His
+righteousness, and excludes every contribution from our store of merit;
+for if we could supply anything, we should inevitably boast as though
+all were our own. We must be content to receive mercy, love, grace,
+kindness--everything, without deserving the least fraction of the
+immense sum. How it strips our vanity; how it crushes us to the
+dust--"the weight of pardoning love!"
+
+Concerning the office of _faith_ in salvation we have already spoken in
+Chapter IV.[83] It is on the objective fact rather than the subjective
+means of salvation that the apostle lays stress in this passage. His
+readers do not seem to have realized sufficiently what God has given
+them and the greatness of the salvation already accomplished. They
+measured inadequately the power which had touched and changed their
+lives (i. 19). St Paul has shown them the depth to which they were
+formerly sunk, and the height to which they have been raised (vv. 1-6).
+He can therefore assure them, and he does it with redoubled emphasis:
+"You _are saved_; By grace you are saved men!"[84] Not, "You will be
+saved"; nor, "You were saved"; nor, "You are in course of
+salvation,"--for salvation has many moods and tenses,--but, in the
+perfect passive tense, he asserts the glorious accomplished _fact_. With
+the same reassuring emphasis in chapter i. 7 he declared, "We have
+redemption in His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses."
+
+Here is St Paul's doctrine of Assurance. It was laid down by Christ
+Himself when He said: "He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal
+life." This sublime confidence is the ruling note of St John's great
+epistle: "We know that we are in Him.... We know that we have passed out
+of death into life.... This is the victory that overcometh the world,
+even our faith." It was this confidence of present salvation that made
+the Church irresistible. With its foundation secure, the house of life
+can be steadily and calmly built up. Under the shelter of the full
+assurance of faith, in the sunshine of God's love felt in the heart, all
+spiritual virtues bloom and flourish. But with a faith hesitant,
+distracted, that is sure of no doctrine in the creed and cannot plant a
+firm foot anywhere, nothing prospers in the soul or in the Church. Oh
+for the clear accent, the ringing, joyous note of apostolic assurance!
+We want a faith not loud, but deep; a faith not born of sentiment and
+human sympathy, but that comes from the vision of the living God; a
+faith whose rock and corner-stone is neither the Church nor the Bible,
+but Christ Jesus Himself.
+
+Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul and John, to
+"assure our hearts" before God. With death confronting us, with the
+hideous evil of the world oppressing us; when the air is laden with the
+contagion of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast of
+doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly through the haze of an
+all-encompassing scepticism and a hundred voices say, in mockery or
+grief, Where is now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our faith
+refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless,--then is the time for the
+Christian assurance to recover its first energy and to rise again in
+radiant strength from the heart of the Church, from the depths of its
+mystic life where it is hid with Christ in God.
+
+_You are saved!_ cries the apostle; not forgetting that his readers have
+their battle to fight, and many hazards yet to run (vi. 10-13). But they
+hold the earnest of victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit
+they sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death, temptation,
+persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly history, by these God means to
+perfect that which He has begun in His saints--"if you continue in the
+faith, grounded and firm" (Col. i. 23). That condition is expressed, or
+implied, in all assurance of final salvation. It is a condition which
+excites to watchfulness, but can never cause misgiving to a loyal heart.
+God is for us! He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus
+who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God, and there
+intercedes for us. _Quis separabit?_[85]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the epistle of the Church and of humanity. It dwells on the
+grand, objective aspects of the truth, rather than upon its subjective
+experiences. It does not invite us to rest in the comforts and delights
+of grace, but to lift up our eyes and see whither Christ has translated
+us and what is the kingdom that we possess in Him. God "quickened us
+together with the Christ": He "raised us up, He made us to sit _in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus_." Henceforth "our citizenship is in
+heaven" (Phil. iii. 20).
+
+This is the inspiring thought of the third group of St Paul's epistles;
+we heard it in the first note of his song of praise (i. 3). It supplies
+the principle from which St Paul unfolds the beautiful conception of the
+Christian life contained in the third chapter of the companion letter to
+the Colossians: "Your life is hid with the Christ in God"; therefore
+"seek the things that are above, where He is." We live in two worlds at
+once. Heaven lies about us in this new mystic childhood of our spirit.
+There our names are written; thither our thoughts and hopes resort. Our
+treasure is there; our heart we have lodged there, with Christ in God.
+_He_ is there, the Lord of the Spirit, from whom we draw each moment
+the life that flows into His members. In the greatness of His love
+conquering sin and death, time and space, He is with us to the world's
+end. May we not say that we, too, are with Him and shall be with Him
+always? So we reckon in the logic of our faith and at the height of our
+high calling, though the soul creeps and drudges upon the lower levels.
+
+    "With Him we are gone up on high,
+      Since He is ours and we are His;
+    With Him we reign above the sky,
+      We walk upon our subject seas!"
+
+In his lofty flights of thought the apostle always has some practical
+and homely end in view. The earthly and heavenly, the mystical and the
+matter-of-fact were not distant and repugnant, but interfused in his
+mind. From the celestial heights of the life hidden with Christ in God
+(ver. 6), he brings us down in a moment and without any sense of
+discrepancy to the prosaic level of "good works" (ver. 10). The love
+which viewed us from eternity, the counsels of Him who works all things
+in all, enter into the humblest daily duties.
+
+Grace, moreover, sets us great tasks. There should be something to show
+in deed and life for the wealth of kindness spent upon us, some visible
+and commensurate result of the vast preparations of the gospel plan. Of
+this result the apostle saw the earnest in the work of faith wrought by
+his Gentile Churches.
+
+St Paul was the last man in the world to undervalue human effort, or
+disparage good work of any sort. It is, in his view, the end aimed at in
+all that God bestows on His people, in all that He Himself works in
+them. Only let this end be sought in God's way and order. Man's doings
+must be the fruit and not the root of his salvation. "Not _of_ works,"
+but "_for_ good works" were believers chosen. "This little word _for_"
+says Monod, "reconciles St Paul and St James better than all the
+commentators." God has not raised us up to sit idly in the heavenly
+places lost in contemplation, or to be the useless pensioners of grace.
+He sends us forth to "walk in the works, prepared for us,"--equipped to
+fight Christ's battles, to till His fields, to labour in the service of
+building His Church.
+
+The "workmanship" of our Version suggests an idea foreign to the
+passage. The apostle is not thinking of the Divine art or skill
+displayed in man's creation; but of the simple fact that "God made man"
+(Gen. i. 27). "We are His _making_, created in Christ Jesus." The
+"preparation" to which he refers in verse 10 leads us back to that
+primeval election of God's sons in Christ for which we gave thanks at
+the outset (i. 3). There are not two creations, the second formed upon
+the ruin and failure of the first; but one grand design throughout.
+Redemption is creation re-affirmed. The new creation, as we call it,
+restores and consummates the old. When God raised His Son from the dead,
+He vindicated His original purpose in raising man from the dust a living
+soul. He has not forsaken the work of His hands nor forgone His original
+plan, which took account of all our wilfulness and sin. God in making us
+meant us to do good work in His world. From the world's foundation down
+to the present moment He who worketh all in all has been working for
+this end--most of all in the revelation of His grace in Jesus Christ.
+
+Far backward in the past, amid the secrets of creation, lay the
+beginnings of God's grace to mankind. Far onward in the future shines
+its lustre revealed in the first Christian age. The apostle has gained
+some insight into those "times and seasons" which formerly were veiled
+from him. In his earliest letters, to the Thessalonians and Corinthians,
+St Paul echoes our Lord's warning, never out of season, that we should
+"watch, for the hour is at hand." _Maran atha_ is his watchword: "Our
+Lord cometh; the time is short." Nor does that note cease to the end.
+But when in this epistle he writes of "the ages that are coming on," and
+of "all the generations of the age of the ages" (iii. 21), there is
+manifestly some considerable period of duration before his eyes. He sees
+something of the extent of the world's coming history, something of the
+magnitude of the field that the future will afford for the unfolding of
+God's designs.
+
+In those approaching aeons he foresees that the apostolic dispensation
+will play a conspicuous part. Unborn ages will be blessed in the
+blessing now descending upon Jews and Gentiles through Christ Jesus. So
+marvellous is the display of God's kindness toward them, that all the
+future will pay homage to it. The overflowing wealth of blessing poured
+upon St Paul and the first Churches had an end in view that reached
+beyond themselves, an end worthy of the Giver, worthy of the magnitude
+of His plans and of His measureless love. If all this was theirs--this
+fulness of God exceeding the utmost they had asked or thought--it is
+because God means to convey it through them to multitudes besides! There
+is no limit to the grace that God will impart to men and to Churches who
+thus reason, who receive His gifts in this generous and communicative
+spirit. The apostolic Church chants with Mary at the Annunciation:
+"For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!"
+
+Never was any prediction better fulfilled. This spot of history shines
+with a light before which every other shows pale and commonplace. The
+companions of Jesus, the humble fraternities of the first Christian
+century have been the object of reverent interest and intent research on
+the part of all centuries since. Their history is scrutinized from all
+sides with a zeal and industry which the most pressing subjects of the
+day hardly command. For we feel that these men hold the secret of the
+world's life. The key to the treasures we all long for is in their
+hands. As time goes on and the stress of life deepens, men will turn
+with yet fonder hope to the age of Jesus Christ. "And many nations will
+say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of
+the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways; and we will walk in
+His paths."
+
+The stream will remember its fountain; the children of God will gather
+to their childhood's home. The world will hear the gospel in the
+recovered accents of its prophets and apostles.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[80] Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The
+=oiktirmoi tou Theou, splanchna kai oiktirmoi=, rendered in our Version
+"mercies of God," denotes something even more affecting,--God's sense of
+the woefulness of human life,--"the pitying tenderness Divine."
+
+[81] Comp. Rom. ix. 22, 23.
+
+[82] On _grace_, comp. _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's
+Bible), Chapter X.
+
+[83] Compare also, on Faith, _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's
+Bible), Chapters X.-XII. and XV.
+
+[84] =Este ses�smenoi=: for the peculiar emphasis of this form of the
+verb, implying a settled fact, an assured state, compare ver. 12, =�te
+... ap�llotri�menoi=; Col. ii. 10; Gal. ii. 11, iv. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 3,
+etc.
+
+[85] Rom. viii. 31-39; comp. vv. 9-17; also 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2 Thess.
+iii. 3-5; 1 Cor. i. 4-9; Phil. i. 6, iii. 13, 14; 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 18,
+for St Paul's doctrine of Assurance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_THE FAR AND NEAR._
+
+    "Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh,
+    who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision
+    in the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from
+    Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
+    from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
+    the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off are
+    made nigh in the blood of Christ."--EPH. ii. 11-13.
+
+
+The apostle's _Wherefore_ sums up for his readers the record of their
+salvation rehearsed in the previous verses. "You were buried in your
+sins, sunk in their corruption, ruined by their guilt, living under
+God's displeasure and in the power of Satan. All this has passed away.
+The almighty Hand has raised you with Christ into a heavenly life. God
+has become your Father; His love is in your heart; by the strength of
+His grace you are enabled to walk in the way marked out for you from
+your creation. _Wherefore remember_: think of what you were, and of what
+you are!"
+
+To such recollections we do well to summon ourselves. The children of
+grace love to recall, and on fit occasions recount for God's glory and
+the help of their fellows, the way in which God led them to the
+knowledge of Himself. In some the great change came suddenly. He "made
+speed" to save us. It was a veritable resurrection, as signal and
+unlooked for as the rising of Christ from the dead. By a swift passage
+we were "translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of the
+Son of His love." Once living without God in the world, we were arrested
+by a strange providence--through some overthrow of fortune or shock of
+bereavement, or by a trivial incident touching unaccountably a hidden
+spring in the mind--and the whole aspect of life was altered in a
+moment. We saw revealed, as by a lightning flash at night, the emptiness
+of our own life, the misery of our nature, the folly of our unbelief,
+the awful presence of _God_--God whom we had forgotten and despised! We
+sought, and found His mercy. From that hour the old things passed away:
+we lived who had been dead,--made alive to God through Jesus Christ.
+
+This instant conversion, such as Paul experienced, this sharp and abrupt
+transition from darkness to light, was common in the first generation of
+Christians, as it is wherever religious awakening takes place in a
+society that has been largely dead to God. The advent of Christianity in
+the Gentile world was much after this fashion,--like a tropical sunrise,
+in which day leaps on the earth full-born. This experience gives a stamp
+of peculiar decision to the convictions and character of its subjects.
+The change is patent and palpable; no observer can fail to mark it. And
+it burns itself into the memory with an ineffaceable impression. The
+violent throes of such a spiritual birth cannot be forgotten.
+
+But if our entrance into the life of God was gradual, like the dawn of
+our own milder clime, where the light steals by imperceptible advances
+upon the darkness--if the glory of the Lord has thus risen upon us, our
+certainty of its presence may be no less complete, and our remembrance
+of its coming no less grateful and joyous. One leaps into the new life
+by a single eager bound; another reaches it by measured, thoughtful
+steps: but both are _there_, standing side by side on the common ground
+of salvation in Christ. Both walk in the same light of the Lord, that
+floods the sky from east to west. The recollections which the latter has
+to cherish of the leading of God's kindly light--how He touched our
+childish thought, and checked gently our boyish waywardness, and mingled
+reproof with the first stirrings of passion and self-will, and wakened
+the alarms of conscience and the fears of another world, and the sense
+of the beauty of holiness and the shame of sin,--
+
+    "Shaping to truth the froward will
+        Along His narrow way,"--
+
+such remembrances are a priceless treasure, that grows richer as we grow
+wiser. It awakens a joy not so thrilling nor so prompt in utterance as
+that of the soul snatched like a brand from the burning, but which
+passes understanding. Blessed are the children of the kingdom, those who
+have never roamed far from the fold of Christ and the commonwealth of
+Israel, whom the cross has beckoned onwards from their childhood. But
+however it was--by whatever means, at whatever time it pleased God to
+call you from darkness to His marvellous light, _remember_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But we must return to Paul and his Gentile readers. The old death in
+life was to them a sombre reality, keenly and painfully remembered. In
+that condition of moral night out of which Christ had rescued them,
+Gentile society around them still remained. Let us observe its features
+as they are delineated in contrast with the privileges long bestowed on
+Israel. The Gentile world was _Christless_, _hopeless_, _godless_. It
+had no share in the Divine polity framed for the chosen people; the
+outward mark of its uncircumcision was a true symbol of its irreligion
+and debasement.
+
+Israel had a _God_. Besides, there were only "those who are called
+gods." This was the first and cardinal distinction. Not their race, not
+their secular calling, their political or intellectual gifts, but their
+faith formed the Jews into a nation. They were "the people of God," as
+no other people has been--of _the_ God, for theirs was "the true and
+living God"--Jehovah, the I AM, the One, the Alone. The monotheistic
+belief was, no doubt, wavering and imperfect in the mass of the nation
+in early times; but it was held by the ruling minds amongst them, by the
+men who have shaped the destiny of Israel and created its Bible, with
+increasing clearness and intensity of passion. "All the gods of the
+nations are idols--vapours, phantoms, nothings!--but Jehovah made the
+heavens." It was the ancestral faith that glowed in the breast of Paul
+at Athens, amidst the fairest shrines of Greece, when he "saw the city
+wholly given to idolatry"--man's highest art and the toil and piety of
+ages lavished on things that were no gods; and in the midst of the
+splendour of a hollow and decaying Paganism he read the confession that
+God was "unknown."
+
+Ephesus had her famous goddess, worshipped in the most sumptuous pile of
+architecture that the ancient world contained. Behold the proud city,
+"temple-keeper of the great goddess Artemis," filled with wrath!
+Infuriate Demos flashes fire from his thousand eyes, and his brazen
+throat roars hoarse vengeance against the insulters of "her
+magnificence, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth"! Without
+God--_atheists_, in fact, the apostle calls this devout Asian
+population; and Artemis of Ephesus, and Athen�, and Cybel� of Smyrna,
+and Zeus and Asclepius of Pergamum, though all the world worship them,
+are but "creatures of art and man's device."
+
+The Pagans retorted this reproach. "Away with _the atheists_!" they
+cried, when Christians were led to execution. Ninety years after this
+time the martyr Polycarp was brought into the arena before the
+magistrates of Asia and the populace gathered in Smyrna at the great
+Ionic festival. The Proconsul, wishing to spare the venerable man, said
+to him: "Swear by the Fortune of Caesar; and say, Away with the
+atheists!" But Polycarp, as the story continues, "with a grave look
+gazing on the crowd of lawless Gentiles in the stadium and shaking his
+hand against them, then groaning and looking up to heaven, said, _Away
+with the atheists_!" Pagan and Christian were each godless in the eyes
+of the other. If visible temples and images, and the local worship of
+each tribe or city made a god, then Jews and Christians had none: if God
+was a Spirit--One, Holy, Almighty, Omnipresent--then polytheists were in
+truth atheists; their many gods, being many, were no gods; they were
+idols,--_eidola_, illusive shows of the Godhead.
+
+The more thoughtful and pious among the heathen felt this already. When
+the apostle denounced the idols and their pompous worship as "these
+vanities," his words found an echo in the Gentile conscience. The
+classical Paganism held the multitude by the force of habit and local
+pride, and by its sensuous and artistic charms; but such religious power
+as it once had was gone. In all directions it was undermined by mystic
+Oriental and Egyptian rites, to which men resorted in search of a
+religion and sick of the old fables, ever growing more debased, that had
+pleased their fathers. The majesty of Rome in the person of the Emperor,
+the one visible supreme power, was seized upon by the popular instinct,
+even more than it was imposed by state policy, and made to fill the
+vacuum; and temples to Augustus had already risen in Asia, side by side
+with those of the ancient gods.
+
+In this despair of their ancestral religions many piously disposed
+Gentiles turned to Judaism for spiritual help; and the synagogue was
+surrounded in the Greek cities by a circle of earnest proselytes. From
+their ranks St Paul drew a large proportion of his hearers and converts.
+When he writes, "Remember that you were at that time _without God_," he
+is within the recollection of his readers; and they will bear him out in
+testifying that their heathen creed was dead and empty to the soul. Nor
+did philosophy construct a creed more satisfying. Its gods were the
+Epicurean deities who dwell aloof and careless of men; or the supreme
+Reason and Necessity of the Stoics, the _anima mundi_, of which human
+souls are fleeting and fragmentary images. "Deism finds God only in
+heaven; Pantheism, only on earth; Christianity alone finds Him both in
+heaven and on earth" (Harless). The Word made flesh reveals _God in the
+world_.
+
+When the apostle says "without God _in the world_," this qualification
+is both reproachful and sorrowful. To be without God in the world that
+He has made, where His "eternal power and Godhead" have been visible
+from creation, argues a darkened and perverted heart.[86] To be without
+God in the world is to be in the wilderness, without a guide; on a
+stormy ocean, without harbour or pilot; in sickness of spirit, without
+medicine or physician; to be hungry without bread, and weary without
+rest, and dying with no light of life. It is to be an orphaned child,
+wandering in an empty, ruined house.
+
+In these words we have an echo of Paul's preaching to the Gentiles, and
+an indication of the line of his appeals to the conscience of the
+enlightened pagans of his time. The despair of the age was darker than
+the human mind has known before or since. Matthew Arnold has painted it
+all in one verse of those lines, entitled _Obermann once more_, in which
+he so perfectly expresses the better spirit of modern scepticism.
+
+    "On that hard Pagan world disgust
+      And secret loathing fell;
+    Deep weariness and sated lust
+      Made human life a hell."
+
+The saying by which St Paul reproved the Corinthians, "Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die," is the common sentiment of pagan epitaphs
+of the time. Here is an extant specimen of the kind: "Let us drink and
+be merry; for we shall have no more kissing and dancing in the kingdom
+of Proserpine. Soon shall we fall asleep, to wake no more." Such were
+the thoughts with which men came back from the grave-side. It is
+needless to say how depraving was the effect of this hopelessness. At
+Athens, in the more religious times of Socrates, it was even considered
+a decent and kindly thing to allow a criminal condemned to death to
+spend his last hours in gross sensual indulgence. There is no reason to
+suppose that the extinction of the Christian hope of immortality would
+prove less demoralizing. We are "saved by hope," said St Paul: we are
+ruined by despair. Pessimism of creed for most men means pessimism of
+conduct.
+
+Our modern speech and literature and our habits of feeling have been for
+so many generations steeped in the influence of Christ's teaching, and
+it has thrown so many tender and hallowed thoughts around the state of
+our beloved dead, that it is impossible even for those who are
+personally without hope in Christ to realize what its general decay and
+disappearance would mean. To have possessed such a treasure, and then to
+lose it! to have cherished anticipations so exalted and so dear,--and to
+find them turn out a mockery! The age upon which this calamity fell
+would be of all ages the most miserable.
+
+The hope of Israel which Paul preached to the Gentiles was a hope for
+the world and for the nations, as well as for the individual soul. "The
+commonwealth [or _polity_] of Israel" and "the covenants of promise"
+guaranteed the establishment of the Messianic kingdom upon earth. This
+expectation took amongst the mass of the Jews a materialistic and even a
+revengeful shape; but in one form or other it belonged, and still
+belongs to every man of Israel. Those noble lines of Virgil in his
+fourth Eclogue[87]--like the words of Caiaphas, an unintended Christian
+prophecy--which predicted the return of justice and the spread of a
+golden age through the whole world under the rule of the coming heir of
+Caesar, had been signally belied by the imperial house in the century
+that had elapsed. Never were human prospects darker than when the
+apostle wrote as Nero's prisoner in Rome. It was an age of crime and
+horror. The political world and the system of pagan society seemed to be
+in the throes of dissolution. Only in "the commonwealth of Israel" was
+there a light of hope and a foundation for the future of mankind; and of
+this in its wisdom the world knew nothing.
+
+The Gentiles were "alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,"--that is
+to say, treated as aliens and made such by their exclusion. By the very
+fact of Israel's election, the rest of mankind were shut out of the
+visible kingdom of God. They became mere _Gentiles_, or _nations_,--a
+herd of men bound together only by natural affinity, with no "covenant
+of promise," no religious constitution or destiny, no definite
+relationship to God, Israel being alone the acknowledged and organized
+"_people_ of Jehovah."
+
+These distinctions were summed up in one word, expressing all the pride
+of the Jewish nature, when the Israelites styled themselves "the
+Circumcision." The rest of the world--Philistines or Egyptians, Greeks,
+Romans, or Barbarians, it mattered not--were "the Uncircumcision." How
+superficial this distinction was in point of fact, and how false the
+assumption of moral superiority it implied in the existing condition of
+Judaism, St Paul indicates by saying, "those who are _called_
+Uncircumcision by that which is _called_ Circumcision, in flesh, wrought
+by human hands." In the second and third chapters of his epistle to the
+Romans he exposed the hollowness of Jewish sanctity, and brought his
+fellow-countrymen down to the level of those "sinners of the Gentiles"
+whom they so bitterly despised.
+
+The destitution of the Gentile world is put into a single word, when the
+apostle says: "You were at that time _separate from Christ_"--without a
+Christ, either come or coming. They were deprived of the world's one
+treasure,--shut out, as it appeared, for ever[88] from any part in Him
+who is to mankind all things and in all.--_Once far off!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But now in Christ Jesus ye were _made nigh_." What is it that has
+bridged the distance, that has transported these Gentiles from the
+wilderness of heathenism into the midst of the city of God? It is "the
+blood of Christ." The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ transformed the
+relations of God to mankind, and of Israel to the Gentiles. In Him God
+reconciled not a nation, but "a world" to Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). The
+death of the Son of man could not have reference to the sons of Abraham
+alone. If sin is universal and death is not a Jewish but a human
+experience, and if one blood flows in the veins of all our race, then
+the death of Jesus Christ was a universal sacrifice; it appeals to every
+man's conscience and heart, and puts away for each the guilt which comes
+between his soul and God.
+
+When the Greeks in Passion week desired to see Him, He exclaimed: "I, if
+I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all_ unto me." The cross of
+Jesus was to draw humanity around it, by its infinite love and sorrow,
+by the perfect apprehension there was in it of the world's guilt and
+need, and the perfect submission to the sentence of God's law against
+man's sin. So wherever the gospel was preached by St Paul, it won
+Gentile hearts for Christ. Greek and Jew found themselves weeping
+together at the foot of the cross, sharing one forgiveness and baptized
+into one Spirit.
+
+The union of Caiaphas and Pilate in the condemnation of Jesus and the
+mingling of the Jewish crowd with the Roman soldiers at His execution
+were a tragic symbol of the new age that was coming. Israel and the
+Gentiles were accomplices in the death of the Messiah--the former of the
+two the more guilty partner in the counsel and deed. If this Jesus whom
+they slew and hanged on a tree was indeed the Christ, God's chosen, then
+what availed their Abrahamic sonship, their covenants and law-keeping,
+their proud religious eminence? They had killed their Christ; they had
+forfeited their calling. His blood was on them and on their children.
+
+Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of Christ were found far
+off,--that both together, the far and the near, might be reconciled and
+brought back to God. "He shut up all unto disobedience, that He might
+have mercy upon all."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Rom. i. 19-23; comp. John i. 10: "He [the true Light] was _in the
+world_, and the world knew Him not."
+
+[87]
+
+    Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
+    Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
+    Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.
+    Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
+    Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
+    Casta, fave, Lucina.
+
+[88] Observe the perfect participle =ap�llotri�menoi=, which signifies
+an abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in
+ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION._
+
+    "For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle
+    wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, _even_
+    the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances, that He might
+    create in Himself of the twain one new man, _so_ making peace; and
+    might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
+    having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good
+    tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that
+    were nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit
+    unto the Father."--EPH. ii. 14-18.
+
+
+_Peace, peace--to the far off, and to the near!_ Such was God's promise
+to His scattered people in the times of the exile (Isai. lvii. 19). St
+Paul sees that peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and
+terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the prophet had
+foreseen. Christ is "our peace"--not for the divided members of Israel
+alone, but for all the tribes of men. He brings about a universal
+pacification.
+
+There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to be overcome by Christ,
+in preaching to the world His good tidings of peace (ver. 17). There was
+the hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its cause and
+principle when Christ "in His flesh" (by His incarnate life and death)
+"abolished the law of commandments in decrees"--_i.e._, the law of Moses
+as it constituted a body of external precepts determining the way of
+righteousness and life. This abolition of the law by the evangelical
+principle "dissolved the middle wall of partition." The occasion of
+quarrel between Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier
+disappeared that had for so long fenced off the privileged ground of the
+sons of Abraham (vv. 14, 15). But behind this human enmity, underneath
+the feud and rancour existing between the Jews and the nations, there
+lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God. Both enmities centred in the
+law; both were slain by one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross
+(ver. 16).
+
+The Jewish and Gentile peoples formed two distinct types of humanity.
+Politically, the Jews were insignificant and had scarcely counted
+amongst the great powers of the world. Their religion alone gave them
+influence and importance. Bearing his inspired Scriptures and his
+Messianic hope, the wandering Israelite confronted the vast masses of
+heathenism and the splendid and fascinating classical civilization with
+the proudest sense of his superiority. To his God he knew well that one
+day every knee would bow and every tongue confess. The circumstances of
+the time deepened his isolation and aggravated to internecine hate his
+spite against his fellow-men, the _adversus omnes alios hostile odium_
+stigmatized by the incisive pen of Tacitus. Within three years of the
+writing of this letter the Jewish war against Rome broke out, when the
+enmity culminated in the most appalling and fateful overthrow recorded
+in the pages of history. Now, it is this enmity at its height--the most
+inveterate and desperate one can conceive--that the apostle proposes to
+reconcile; nay, that he sees already slain by the sacrifice of the
+cross, and within the brotherhood of the Christian Church. It was slain
+in the heart of Saul of Tarsus, the proudest that beat in Jewish
+breast.
+
+In his earlier writings the apostle has been concerned chiefly to guard
+the position and rights of the two parties within the Church. He has
+abundantly maintained, especially in the epistle to the Galatians, the
+claims of Gentile believers in Christ against Judaic assumptions and
+impositions. He has defended the just prerogative of the Jew and his
+hereditary sentiments from the contempt to which they were sometimes
+exposed on the part of the Gentile majority.[89] But now that this has
+been done, and that Gentile liberties and Jewish dignity have been
+vindicated and safeguarded on both sides, St Paul advances a step
+further: he seeks to amalgamate the Jewish and Gentile section of the
+Church, and to "make of the twain one new man, so making peace." This,
+he declares, was the end of Christ's mission; this a chief purpose of
+His atoning death. Only by such union, only through the burying of the
+old enmity slain on the cross, could His Church be built up to its
+completeness. St Paul would have Gentile and Jewish believers everywhere
+forget their differences, efface their party lines, and merge their
+independence in the oneness of the all-embracing and all-perfecting
+Church of Jesus Christ, God's habitation in the Spirit. Instead of
+saying that a catholic ideal like this belongs to a later and
+post-apostolic age, we maintain, on the contrary, that a catholic mind
+like St Paul's, under the conditions of his time, could not fail to
+arrive at this conception.
+
+It was his confidence in the victory of the cross over all strife and
+sin that sustained St Paul through these years of captivity. As he
+looks out from his Roman prison, under the shadow of Nero's palace, the
+future is invested with a radiance of hope that makes the heart of the
+chained apostle exult within him. The world is lost, to all outward
+seeming: he knows it is saved! Jew and Gentile are about to close in
+mortal conflict: he proclaims peace between them, assured of their
+reconcilement, and knowing that in their reunion the salvation of human
+society is assured.
+
+The enmity of Jew and Gentile was representative of all that divides
+mankind. In it were concentrated most of the causes by which society is
+rent asunder. Along with religion, race, habits, tastes and culture,
+moral tendencies, political aspirations, interests of trade, all helped
+to widen the breach. The cleavage ran deep into the foundations of life;
+the enmity was the growth of two thousand years. It was not a case of
+local friction, nor a quarrel arising from temporary causes. The Jew was
+ubiquitous, and everywhere was an alien and an irritant to Gentile
+society. No antipathy was so hard to subdue. The grace that conquers it,
+can and will conquer all enmities.
+
+St Paul's view embraced, in fact, a world-wide reconcilement. He
+contemplates, as the Hebrew prophets themselves did, the fraternization
+of mankind under the rule of the Christ. After this scale he laid down
+the foundation of the Church, "wise master-builder" that he was. It was
+destined to bear the weight of an edifice in which all the races of men
+should dwell together, and every order of human faculty should find its
+place. His thoughts were not confined within the Judaic antithesis.
+"There is no Jew and Greek," he says in another place; yes, and "no
+barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, male or female. Ye are all one in
+Christ Jesus."[90] Birth, rank, office in the Church, culture, even sex
+are minor and subordinate distinctions, merged in the unity of redeemed
+souls in Christ. That which He "creates in Himself of the twain" is _one
+new man_--one incorporate humanity, neither Jew nor Gentile, Englishman
+nor Hindu, priest nor layman, male nor female; but simply _man_, and
+_Christian_.
+
+At the present time we are better able to enter into these views of the
+apostle than at any intervening period of history. In his day almost the
+whole visible world, lying round the Mediterranean shores, was brought
+under the government and laws of Rome. This fact made the establishment
+of one religious polity a thing quite conceivable. The Roman empire did
+not, as it proved, allow Christianity to conquer it soon enough and to
+leaven it sufficiently to save it. That huge construction, the mightiest
+fabric of human polity, fell and covered the earth with its ruins. In
+its fall it reacted disastrously upon the Church, and has bequeathed to
+it the corrupt and despotic unity of Papal Rome. Now, in these last
+days, the whole world is opened to the Church, a world stretching far
+beyond the horizon of the first century. Science and Commerce, those two
+strong-winged angels and giant ministers of God, are swiftly binding the
+continents together in material ties. The peoples are beginning to
+realize their brotherhood, and are feeling their way in many directions
+towards international union; while in the Churches a new, federal
+catholicity is taking shape, that must displace the false catholicism of
+external uniformity and the disastrous absolutism inherited from Rome.
+The spread of European empire and the marvellous expansion of our
+English race are carrying forward the world's unification with enormous
+strides,--towards some end or other. What end is this to be? Is the
+kingdom of the world about to become the kingdom of our Lord and His
+Christ? and are the nations preparing to be "reconciled in one body unto
+God"?
+
+If Christendom were worthy of her Master and her name, this question
+would be answered with no doubtful affirmative. The Church is well able,
+if she were prepared, to go up and possess the whole earth for her Lord.
+The way is open; the means are in her hand. Nor is she ignorant, nor
+wholly negligent of her opportunity and of the claims that the times
+impose upon her. She is putting forth new strength and striving to
+overtake her work, notwithstanding the weight of ignorance and sloth
+that burdens her. Soon the reconciling cross will be planted on every
+shore, and the praises of the Crucified sung in every human language.
+
+But there are dark as well as bright auguries for the future. The
+advance of commerce and emigration has been a curse and not a blessing
+to many heathen peoples. Who can read without shame and horror the story
+of European conquest in America? And it is a chapter not yet closed.
+Greed and injustice still mark the dealings of the powerful and
+civilized with the weaker races. England set a noble example in the
+abolition of negro slavery; but she has since inflicted, for purposes of
+gain, the opium curse on China, putting poison to the lips of its vast
+population. Under our Christian flags fire-arms are imported, and
+alcohol, amongst tribes of men less able than children to resist their
+evils. Is this "preaching peace to those far off"? It is likely that
+the commercial profits made in the destruction of savage races as yet
+exceed all that our missionary societies have spent in saving them. One
+of these days Almighty God may have a stern reckoning with modern Europe
+about these things. "When He maketh inquisition for blood, He will
+remember."
+
+And what shall we say of ourselves at home, in our relation to this
+great principle of the apostle? The old "middle wall of partition," the
+temple-barrier that sundered Jew and Gentile, is "broken down,"--visibly
+levelled by the hand of God when Jerusalem fell, as it had been
+virtually and in its principle destroyed by the work of Christ. But are
+there no other middle walls, no barriers raised within the fold of
+Christ? The rich man's purse, and the poor man's penury; aristocratic
+pride, democratic bitterness and jealousy; knowledge and refinement on
+the one hand, ignorance and rudeness on the other--how thick the veil of
+estrangement which these influences weave, how high the party walls
+which they build in our various Church communions!
+
+It is the duty of the Church, as she values her existence, with gentle
+but firm hands to pull down and to keep down all such partitions. She
+cannot abolish the natural distinctions of life. She cannot turn the Jew
+into a Gentile, nor the Gentile into a Jew. She will never make the poor
+man rich in this world, nor the rich man altogether poor. Like her
+Master, she declines to be "judge or divider" of our secular
+inheritance. But she can see to it that these outward distinctions make
+no difference in her treatment of the men as men. She can combine in her
+fellowship all grades and orders, and teach them to understand and
+respect each other. She can soften the asperities and relieve many of
+the hardships which social differences create. She can diffuse a
+healing and purifying influence upon the contentions of society around
+her.
+
+Let us labour unweariedly for this, and let our meeting at the Lord's
+table be a symbol of the unreserved communion of men of all classes and
+conditions in the brotherhood of the redeemed sons of God. "_He_ is our
+peace"; and if He is in our hearts, we must needs be sons of peace.
+"Behold the secret of all true union! It is not by others coming to us,
+nor by our going over to them; but it is by both them and ourselves
+coming to Christ" that peace is made (Monod).
+
+Thus within and without the Church the work of atonement will advance,
+with Christ ever for its preacher (ver. 17). He speaks through the words
+and the lives of His ten thousand messengers,--men of every order, in
+every age and country of the earth. The leaven of Christ's peace will
+spread till the lump is leavened. God will accomplish His purpose of the
+ages, whether in our time, or in another worthier of His calling. His
+Church is destined to be the home of the human family, the universal
+liberator and instructor and reconciler of the nations. And Christ shall
+sit enthroned in the loyal worship of the federated peoples of the
+earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the question remains: What is the foundation, what the warrant of
+this grand idealism of the apostle Paul? Many a great thinker, many an
+ardent reformer before and since has dreamed of some such millennium as
+this. And their enthusiastic plans have ended too often in conflict and
+destruction. What surer ground of confidence have we in Paul's
+undertaking than in those of so many gifted visionaries and
+philosophers? The difference lies here: his expectation rests on the
+word and character of God; his instrument of reform is the cross of
+Jesus Christ.
+
+God is the centre of His own universe. Any reconciliation that is to
+stand, must include Him first of all. Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile
+"both in one body _to God_." There is the meeting point, the true focus
+of the orbit of human life, that can alone control its movements and
+correct its wild aberrations. Under the shadow of His throne of justice,
+in the arms of His fatherly love, the kindreds of the earth will at last
+find reconciliation and peace. Humanitarian and secularist systems make
+the simple mistake of ignoring the supreme Factor in the scheme of
+things; they leave out the All in all.
+
+"Be ye _reconciled to God_," cries the apostle. For Almighty God has had
+a great quarrel with this world of ours. The hatred of men towards each
+other is rooted in the "carnal mind which is enmity against God." The
+"law of commandments contained in ordinances," in whose possession the
+Jew boasted over the lawless and profane Gentile, in reality branded
+both as culprits.
+
+The secret disquiet and dread lurking in man's conscience, the pangs
+endured in his body of humiliation, the groaning frame of nature declare
+the world unhinged and out of course. Things have gone amiss, somehow,
+between man and his Creator. The face of the earth and the field of
+human history are scarred with the thunderbolts of His displeasure. God,
+the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King of the ages, is not the
+amiable, almighty Sentimentalist that some pious people would make Him
+out to be. The men of the Bible felt and realized, if we do not, the
+grave and tremendous import of the Lord's controversy with all flesh. He
+is unceasingly at war with the sins of men. "God is _love_"--oh yes;
+but then He is also "a consuming fire"! There is no anger so crushing as
+the anger of love, for there is none so just; no wrath to be feared like
+"the wrath of the Lamb." God is not a man, weak and passionate, whom a
+spark of anger might set all on fire, burning out His justice and
+compassion. "In His wrath He remembers mercy." Within that infinite
+nature there is room for an absolute loathing and resentment towards
+sin, in consistence with an immeasurable pity and yearning towards His
+sinful children. Hence the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+Look at it from what side you will (and it has many sides), propound it
+in what terms you may (and it translates itself anew into the dialect of
+every age), you must not explain the cross of Christ away nor cause its
+offence to cease. "The atonement has always been a scandal and a folly
+to those who did not receive it; it has always contained something which
+to formal logic is false and to individualistic ethics immoral; yet in
+that very element which has been branded as immoral and false, has
+always lain the seal of its power and the secret of its truth." The Holy
+One of God, the Lamb without spot and blemish, He died by His own
+consent a sinner's death. That sacrifice, undergone by the Son of God
+and Son of man dying as man for men, in love to His race and in
+obedience to the Divine will and law, gave an infinite satisfaction to
+God in His relation to the world, and there went up to the Divine throne
+from the anguish of Calvary a "savour of sweet smell." The moral glory
+of the act of Jesus Christ in dying for His guilty brethren outshone its
+horror and disgrace; and it redeemed man's lost condition, and clothed
+human nature with a new character and aspect in the eyes of God
+Himself. "Now therefore there is no more condemnation to them that are
+in Christ Jesus." The mercy of God, if we may so say, is set free to act
+in forgiveness and restoration, without any compromise of justice and
+inflexible law. No peace without this: no peace that did not _satisfy
+God_, and satisfy that law, deep as the deepest in God, that binds
+suffering to wrong-doing and death to sin.
+
+Perhaps you say: This is immoral, surely, that the just should suffer
+for the unjust; that one commits the offence, and another bears the
+penalty.--Stay a moment: that is only half the truth. We are more than
+individuals; we are members of a race; and vicarious suffering runs
+through life. Our sufferings and wrong-doings bind the human family
+together in an inextricable web. We are _communists in sin and death_.
+It is the law and lot of our existence. And Christ, the Lord and centre
+of the race, has come within its scope. He bound Himself to our sinking
+fortunes. He became co-partner in our lost estate, and has redeemed it
+to God by His blood. If He was true and perfect man, if He was the
+creative Head and Mediator of the race, the eternal Firstborn of many
+brethren, He could do no other. He who alone had the right and the
+power,--"_One_ died for all." He took upon His Divine heart the sin and
+curse of the world, He fastened it to His shoulders with the cross; and
+He bore it away from Caiaphas' hall and Pilate's judgement-seat, away
+from guilty Jerusalem; He took away the sin of the world, and expiated
+it once for all. He quenched in His blood the fires of wrath and hate it
+kindled. He slew _the enmity_ thereby.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still, we are individuals, as you said, not lost after all in the
+world's solidarity. Here your personal right and will must come in. What
+Christ has done for you is yours, so far as you accept it. He has died
+your death beforehand, trusting that you would not repudiate His act,
+that you would not let His blood be spilt in vain. But He will never
+force His mediation upon you. He respects your freedom and your manhood.
+Do you now endorse what Jesus Christ did on your behalf? Do you renounce
+the sin, and accept the sacrifice? Then it is yours, from this moment,
+before the tribunal of God and of conscience. By the witness of His
+Spirit you are proclaimed a forgiven and reconciled man. Christ
+crucified is yours--if you will have Him, if you will identify your
+sinful self with the sinless Mediator, if as you see Him lifted up on
+the cross you will let your heart cry out, "Oh my God, He dies for
+_me_!"
+
+Coming "in one Spirit to the Father," the reconciled children join hands
+again with each other. Social barriers, caste feelings, family feuds,
+personal quarrels, national antipathies, alike go down before the virtue
+of the blood of Jesus.
+
+            "Neither passion nor pride
+              His cross can abide,
+    But melt in the fountain that streams from His side!"
+
+"Beloved," you will say to the man that hates or has wronged you
+most,--"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
+In these simple words of the apostle John lies the secret of universal
+peace, the hope of the fraternization of mankind. Nations will have to
+say this one day, as well as men.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[89] See to this effect such passages as Rom. i. 16 (_to the Jew
+first_), ix. 4, 5; and especially xi. 13-32.
+
+[90] Gal. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11. Comp. John x. 16, xi. 52. See _The
+Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible), Chapter XV.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_GOD'S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY._
+
+    "So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are
+    fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being
+    built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus
+    Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building,
+    fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in
+    whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the
+    Spirit."--EPH. ii. 19-22.
+
+
+Not unfrequently it is the last word or phrase of the paragraph that
+gives us the clue to St Paul's meaning and discloses the point at which
+he has aimed all along. So in this instance. "For a habitation of God in
+the Spirit": behold the goal of God's ways with mankind! For this end
+the Divine grace has wrought through countless ages and has made its
+great sacrifice. For this end Jew and Gentile are being gathered into
+one and compacted into a new humanity.
+
+I. The Church is a house built for an _Occupant_. Its quality and size,
+and the mode of its construction are determined by its destination. It
+is built to suit the great Inhabitant, who says concerning the new Zion
+as He said of the old in figure: "This is my rest for ever! Here will I
+dwell, for I have desired it." God, who is spirit, cannot be satisfied
+with the fabric of material nature for His temple, nor does "the Most
+High dwell in houses made by men's hands." He seeks our spirit for His
+abode, and
+
+                            "Doth prefer
+    Before all temples the upright heart and pure."
+
+In the collective life and spirit of humanity God claims to reside, that
+He may fill it with His glory and His love. "Know you not," cries the
+apostle to the once debased Corinthians, "that you are God's temple, and
+that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"
+
+Nothing that is bestowed upon man terminates in himself. The deliverance
+of Jewish and Gentile believers from their personal sins, their
+re-instatement into the broken unity of mankind and the destruction in
+them of their old enmities, of the antipathies generated by their common
+rebellion against God--these great results of Christ's sacrifice were
+means to a further end. "Hallowed be Thy name" is our first petition to
+the Father in heaven; "Glory to God in the highest" is the key-note of
+the angels' song, that runs through all the harmonies of "peace on
+earth," through every strain of the melody of life. Religion is the
+mistress, not the handmaid in human affairs. She will never consent to
+become a mere ethical discipline, an instrument and subordinate stage in
+social evolution, a ladder held for men to climb up into their
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The old temptation of the Garden, "Ye shall be as gods," has come upon
+our age in a new and fascinating form, "You shall be as gods," it is
+whispered: "nay, you _are_ God, and there is no other. The supernatural
+is a dream. The Christian story is a fable. There is none to fear or
+adore above yourselves!" Man is to worship his collective self, his own
+humanity. "I am the Lord thy God," the great idol says, "that brought
+thee up out of animalism and savagery, and me only shalt thou
+serve!--Love and faithful service to one's kind, a holy passion for the
+welfare of the race, for the relief of human ignorance and poverty and
+pain, this is the true religion; and you need no other. Its obligation
+is instinctive, its benefits immediate and palpable; and it gives a
+consecration to individual life that dignifies and chastens, while it
+calls into exercise all our faculties."
+
+Yes, we willingly admit, such human service is "religion pure and
+undefiled, _before our God and Father_." If service is rendered to our
+kind as worship to the Father of men; if we reverence in each man the
+image of God and the shrine of His Spirit; if we are seeking to cleanse
+and adorn in men the temple where the Most High shall dwell, the
+humblest work done for our fellows' good is done for Him. The best human
+charity is rendered for the love of God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
+God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. This," said Jesus, "is
+the first and great commandment. And the second is _like unto it_: Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
+the law and the prophets." On these two hangs the welfare of men and
+nations.
+
+But the first commandment must come first. The second law of Jesus never
+has been or will be kept to purpose without the first. Humanitarian
+sentiments, dreams of universal brotherhood, projects of social reform,
+may seem for the moment to gain by their independence of religion a
+certain zest and emphasis; but they are without root and vitality. Their
+energy fails, or spends itself in revolt; their glow declines, their
+purity is stained. The leaders and first enthusiasts trained in the
+school of Christ, whose spirit, in vain repudiated, lives on in them,
+find themselves betrayed and alone. The coarse selfishness and
+materialism of the human heart win an easy triumph over a visionary
+altruism. "Without me," says Jesus Christ, "ye can do nothing."
+
+In the light of God's glory man learns to reverence his nature and
+understand the vocation of his race. The love of God touches the deep
+and enduring springs of human action. The kingdom of Christ and of God
+commands an absolute devotion; its service inspires unfaltering courage
+and invincible patience. There is a grandeur and a certainty, of which
+the noblest secular aims fall short, in the hopes of those who are
+striving together for the faith of the gospel, and who work to build
+human life into a dwelling-place for God.
+
+II. God's temple in the Church of Jesus Christ, while it is one, is also
+manifold. "In whom _each several building_ [or _every part of the
+building_[91]], while it is compacted together, grows into a holy temple
+in the Lord."
+
+The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient
+temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points
+over a wide area. The builders work in concert, upon a common plan. The
+several parts of the work are adjusted to each other; and the various
+operations in process are so harmonized, that the entire construction
+preserves the unity of the architect's design. Such an edifice was the
+apostolic Church--one, but of many parts--in its diverse gifts and
+multiplied activities animated by one Spirit and directed towards one
+Divine purpose.
+
+Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome--what a various scene of
+activity these centres of Christian life presented! The Churches
+founded in these great cities must have differed in many features. Even
+in the communities of his own province the apostle did not, so far as we
+can judge, impose a uniform administration. St Peter and St Paul carried
+out their plans independently, only maintaining a general understanding
+with each other. The apostolic founders, inspired by one and the
+self-same Spirit, could labour at a distance, upon material and by
+methods extremely various, with entire confidence in each other and with
+an assurance of the unity of result which their teaching and
+administration would exhibit. The many buildings rested on the one
+foundation of the apostles. "Whether it were I or they," says our
+apostle, "so we preach, and so you believed." Where there is the same
+Spirit and the same Lord, men do not need to be scrupulous about visible
+conformity. Elasticity and individual initiative admit of entire harmony
+of principle. The hand may do its work without irritating and
+obstructing the eye; and the foot run on its errands without mistrusting
+the ear.
+
+Such was the catholicism of the apostolic age. The true reading of verse
+21, as it is restored by the Revisers, is an incidental witness to the
+date of the epistle. A churchman of the second century, writing under
+Paul's name in the interests of catholic unity as it was then
+understood, would scarcely have penned such a sentence without attaching
+to the subject the definite article: he must have written "all the
+building," as the copyists from whom the received text proceeds very
+naturally have done. From that time onwards, as the system of the
+ecclesiastical hierarchy was developed, external unity was more and more
+strictly imposed. The original "diversity of operations" became a rigid
+uniformity. The Church swallowed up the Churches. Finally, the spiritual
+bureaucracy of Rome gathered all ecclesiastical power into one centre,
+and placed the direction of Western Christendom in the hands of a single
+priest, whom it declared to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ and endowed
+with the Divine attribute of infallibility.
+
+Had not Jerusalem been overthrown and its Church destroyed, the
+hierarchical movement would probably have made that city, rather than
+Rome, its centre. This was in fact the tendency, if not the express
+purpose of the Judaistic party in the Church. St Paul had vindicated in
+his earlier epistles the freedom of the Gentile Christian communities,
+and their right of non-conformity to Jewish usage. In the words "each
+several building, fitly framed together," there is an echo of this
+controversy. The Churches of his mission claim a standing side by side
+with those founded by other apostles. For himself and his Gentile
+brethren he seems to say, in the presence of the primitive Church and
+its leaders: "As they are Christ's, so also are we."
+
+The co-operation of the different parts of the body of Christ is
+essential to their collective growth. Let all Churches beware of
+crushing dissent. Blows aimed at our Christian neighbours recoil upon
+ourselves. Undermining their foundation, we shake our own. Next to
+positive corruption of doctrine and life, nothing hinders so greatly the
+progress of the kingdom of God as the claim to exclusive legitimacy made
+on behalf of ancient Church organizations. Their representatives would
+have every part of God's temple framed upon one pattern. They refuse a
+place on the apostolic foundation to all Churches, however numerous,
+however rich in faith and good works, however strong the historical
+justification for their existence, however clear the marks they bear of
+the Spirit's seal, which do not conform to the rule they themselves have
+received. Their rites and ministry, they assert, are those alone
+approved by Christ and authorized by His apostles, within a given area.
+They refuse the right hand of fellowship to men who are doing Christ's
+work by their side; they isolate their flocks, as far as possible, from
+intercourse with the Christian communities around them.
+
+This policy on the part of any Christian Church, or Church party, is
+contrary to the mind of Christ and to the example of His apostles. Those
+who hold aloof from the comity of the Churches and prevent the many
+buildings of God's temple being fitly framed together, must bear their
+judgement, whosoever they be. They prefer conquest to peace, but that
+conquest they will never win; it would be fatal to themselves. Let the
+elder sister frankly allow the birthright of the younger sisters of
+Christ's house in these lands, and be our example in justice and in
+charity. Great will be her honour; great the glory won for our common
+Lord.
+
+"Every building fitly framed together _groweth into a holy temple_ in
+the Lord." The subject is distributive; the predicate collective. The
+parts give place to the whole in the writer's mind. As each several
+piece of the structure, each cell or chapel in the temple, spreads out
+to join its companion buildings and adjusts itself to the parts around
+it, the edifice grows into a richer completeness and becomes more fit
+for its sacred purpose. The separate buildings, distant in place or
+historical character, approximate by extension, as they spread over the
+unoccupied ground between them and as the connecting links are
+multiplied. At last a point is reached at which they will become
+continuous. Growing into each other step by step and forming across the
+diminishing distance a web of mutual attachment constantly thickening,
+they will insensibly, by a natural and vital growth, become one in
+visible communion as they are one in their underlying faith.
+
+When each organ of the body in its own degree is perfect and holds its
+place in keeping with the rest, we think no longer of their individual
+perfection, of the charm of this feature or of that; they are forgotten
+in the beauty of the perfect frame. So it will be in the body of Christ,
+when its several communions, cleansed and filled with His Spirit, each
+honouring the vocation of the others, shall in freedom and in love by a
+spontaneous movement be gathered into one. Their strength will then be
+no longer weakened and their spirit chafed by internal conflict. With
+united forces and irresistible energy, they will assail the kingdom of
+darkness and subjugate the world to Christ.
+
+For this consummation our Saviour prayed in the last hours before His
+death: "that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in
+Thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that Thou
+didst send me" (John xvii. 21). Did He fear that His little flock of the
+Twelve would be parted by dissensions? Or did He not look onward to the
+future, and see the "offences that must come," the alienations and
+fierce conflicts that would arise amongst His people, and the blood that
+would be shed in His name? Yet beyond these divisions, on the horizon of
+the end of the age, He foresaw the day when the wounds of His Church
+would be healed, when the sword that He had brought on the earth would
+be sheathed, and through the unity of faith and love in His people all
+mankind would at last come to acknowledge Him and the Father who had
+sent Him.
+
+III. To appearance, we are many rather than one who bear the name of
+Christ. But we are one notwithstanding, if below the variety of
+superstructure our faith rests upon the witness of the apostles, and the
+several buildings have Christ Jesus Himself for chief corner-stone. The
+_one foundation_ and the _one Spirit_ constitute the unity of God's
+temple in the Church.
+
+"The apostles and prophets" are named as a single body, _the prophets_
+being doubtless, in this passage and in chapters iii. 5 and iv. 11, the
+existing prophets of the apostolic Church, whose inspired teaching
+supplemented that of the apostles and helped to lay down the foundation
+of revealed truth. That foundation has been, through the providence of
+God, preserved for later ages in the Scriptures of the New Testament, on
+which the faith of Christians has rested ever since. Such a prophet
+Barnabas was in the first days (Acts xiii. 1), and such was the unknown,
+but deeply inspired writer of the epistle to the Hebrews; such prophets,
+again, were SS. Mark and Luke, the Evangelists. Prophecy was not a
+stated gift of office. Just as there were "teachers" in the early Church
+whose knowledge and eloquence did not entitle them to bear rule, so
+prophecy was frequently exercised by private persons and carried with it
+no such official authority as belonged in the highest degree to the
+apostles.
+
+It is thought surprising that St Paul should write thus, in so general
+and distant a fashion, of the order to which he belonged (comp. iii. 5).
+This, it is said, is the language of a later generation, which looks
+back with reverence to the inspired Founders. But this letter is
+written, as we observed at the outset, from a peculiarly objective and
+impersonal standpoint. It differs in this respect from other epistles of
+St Paul. He is addressing a number of Churches, with some of which his
+personal relations were slight and distant. He is contemplating the
+Church in its most general character. He is not the only founder of
+Churches; he is one of a band of colleagues, working in different
+regions. It is natural that he should use the plural here. He sets his
+successors an example of the recognition due to fellow-labourers whose
+work bears the seal of Christ's Spirit.
+
+These men have laid _the foundation_--Peter and Paul, John and James,
+Barnabas and Silas, and the rest. They are our spiritual progenitors,
+the fathers of our faith. We see Jesus Christ through their eyes; we
+read His teaching, and catch His Spirit in their words. Their testimony,
+in its essential facts, stands secure in the confidence of mankind. Nor
+was it their word alone, but the men themselves--their character, their
+life and work--laid for the Church its historical foundation. This
+"glorious company of the apostles" formed the first course in the new
+building, on whose firmness and strength the stability of the entire
+structure depends. Their virtues and their sufferings, as well as the
+revelations made through them, have guided the thoughts and shaped the
+life of countless multitudes of men, of the best and wisest men in all
+ages since. They have fixed the standard of Christian doctrine and the
+type of Christian character. At our best, we are but imitators of them
+as they were of Christ.
+
+In regard to the chief part of their teaching, both as to its meaning
+and authority, the great bulk of Christians in all communions are
+agreed. The keen disputes which engage us upon certain points, testify
+to the cardinal importance which is felt on all hands to attach to the
+words of Christ's chosen apostles. Their living witness is in our midst.
+The self-same Spirit that wrought in them, works amongst men and dwells
+in the communion of saints. He still reveals the things of Christ, and
+guides into truth the willing and obedient.
+
+So "the firm foundation of God standeth"; though men, shaken themselves,
+seem to see it tremble. On that basis we may labour confidently and
+loyally, with those amongst whom the Master has placed us. Some of our
+fellow-workmen disown and would hinder us: that shall not prevent us
+from rejoicing in their good work, and admiring the gold and precious
+stones that they contribute to the fabric. The Lord of the temple will
+know how to use the labour of His many servants. He will forgive and
+compose their strife, who are jealous for His name. He will shape their
+narrow aims to His larger purposes. Out of their discords He will draw a
+finer harmony. As the great house grows to its dimensions, as the
+workmen by the extension of their labours come nearer to each other and
+their sectional plans merge in Christ's great purpose, reproaches will
+cease and misunderstandings vanish. Over many who followed not with us
+and whom we counted but as "strangers and sojourners," as men whose
+place within the walls of Zion was doubtful and unauthorized, we shall
+hereafter rejoice with a joy not unmixed with self-upbraiding, to find
+them in the fullest right our fellow-citizens amongst the saints and of
+the household of God.
+
+The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder of the Church, as He is the
+supreme witness to Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words _in the
+Spirit_, closing the verse with solemn emphasis, denote not the mode of
+God's habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency engaged in
+building this new house of God. With one "chief corner-stone" to rest
+upon and one Spirit to inspire and control them, the apostles and
+prophets laid their foundation and the Church was "builded together" for
+a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But for this sovereign influence
+the primitive founders of Christianity, like later Church leaders, would
+have fallen into fatal discord. Modern critics, reasoning upon natural
+grounds and not understanding the grace of the Holy Spirit, assume that
+they did thus quarrel and contend. Had this been so, no foundation could
+ever have been laid; the Church would have fallen to pieces at the very
+beginning.
+
+In the hands of these faithful and wise stewards of God's dispensation,
+"the stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner."
+Their work has been tried by fire and by flood; and it abides. The rock
+of Zion stands unworn by time, unshaken by the conflict of ages,--amidst
+the movements of history and the shifting currents of thought the one
+foundation for the peace and true welfare of mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[91] =Pasa oikodom�=, according to the well-established critical
+reading. For =pas= without the article, implying a various whole,
+compare =pas�s ktise�s= in Col. i. 15; =pasa graph�=, 2 Tim. iii. 16;
+=en pas� anastroph�=, 1 Peter i. 15; and =Theos pas�s charitos=, 1 Peter
+v. 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_THE SECRET OF THE AGES._
+
+    "For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of
+    you Gentiles,--if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of
+    that grace of God which was given me toward you; how that by
+    revelation was made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in
+    few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding
+    in the mystery of Christ), which in other generations was not made
+    known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His
+    holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; _to wit_, that the
+    Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and
+    fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
+    whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace
+    of God which was given me according to the working of His power.
+    Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
+    given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
+    Christ; and to bring to light what is the dispensation of the
+    mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all
+    things."--EPH. iii. 1-9.
+
+
+Verses 2-13 are in form a parenthesis. They interrupt the prayer which
+appears to be commencing in the first verse and is not resumed until
+verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical, however, in
+appearance more than in reality. The matter it contains is so weighty
+and so essential to the argument and structure of the epistle, that it
+is impossible to treat it as a mere _aside_. The writer intends, at the
+pause which occurs after the paragraph just concluded (ii. 22), to
+interpose a few words of prayer before passing on to the next topic.
+But in the act of doing so, this subject of which his mind is
+full--viz., that of his own relation to God's great purpose for
+mankind--forces itself upon him; and the prayer that was on his lips is
+pent up for a few moments longer, until it flows forth again, in richer
+measure, in verses 14-19.
+
+Like chapter i. 3-14, this passage is an extreme instance of St Paul's
+amorphous style. His sentences are not composed; they are spun in a
+continuous thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial, and
+relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes like living things, putting
+forth new processes every moment, now in this and now in that direction.
+Within the main parenthesis we soon come upon another parenthesis
+including verses 3_b_ and 4 ("as I wrote afore," etc.); and at several
+points the grammatical connexion is uncertain. In its general scope,
+this intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of _what God
+has wrought in the apostle_ toward the accomplishment of His great plan.
+It thus completes the exposition given already of that which _God
+wrought in Christ for the Church_, and that which _He has wrought
+through Christ in Gentile believers_ in fulfilment of the same end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 1-9 speak (1) of the mystery itself--God's gracious intention
+toward the human race, unknown in earlier times; and (2) of the man to
+whom, above others, it was given to make known the secret.
+
+I. _The mystery_ is defined twice over. First, it consists in the fact
+that "in Christ Jesus through the gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and
+co-incorporate and co-partners in the promise" (ver. 6); and secondly,
+it is "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (ver. 8). The latter phrase
+gathers to a point what is diversely expressed in the former.
+
+Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of the mysteries of Divine
+truth, of the whole enigma of existence. In the parallel epistle he
+calls Him "the mystery of God--in whom are all the treasures of wisdom
+and knowledge hidden" (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.). The mystery of God,
+discovered in Christ, was hidden out of the sight and reach of previous
+times. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common
+property of mankind (Col. i. 25-28).
+
+In close connexion with these statements, St Paul speaks there, as he
+does here, of his own heavy sufferings endured on this account and the
+joy they gave him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose worthy of
+God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation waiting to be spoken since the
+world began, that is addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along
+with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate with the
+greatness of the truth given him to announce.
+
+The mystery, as we have said, consists in _Christ_. This we learned from
+chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and
+laid His plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness of the
+times dispenses. The Old Testament, the reservoir of previous
+revelation, had Him for its close-kept secret, "held in silence through
+eternal times" (Rom. xvi. 25-27). The drift of its prophecies, the focus
+of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards which its spiritual
+indications pointed, was "Christ." He "was the spiritual rock that
+followed" Israel in its wanderings, from whose springs the people
+drank, as it answered to the touch of one and now another of the holy
+men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ gives unity, substance, and
+meaning to the history of Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without
+goal, a problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law and sacrifice;
+the kingly Son of David, and the suffering Servant of Jehovah; the Seed
+of the woman with bruised foot bruising the serpent's head; the Lord
+whom His people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone hewn from
+the mountains without hands, that grows till it fills the earth--the
+manifold representations of Israel's ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus
+Christ. The lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of
+prophecy--disconnected as they seemed and without a plan, giving rise to
+a thousand dreams and speculations--are filled out and drawn into shape
+and take life and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of a
+consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment or of that
+belonging to the consummate Person and the comprehensive plan manifest
+in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
+
+But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated wealth of former
+revelation, His fulness is not measured thereby or exhausted. He solves
+the problems of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But He
+creates new and deeper problems, some explained in the continued
+teaching of His Spirit and His providence, others that remain, or emerge
+from time to time to tax the faith and understanding of His Church.
+There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person, with which the Greek
+Church struggled long--His eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation
+to mankind and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial reign
+and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty of God. These depths
+St Paul sounded with his plummet; but he found them unfathomable.
+Theological science has explored and defined them, and illuminated them
+on many sides, but cannot reach to their inmost mystery. Then there is
+the problem of the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching
+the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt, touching the
+adjustment of law and grace, the method of justification, the extent and
+efficacy of Christ's redeeming work, touching the future destiny and
+eternal state of souls. Another class of questions largely occupies the
+minds of thoughtful men to-day. They are studying the relation of Christ
+and His Church to nature and the outward world, the bearings of
+Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of the Spirit of God
+in communities, and the place of man's collective life in the progress
+and upbuilding of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to those
+who humbly seek His light. He is given afresh in every age. Out of
+Christ's unsearchable riches ever-new resources are forthcoming at His
+Church's need, new treasures lying hidden in the old for him who can
+extract them. But His riches, however far they are investigated, remain
+unsearchable, and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God's ways
+may be tracked further and further in each generation; they will remain
+to the end, as they were to the mind of Paul at the limit of his bold
+researches, "past finding out." The inspired apostle confesses himself a
+child in Divine learning: "We know in part," he says, "we prophesy in
+part." Oh the depths of "hidden wisdom" unimagined now, that are in
+store for us in Christ, "foreordained before the worlds unto our
+glory!"
+
+The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with which the apostle is
+concerned, is that of His relationship to the Gentile world. "The grace
+of God," he says in verse 2, "was given me _for you_." Such is "the
+dispensation" in which God is now engaged. Upon this lavish and
+undreamed-of scale He is dealing forth salvation to men. St Paul
+describes this revelation of God's goodness to the Gentiles by three
+parallel but distinct terms in verse 6. They "are fellow-heirs"--a word
+that carries us back to chapter i. 11-13, and assures the Gentile
+readers of their final redemption and heavenly glory.[92] They "are of
+the same body"--which sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii.
+11-22. And they "are fellow-partakers of the promise"--receiving upon a
+footing of equal privilege with Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit
+and the blessings promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.
+
+In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St Paul formally
+proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles into the body of Christ,
+their investiture with the franchise of faith. The forgiveness of sins
+is theirs, the light of God's smile, the breath of His Spirit, the
+worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and honours of His
+service. The incarnation of Christ is theirs; His life, teaching, and
+miracles; His cross is theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His
+second coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom--all made their
+own on the bare condition of a penitent and obedient faith. The past is
+theirs--is ours, along with the present and the future. The God of
+Israel is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons after the
+flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets prophesied of the grace that
+should come unto us. Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile
+peoples in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and praises. In
+their words we find expression for our heart-griefs and joys. At the
+wedding-feast or by the grave-side, amidst "the multitude that keep holy
+day" and in "dry lands" where the soul thirsts for God's ordinances, we
+carry the Psalmists with us and the teachers of Israel.
+
+What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by Jesus Christ, have
+discovered in the Jewish Bible! When will the Jewish people understand
+that their greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the
+Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept their part in the
+riches of which they have made all the world partakers? The mystery of
+our participation in their Christ has now been "revealed to the sons of
+men" long enough. Is it not time that they themselves should see it,
+that the veil should be lifted from the heart of Israel? The disclosure
+was in the first instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished
+expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was at first rejected.
+But God the King of the ages has been asserting and re-asserting the
+fact in the course of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him!
+how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!
+
+II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,--men of unveiled heart
+to whom the mystery of ages was disclosed. "The secret of Jehovah is
+with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant." Such is
+the rule of revelation. To the like effect Christ said: "The pure in
+heart shall see God. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the
+doctrine."
+
+The light of God's universal love had come into the world; but where it
+fell on cold or impure hearts, it shone in vain. The mystery "was made
+manifest to His _saints_," writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So in
+this passage: "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets in the
+Spirit." The pure eye sees the true light. This was the condition which
+made it possible for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be
+the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere and devoted
+men, willing to be taught of God, willing to surrender every prejudice
+and the preconceptions of flesh and blood, in order to receive and
+convey to the world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than the
+thoughts of men. To such men--true disciples, loyal at all costs to God
+and truth, holy and humble of heart--Jesus Christ gave His great
+commission and bade them "go and make disciples of all the nations."
+
+The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the
+house of Cornelius "not to call any man common or unclean." He saw, and
+the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God "gave the like gift"
+to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had "purified their
+hearts by faith." Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this
+revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors
+in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when
+he speaks of "holy apostles and prophets" in verse 5. His readers would
+naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original
+apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine
+of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance
+to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown
+by the stress which is laid upon it and the prominence given to it in
+the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.
+
+The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never
+claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It
+was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. "Whereof," he says, in
+verse 7, "I _became minister_"; again, "to me was this grace given, to
+_preach to the Gentiles_ Christ's unsearchable riches." The leaders of
+the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for
+all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the
+practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came
+upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to
+it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then "it pleased God
+to reveal His Son" in him, that he might "preach Him among the
+Gentiles."
+
+The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and
+continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him
+to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative,
+to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds
+itself: "To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace
+given." That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and
+most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ's
+riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for
+this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness
+that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that
+this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped
+in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew
+better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the
+house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of
+that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its
+precious things and make them at home within its walls.
+
+To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the
+gospel--a commonplace of our modern rhetoric--had burst upon his mind in
+its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an
+undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are
+opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the
+promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the
+largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of
+the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine
+impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the
+disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.
+
+St Paul's work, in carrying out the dispensation of this mystery, was
+twofold. It was both external and internal. He was a "herald and
+apostle"; he was also "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth" (1
+Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry the good tidings
+from one end to the other of the Roman empire, to spread it abroad as
+far as his feet could travel and his voice reach, and thus "to fulfil
+the gospel of Christ." But there was another, mental task, as necessary
+and still more difficult, which likewise fell to his lot. He had to
+_think out_ the gospel. It was his office to unfold and apply it to the
+wants of a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted
+him as evangelist and pastor,--questions that contained the seed and
+beginning of the intellectual difficulties of the Church in future
+times. He had to free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism,
+to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical and legal
+interpretation. On the other hand, he had equally to guard the truth as
+it is in Jesus from the dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and
+theosophy. Fighting his way through fierce and incessant opposition on
+both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind of the Church onwards and
+guides it still in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. These
+noble epistles are the fruit and record of St Paul's theological work.
+Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience of the world
+than any one man besides, except the Master of truth who was more than
+man.
+
+The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence he now possessed, and
+that must accrue to him in the future from the transcendent interest of
+the doctrines committed to his charge. There is no false modesty about
+this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only to "preach to the
+Gentiles the good news of Christ's unsearchable riches"; but more than
+that, "to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery that
+has been hidden away from the ages in God who created all things." The
+great secret was out while Saul of Tarsus was still a persecutor and
+blasphemer. But as to the _management_ and _dispensation_ of the
+mystery, the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in which
+God would convey and apply it to the world at large, and as to the
+bearings and consequences of this momentous truth,--the apostle Paul,
+and no one but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He was, in
+fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.
+
+Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul's debtors; and are
+included amongst the "all men" of verse 9 (if this reading of the text
+is correct). St John had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the
+mind of Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation; but
+the labours and the logic of St Paul provided the field into which he
+entered in his ripe old age spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and
+assimilated everything that belonged to Christ and found for everything
+its principle and centre in the Master of his youth--"the way, the
+truth, and the life"--passed through the school of Paul. With the rest,
+he learnt through the new apostle to see more perfectly "what is the
+dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this letter in the
+Asian towns, if they have not known it before, will now "perceive" his
+"understanding in the mystery of Christ." All ages have discerned it
+since. And the ages to come will measure its value better than we can do
+now.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[92] See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14-25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN._
+
+    "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the
+    heavenly _places_ might be made known through the Church the
+    manifold wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages which
+    He formed in the Christ, _even_ Jesus our Lord: in whom we have
+    boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him.
+    Wherefore I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which
+    are your glory."--EPH. iii. 10-13.
+
+
+_The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God who created all
+things_: so the last paragraph concluded. The added phrase "through
+Jesus Christ" is a comment of the pious reader, that has been
+incorporated in the received text; but it is wanting in the oldest
+copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not concerned with the
+prerogatives of Christ, but with the scope of the Christian economy. He
+is displaying the breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace, the
+infinite range of the Divine plans and operations of which it forms the
+centre. Its secret was cherished in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations
+are laid in the very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now
+being made brings new light and wisdom to the powers of the celestial
+realms.
+
+"There is nothing covered," said Jesus, "which shall not be revealed,
+and hidden which shall not be known." The mysteries which God sets
+before His intelligent creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are
+drafts, to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of wisdom hidden
+in Christ. So this great secret of the destiny of the Gentile world was
+"from all ages hidden, in order that now through the Church it might be
+made known," and by its means God's wisdom, to these sublime
+intelligences. This intention was a part of the "plan of the ages"
+formed in Christ (ver. 11). God designed by our redemption to bless
+higher races along with our own. The elder sons of God, those "morning
+stars" of creation, are schooled and instructed by what is transpiring
+here upon earth.
+
+To some this will appear to be mere extravagance. They see in such
+expressions the marks of an unrestrained enthusiasm, of theological
+speculation pushed beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge
+of the physical universe. This censure would be plausible and it might
+seem that the apostle had extended the mission of the gospel beyond its
+province, were it not for what he says in verse 11: This "purpose of the
+ages" God "made in _the Christ_, even _Jesus our Lord_." Jesus Christ
+links together angels and men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of
+heaven. Christ's coming to this world and identification with it unite
+to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The scenes enacted upon this
+planet and the events of its religious history have sent their shock
+through the universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to human
+life a boundless interest and significance. It is idle to oppose to this
+conviction the fact of the littleness of the terrestrial globe.
+Spiritual and physical magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot
+measure a man's soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science teaches
+us that the most powerful forces may exist and operate within the
+narrowest space. A microscopic cell may contain the potential life of a
+world. If our earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has
+been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which God spared not to
+give His own Son!
+
+Here, then, lies the centre of the apostle's thoughts in this paragraph:
+_God's all-comprehending purpose in Christ_. The magnitude and
+completeness of this plan are indicated by the fact that it embraces in
+its purview _the angelic powers and their enlightenment_. So
+understanding it, our _human faith gains confidence and courage_ (vv.
+12, 13).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. The textual critics restore the definite article which later copyists
+had dropped before the word _Christ_ in verse 11. We have already
+remarked the frequency of "the Christ" in this epistle.[93] Once besides
+this peculiar combination of the names of our Saviour occurs--in
+Colossians ii. 6, where Lightfoot renders it _the Christ, even Jesus the
+Lord_. So it should be rendered in this place. St Paul sets forth the
+purpose of "God who created all things." He is looking back through "the
+ages" during which the Divine plan was kept secret. God was all the time
+designing His work of mercy, pointing meanwhile the hopes of men by
+token and promise to the Coming One. The Messiah was the burden of those
+prophetic ages. That inscrutable Christ of the Old Testament, the veiled
+mystery of Jewish hope, stands manifested before us and challenges our
+faith in the glorious person of "Jesus our Lord." This singular turn of
+expression identifies the ideal and the real, the promise and
+fulfilment, the dream of Old Testament prophecy and the fact of New
+Testament history. For Jesus our Lord is the very Christ to whom the
+generations before His coming looked forward out of their twilight with
+wistful expectancy.
+
+Not without meaning is He called "Jesus _our Lord_." The "principalities
+and powers" of the heavenly places are in our view (ver. 10). These
+potentates some of the Asian Christians were fain to worship. "See ye do
+it not," Paul seems to say. "Jesus, the Christ of God, is alone our
+Lord; not these. He is our Lord _and theirs_ (i. 21, 22). As our Lord He
+commands their homage, and gives them lessons through His Church in
+God's deep counsels." Everything that the apostle says tends to exalt
+our Redeemer and to enhance our confidence in Him. His position is
+central and supreme, in regard alike to the ages of time and the powers
+of the universe. In His hand is the key to all mysteries. He is the
+Alpha and Omega, the beginning, middle, and end of God's ways. He is the
+centre of Israel, Israel of the world and the human ages; while the
+world of men is bound through Him to the higher spheres of being, over
+which He too presides.
+
+There is a splendid intellectual courage, an incredible boldness and
+reach of thought in St Paul's conception of the sovereignty of Christ.
+Remember that He of whom these things are said, but thirty years before
+died a felon's death in the sight of the Jewish people. It is not _our_
+Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is hallowed by the lips of millions and
+glorified by the triumphs of centuries upon centuries past, but the
+Nazarene with the obscurity of His life and the cruel shame of Calvary
+fresh in the recollection of all men. With what immense force had the
+facts of His glorification wrought upon men's minds--His resurrection
+and ascension, the witness of His Spirit and the virtue of His
+gospel--for it to be possible to speak of Him thus, within a generation
+of His death! While "the foolishness of preaching" such a Christ and the
+weakness in which He was crucified were patent to all eyes, unrelieved
+by the influence of time and the glamour of success, how was it that the
+first believers raised Jesus to this limitless glory and dominion? It
+was through the conviction, certified by outward fact and inward
+experience, that "He liveth by the power of God." Thus Peter on the day
+of Pentecost: "By the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this
+which ye now see and hear." The resurrection from the dead, the
+demonstration of the Spirit proved Jesus Christ to be that which He had
+claimed to be, the Saviour of men and the eternal Son of God.
+
+The supremacy here assigned to Christ is a consequence of the exaltation
+described at the close of the first chapter. There we see the height,
+here the breadth and length of His dominion. If He is raised from the
+grave so high that all created powers and names are beneath His feet, we
+cannot wonder that the past ages were employed in preparing His way,
+that the basis of His throne lies in the foundation of the world.
+
+II. The universe is one. There is a solidarity of rational and moral
+interests amongst all intelligences. Granting the existence of such
+beings as the angels of Scripture, we should expect them to be
+profoundly concerned in the redeeming work of Christ. They are the
+"watchers" and "holy ones" spoken of by the later Isaiah and Daniel,
+whom the Lord has "set upon the walls of Jerusalem" and who survey the
+affairs of nations. Such was "the angel who talked" with Zechariah in
+his vision, and whom the prophet overheard pleading for Jerusalem. In
+the Apocalypse, again, we find the angels acting as God's unseen
+executive. We decline to believe that these superhuman creatures are
+nothing more than apocalyptic machinery, that they are creations of
+fancy employed to give a livelier aspect to spiritual truth. "Cannot I
+pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve
+legions of angels?" So Jesus said, in the most solemn hour of His life.
+And who can forget His tender words concerning the little children,
+whose "angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven"?
+
+The apostle Paul, who denounces "worship of the angels" in the fellow
+epistle to this, earnestly believed in their existence and their
+interest in human affairs. If he did not write the words of Hebrews i.
+14, he certainly held that "they are ministering spirits sent forth to
+do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation." Most
+clearly is their relationship to the Church affirmed by the words of the
+revealing angel to the apostle John: "I am a fellow-servant with thee
+and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them that keep the words of
+this book."
+
+Christ's service is the high school of wisdom for the universe. These
+princes of heaven win by their ministry to Christ and His Church a great
+reward. Their intelligence, however lofty its range, is finite. Their
+keen and burning intuition could not penetrate the mystery of God's
+intentions toward this world. The revelations of the latter days--the
+incarnation, the cross, the publication of the gospel, the outpouring
+of the Spirit--were full of surprises to the heavenly watchers. They
+sang at Bethlehem; they hid their faces and shrouded heaven in blackness
+at the sight of Calvary. They bent down with eager observation and
+searching thought "desiring to look into" the things made known to men
+(1 Peter i. 12),--close and sympathetic students of the Church's
+history. The apostle felt that there were other eyes bent upon him than
+those of his fellow-men, and that he was acting in a grander arena than
+the visible world. "We are a spectacle," he says, "_to angels_ and to
+men." So he enjoins faithfulness on Timothy, and with Timothy on all who
+bear the charge of the gospel, "before God and Christ Jesus, and the
+elect angels." What is public opinion, what the applause or derision of
+the crowd, to him who lives and acts in the presence of these august
+spectators?
+
+"Through the Church," we are told, the angels of God are "now" having
+His "manifold wisdom made known" to them. It is not from the abstract
+scheme of salvation, from the theory or theology of the Church that they
+get this education, but through the living Church herself. The Saviour's
+mission to earth created a problem for them, the development of which
+they follow with the most intense and sympathetic interest. With what
+solicitude they watch the conflict between good and evil and the varying
+progress of Christ's kingdom amongst men! Many things, doubtless, that
+engage our attention and fill a large space in our Church records, are
+of little account with them; and much that passes in obscurity, names
+and deeds unchronicled by fame, are written in heaven and pondered in
+other spheres. No brave and true blow is struck in Christ's battle, but
+it has the admiration of these high spectators. No advance is made in
+character and habit, in Christian intelligence and efficiency and the
+application of the gospel to human need, but they notice and approve.
+When the cause of the Church and the salvation of mankind go forward,
+when righteousness and peace triumph, the morning stars sing together
+and the sons of God shout for joy. The joy that there is in the presence
+of the angels of God over the repenting sinner, is not the joy of
+sympathy or pity only; it is the delight of growing wisdom, of deepening
+insight into the ways of God, into the heart of the Father and the love
+that passes knowledge.
+
+One would suppose from what the apostle hints, that our world presents a
+problem unique in the kingdom of God, one which raises questions more
+complicated and crucial than have elsewhere arisen. The heavenly
+princedoms are learning through the Church "the _manifold_ wisdom of
+God." His love, in its pure essence, those happy and godlike beings
+know. They have lived for ages in its unclouded light. His power and
+skill they may see displayed in proportions immensely grander than this
+puny globe of ours presents. God's justice, it may be, and the thunders
+of His law have issued forth in other regions clothed with a splendour
+of which the scenes of Sinai were but a faint emblem. It is in the
+combination of the manifold principles of the Divine government that the
+peculiarity of the human problem appears to lie. The delicate and
+continuous balancing of forces in God's plan of dealing with this world,
+the reconciliation of seeming incompatibilities, the issue found from
+positions of hopeless contradiction, the accord of goodness with
+severity, of inflexible rectitude and truth with fatherly compassion,
+afford to the greatest minds of heaven a spectacle and a study
+altogether wonderful. So amongst ourselves the child of a noble house,
+reared in cultured ease and shielded from moral peril, in visiting the
+homes of poverty in the crowded city finds a new world opened to him,
+that can teach him Divine lessons if he has the heart to learn. His mind
+is awakened, his sympathies enriched. He hears the world's true voice,
+"the still, sad music of humanity." He measures the heights and depths
+of man's nature. A host of questions are thrust upon him, whose urgency
+he had scarcely guessed; and wide ranges of truth are lighted up for
+him, which before were distant and unreal. The highest have ever to
+learn from the lowest in Christ's school, the seeming-wise from the
+simple; even the pure and good, from contact with the fallen whom they
+seek to save.
+
+And "the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places" are, it
+seems, willing to learn from those below them. As they traced the course
+of human history in those "eternal times" during which the mystery lay
+wrapped in silence, the angel watchers were too wise to play the
+sceptic, too cautious to criticize an unfinished plan and arraign a
+justice they could not yet understand. With a dignified patience they
+waited the uplifting of the curtain and the unravelling of the entangled
+plot. They looked for the coming of the Promised One. So in due time
+they witnessed and, for their reward, assisted in His manifestation.
+With the same docility these high sharers of our theological inquiries
+still wait to see the end of the Lord and to take their part in the
+d�nouement of the time-drama, in the revelation of the sons of God. Let
+us copy their long patience. God has not made us to mock us. "What thou
+knowest not now," said the great Revealer, the Master of all mysteries,
+to His disciple, "thou shalt know hereafter."
+
+These wise elder brothers of ours, rich in the lore of eternity, foresee
+the things to come as we cannot do. They are far above the smoke and
+dust of the earthly conflict. The doubts that shake the strongest souls
+amongst us, the cries of the hour which confuse and deceive us, do not
+trouble them. They behold us in our weakness, our fears and our
+divisions; but they also look on Him who "sits expecting till His
+enemies are made His footstool." They see how calmly He sits, how
+patiently expectant, while the sound of clashing arms and the rage and
+tumult of the peoples go up from the earth. They mark the steadiness
+with which through century after century, in spite of refluent waves,
+the tide of mercy rises, and still rises on the shores of earth.
+Thrones, systems, civilizations have gone down; one after another of the
+powers that strove to crush or to corrupt Christ's Church has
+disappeared; and still the name of Jesus lives and spreads. It has
+traversed every continent and sea; it stands at the head of the living
+and moving forces of the world. Those who come nearest to the angelic
+point of view, and judge of the progress of things not by the froth upon
+the surface but by the trend of the deeper currents, are the most
+confident for the future of our race. The kingdom of Satan will not fall
+without a struggle--a last struggle, perhaps more furious than any in
+the past--but it is doomed, and waning to its end. So far has the
+kingdom of Christ advanced, so mightily does the word of God grow and
+prevail in the earth, that faith may well assure itself of the promised
+triumph. Soon we shall shout: "Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent
+reigneth!"
+
+III. Suddenly, according to his wont, the apostle drops down from the
+heights of contemplation to the level of ordinary fact. He descends in
+verse 12 from the thought of the eternal purpose and the education of
+the angels to the struggling Church. The assurance of its life in the
+Spirit corresponds to the grandeur of that Divine order to which it
+belongs. "In whom," he says--in this Christ, the revealed mystery of
+ages past, the Teacher of angels and archangels--"we have our freedom
+and confident access to God through faith in Him."
+
+If it be "Jesus our Lord" to whom these attributes belong, and He is not
+ashamed of us, well may we draw near with _confidence_ to the Father,
+unashamed in the presence of His holy angels. We have no need to be
+abashed, if we approach the Divine Majesty with a true faith in Christ.
+His name gives the sinner access to the holiest place. The cherubim
+sheathe their swords of flame. The heavenly warders at this passport
+open the golden gates. We "come unto Mount Sion, the city of the living
+God, and to an innumerable company of angels." Not one of these
+mightinesses and ancient peers of heaven, not Gabriel or Michael
+himself, would wish or dare to bar our entrance.
+
+"We _have_ boldness and access," says the apostle, as in chapter i. 7:
+"We have redemption in His blood." He insists upon the conscious fact.
+This freedom of approach to God, this sonship of faith, is no hope or
+dream of what may be; it is a present reality, a filial cry heard in a
+multitude both of Gentile and Jewish hearts (comp. ii. 18).
+
+This sentence exhibits the richness of synonyms characteristic of the
+epistle. There is _boldness_ and _access_, _confidence_ as well as
+_faith_. The three former terms Bengel nicely distinguishes: "libertatem
+_oris_ in orando," and "admissionem in fiducia _in re_, et
+_corde_"--freedom of _speech_ (in prayer), of _status_, and of
+_feeling_. The second word (as in chapter ii. 18 and Romans v. 2)
+appears to be active rather than passive in its force, denoting
+_admittance_ rather than _access_. So that while the former of the
+parallel terms (_boldness_) describes the liberty with which the
+new-born Church of the redeemed address themselves to God the Father and
+the unchecked freedom of their petitions, the latter (_admittance_)
+takes us back to the act of Christ by which He introduced us to the
+Father's presence and gave us the place of sons in the house. Being thus
+admitted, we may come with confidence of heart, though we be less than
+the least of saints. Accepted in the Beloved, we are within our right if
+we say to the Father:--
+
+    "Yet in Thy Son divinely great,
+    We claim Thy providential care.
+    Boldly we stand before Thy seat;
+    Our Advocate hath placed us there!"
+
+"Wherefore," concludes the imprisoned apostle, "I beg you not to lose
+heart at my afflictions for you." Assuredly Paul did not pray that _he_
+should not lose heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew how
+his friends were fretting and wearying over his long captivity. Hence he
+writes to the Philippians: "I would have you know that the things which
+have happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the
+gospel." Hence, too, he assures the Colossians earnestly of his joy in
+suffering for their sake (ch. i. 24).
+
+The Church was fearful for Paul's life and distressed by his prolonged
+sufferings. It missed his cheering presence and the inspiration of his
+voice. But if the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this letter
+show, and grounded in His eternal purposes, then let all friends of
+Christ take courage. The ark freighted with such fortunes cannot sink.
+St Paul is a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom! Every
+stroke that falls upon him, every day added to the months of his
+imprisonment helps to show the worth of the cause he has espoused and
+gives to it increased lustre: "my afflictions for you, which are your
+glory."
+
+Those that love him should _boast_ rather than grieve over his
+afflictions. "We make our boast in you amongst the Churches of God," he
+wrote to the distressed Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), "for your patience
+and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions"; so he would have
+the Churches think of him. When good men suffer in a good cause, it is
+not matter for pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[93] See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.
+
+
+
+
+_PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    =To hyperechon t�s gn�se�s Christou I�sou tou Kyriou mou.=--PHIL.
+    iii. 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST._
+
+    "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every
+    family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you,
+    according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened
+    with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may
+    dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted
+    and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the
+    saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth."--EPH.
+    iii. 14-18.
+
+
+In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer
+at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts
+carried him away. The supplication is offered "for this cause" (vv. 1,
+14),--it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of
+all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of
+His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them
+to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His
+Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much
+he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to
+pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into
+this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose
+upon the writer's mind before his prayer could find expression. He has
+told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the
+interest it excites amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,--thoughts
+full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment
+and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to
+the "For this cause" repeated from verse 1.
+
+The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his
+epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God
+as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow
+the readers in a manner corresponding to _the wealth of His glory_--in
+other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal
+Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed
+Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the
+Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are
+one,--viz., _the inward strength of the Holy Spirit_ (ver. 16), and _the
+permanent indwelling of Christ_ (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his
+readers' behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings,
+which are also one,--viz., _the power to understand the Divine plan_
+(ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and so _to know the
+love of Christ_ (ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the
+distance a further end for man and the Church: _the reception of the
+entire fulness of God_. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit;
+they grasp at the infinite.
+
+In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle's prayer to the end
+of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches
+the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all
+believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of
+Christ in which they participate.
+
+Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul's invocation: "I bow my
+knees to the Father, of whom [not _the whole family_, but] _every
+family_ in heaven and upon earth is named." The point of St Paul's
+original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for
+_family_ (_patria_) is based on that for _father_ (_pater_). A
+distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and
+this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the
+title which ennobled the race. So we have "the sons of Israel," the
+"sons of Aaron" or "of Korah"; and in Greek history, the Atridae, the
+Alcmaeonidae, who form a family of many kindred households--a _clan_, or
+_gens_, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4)
+is described as "being of the house and family [_patria_] of David"; and
+Jesus is "the Son of David." Now Scripture speaks also of _sons of God_;
+and these of two chief orders. There are those "in heaven," who form a
+race distinct from ourselves in origin--divided, it may be, amongst
+themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in
+the heavenly places.
+
+Of these are "the sons of God" whom the Book of Job pictures appearing
+in the Divine court and forming a "family in heaven." When Christ
+promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will
+be "equal to the angels," because they are "sons of God," it is implied
+that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in
+Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as "the festal gathering
+and assembly of _the firstborn_ enrolled in heaven." We, the sons of
+Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder
+Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and
+permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the
+Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the "family on earth
+named" from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our
+wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike
+God's offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.
+
+This passage gives to God's Fatherhood the same extension that chapter
+i. 21 has given to Christ's Lordship. Every order of creaturely
+intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to
+Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God's name of Father the entire wealth
+of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured
+worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the
+blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His
+needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are
+barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to
+meet temptation. _Strength_ is their first necessity: "I bow my knees to
+the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according
+to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the
+Spirit into your inward man." The apostle asked them in verse 13, in
+view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his
+account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour
+into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in
+them. The _strengthening_ of which he speaks is the opposite of the
+_faintness of heart_, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13.
+Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians "Quit themselves
+like men, _be strong_" (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian
+believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger
+without quailing.
+
+The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be
+"strengthened _with_ [or _by_] _power_,"--by "the power" of God "working
+in us" (ver. 20), the very same "power, exceeding great," that raised
+Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God
+operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: "by power made
+strong," he says, "_through the Spirit_." Nothing is more familiar in
+Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the
+source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel
+Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. "Ye shall receive power," He
+said to His disciples, "after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you."
+Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good
+soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and
+indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for
+righteousness' sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a
+brave and enterprising man as a _man of spirit_. All high and commanding
+qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are
+inspirations. In the human will, with its _vis vivida_, its elasticity
+and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest
+type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is
+animated and filled with "the Spirit," the man so possessed is the
+embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and
+constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,--all the
+elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such
+power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under
+their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. "My grace
+is sufficient for thee," said Christ to His disabled servant; "for
+power is perfected in weakness." In privation and loneliness, in old age
+and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with
+its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral
+ascendency as at the time when he was "smitten down" and all but
+destroyed by persecution and affliction. "That the excellency of the
+power," he says, "may be of God, and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. iv.
+7-11).
+
+The apostle points to "the inner man" as the seat of this invigoration,
+thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the
+Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface
+waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a
+spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God.
+Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of
+the prisoner Paul--a mark for the world's scorn--there lives a strength
+of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Caesars, a power of
+the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent
+power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of
+his readers may partake.
+
+II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it,
+is the second: "that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in
+your hearts." Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17.
+Christ's residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result,
+nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward
+man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a
+varying light.
+
+We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which
+marks the doxology of chapter i., and other leading passages in this
+epistle.[94] The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the
+object of the apostle's devout supplication.
+
+As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and
+conveys the point of St Paul's entreaty; he asks that "the Christ may
+_take up His abode_,--may _settle_ in your hearts." The word signifies
+to _set up one's house_ or _make one's home_ in a place, by way of
+contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same
+verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ "_dwells_ all the
+fulness of the Godhead"; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in
+the same tense as here, how it was God's "pleasure that all the fulness
+should _make its dwelling_ in Him" now raised from the dead, who had
+emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father's love.
+So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never
+again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and
+disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His
+own. Let Him become the heart's fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him,
+if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there
+rest in His love. For He promised: "If any man love me, my Father will
+love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
+
+And "_the_ Christ," not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this?
+There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found
+elsewhere.[95] The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something
+beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true
+Christian,--more even than the permanence and certainty of this
+indwelling indicated by the verb. "The Christ" is Christ in the
+significance of His _name_. It is Christ not only possessed, but
+understood,--Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of
+His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the
+Christ of the Church and the ages--known and accepted for all this--that
+St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile
+disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension
+of the greatness of the Redeemer's person and offices; he longs to have
+their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.
+
+_The heart_, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional
+nature by itself. The antithesis of "heart and head," the divorce of
+feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture.
+The heart is our interior, conscious self--thought, feeling, will in
+their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the
+whole heart,--a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of
+the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.
+
+The difference in significance between "Christ" or "Christ Jesus" and
+"the Christ" in such a sentence as this, is not unlike the difference
+between "Queen Victoria" and "the Queen." The latter phrase brings Her
+Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour of her Queenship. We
+think of her vast dominion, of her line of royal and famous ancestry, of
+her beneficent and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to
+apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the breadth of His
+humanity, in the plenitude of His nature and His powers. And this is the
+object to which the teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches
+at the present time are directed. Understanding in this larger sense the
+indwelling of the Christ for which he prays, we see how naturally his
+supplication expands into the "height and depth" of the ensuing verse.
+
+But however large the mental conception of Christ that St Paul desires
+to impart to us, it is to be grasped "through faith." All real
+understanding and appropriation of Christ, the simplest and the most
+advanced, come by this channel,--through the faith of the heart in which
+knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one act of trustful
+apprehension of the truth concerning Jesus Christ by which the soul
+commits itself to Him.
+
+How much is contained in this petition of the apostle that we need to
+ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus dwells now as then in the hearts of all
+who love Him. But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how poor a
+Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul's experience! how slight
+and empty a word is His name to multitudes of those who bear it! If men
+have once attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of their
+interest in His atonement and their right to hope for eternal life
+through Him, their minds are at rest. They have accepted Christ and
+received what He has to give them; they turn their attention to other
+things. They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They have other
+mental interests,--scientific, literary, political or industrial; but
+the knowledge of Christ has no intellectual attraction for them. With St
+Paul's passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind to "know
+Him," these complacent believers have no sympathy whatever. This, they
+think, belongs only to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of
+religious genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as a
+subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentable and disastrous
+neglect, leave the study of Christian doctrine to the ministry. The
+Christ cannot take His due place in His people's heart, He will not
+reveal to them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little and
+care to know so little of Him. How many can be found, outside the ranks
+of the ordained, that make a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to
+meditate on Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man of affairs
+is there who will spare an hour each day from his other gains "for the
+excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord"?--"If at the
+present time the religious life of the Church is languid, and if in its
+enterprises there is little of audacity and vehemence, a partial
+explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in
+the contents of the Christian Faith which has characterized the last
+hundred or hundred and fifty years of our history."[96]
+
+It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the mind without limit.
+St Paul, who knew so much, for that reason felt that all he had attained
+was but in the bud and beginning. "The Christ" is a subject infinite as
+nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged apprehension of
+Him, the heart enlarges in capacity and moral power. Not unfrequently,
+the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men,
+to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an
+intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that
+trained scholars might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship
+with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction are sustained,
+that the apostle first asked from God on behalf of his anxious Gentile
+friends.
+
+III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul were concerned
+only for the individual needs of those to whom he writes and their
+personal advancement in the new life. But it is otherwise. _The Church_
+fills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our
+attention. This is God's holy temple and the habitation of His Spirit;
+it is the body in which Christ dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The
+Church is the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it the
+angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons of God's wisdom. Round
+this centre the apostle's intercession must needs revolve. When he asks
+for his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship with
+Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into
+the Church's life and to apprehend God's great designs for mankind.
+
+This object so much absorbs the writer's thoughts and has been so
+constantly in view from the outset, that it does not occur to him, in
+verse 18, to say precisely _what_ that is whose "breadth and length and
+height and depth" the readers are to measure. The vast building stands
+before us and needs not to be named; we have only not to look away from
+it, not to forget what we have been reading all this time. It is _God's
+plan for the world in Christ_; it is the purpose of the ages realized in
+the building of His Church. This conception was so impressive to the
+original readers and has held their attention so closely since the
+apostle unfolded it in the course of the second chapter, that they would
+have no difficulty in supplying the ellipsis which has given so much
+trouble to the commentators since.
+
+If we are asked to interpret the four several magnitudes that are
+assigned to this building of God, we may say with Hofmann[97]: "It
+stretches _wide_ over all the world of the nations, east and west. In
+its _length_, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. In
+_depth_, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death
+[comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven's _height_, where Christ lives."
+In the like strain Bernardine � Piconio, most genial and spiritual of
+Romanist interpreters: "_Wide_ as the furthest limits of the inhabited
+world, _long_ as the ages of eternity through which God's love to His
+people will endure, _deep_ as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He
+has raised us, _high_ as the throne of Christ in the heavens where He
+has placed us." Such is the commonwealth to which we belong, such the
+dimensions of this city of God built on the foundation of the
+apostles,--"that lieth four-square."
+
+Do we not need to be _strong_--to "gain full strength," as the apostle
+prays, in order to grasp in its substance and import this immense
+revelation and to handle it with practical effect? Narrowness is
+feebleness. The greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches the
+greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm spiritual faith, a
+far-seeing intelligence, and a charity broad as the love of Christ to
+comprehend this mystery. From many believing eyes it is still hidden.
+Alas for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements! alas for the
+materialism that infects our Church theories, and that limits God's free
+grace and the sovereign action of His Spirit to visible channels and
+ministrations "wrought by hand." Those who call themselves Churchmen
+and Catholics contradict the titles they boast when they bar out their
+loyal Christian brethren from the covenant rights of faith, when they
+deny churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ as warm and
+fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure and saving, a discipline at
+least as faithful as their own. Who are we that we dare to forbid those
+who are doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because they follow
+not with us? When we are fain to pull down every building of God that
+does not square with our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend
+"what is the breadth!"
+
+We draw close about us the walls of Christ's wide house, as if to
+confine Him in our single chamber. We call our particular communion "the
+Church," and the rest "the sects"; and disfranchise, so far as our word
+and judgement go, a multitude of Christ's freemen and God's elect, our
+fellow-citizens in the New Jerusalem--saints, some of them, whose feet
+we well might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church theory that
+leads to such results as these, that condemns Nonconformists to be
+strangers in the House of God, is self-condemned. It will perish of its
+own chillness and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the
+doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist or Presbyterian
+legitimacy, are in feeling and practice more catholic than in their
+creed.
+
+"With _all_ the saints" the Asian Christians are called to enter into St
+Paul's wider view of God's work in the world. For this is a collective
+idea, to be shared by many minds and that should sway all Christian
+hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity that St Paul
+wants his readers to understand, its mission to save humanity and to
+reconstruct the world for a temple of God. This is a calling for _all
+the saints_; but only for _saints_,--for men devoted to God and renewed
+by His Spirit. It was "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets"
+(ver. 5); and it needs men of the same quality for its bearers and
+interpreters.
+
+But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that
+stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an
+emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: "in love being fast
+rooted and grounded." Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love
+enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which
+our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. _Love_
+is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom
+Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike
+man, loves him and counts him a brother.
+
+When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their
+depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to
+master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the
+courage to adopt Christ's simple rule of fellowship: "Whosoever shall
+do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
+and mother."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[94] See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4-6.
+
+[95] See pp. 47, 83, 169.
+
+[96] _Lectures on Ephesians_, pp. 235-8. No one who has read Dr. R. W.
+Dale's noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject
+without being deeply in his debt.
+
+[97] _Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser_, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those
+writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often
+differ from him as agree with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+_KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE._
+
+    "[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong
+    to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
+    height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth
+    knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God."--EPH.
+    iii. 17-19.
+
+
+We were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostle's
+comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its
+connexion. Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of verse 18.
+The catholic love which embraces "all the saints" and "comprehends" in
+its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemer's kingdom, admits us to a
+deeper knowledge of Christ's own love. The breadth and length, the
+height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a
+worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. "In the
+Church" at once "and in Christ Jesus" God's glory is revealed. Our
+Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love.
+Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards
+Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the
+Divine grace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. St Paul prays that we may "_know_ [not _comprehend_] the love of
+Christ"; for it "passes knowledge." Amongst the Greek words denoting
+mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the
+acquisition rather than possession--_getting to know_. Hence it is
+rightly, and often used of things Divine that "we know in part," our
+knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to
+it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostle's wish disappears.
+We know the unknowable, just as we "clearly see the invisible things of
+God" (Rom. i. 20). The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our
+observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches
+apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived
+before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the
+Philippians the aged apostle writes: "I do not reckon myself to have
+apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly
+to the goal. I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for
+it,--that I may _win Christ_!"
+
+In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past
+finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in
+daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all
+the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand
+it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.
+
+Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part
+assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of
+time. The apostle's doctrine of the Church is not beyond the
+comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though
+we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the
+mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us.
+Our principles of judgement and standards of comparison fail us when
+applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed
+heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and
+tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the
+side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and
+dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers
+the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold
+it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our
+definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through
+history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most
+generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a
+wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. "Never
+man spake like this man," said one; but verily never man loved like
+Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His
+love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its
+features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels,
+and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the
+cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great
+sight--the love that passeth knowledge.
+
+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
+principalities,--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 ambassador 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 God_. 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 God," 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 God 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 God."
+
+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 God." When we
+have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of
+men is once more a family of God 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 participate. God'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 God's children. "Ye shall be holy, for I am
+holy" is God'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 God gathers up into one stream of white radiance
+the revelation of His character, "the fulness of God" 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 surpassing all,--these objects of
+the soul's desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in
+pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal
+Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end; Christ, when He has "put
+down all rule and authority," will at last "yield it up to His God and
+Father"; and "the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all
+things under Him, that God 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 God 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 God's purposes,
+it falls short of them. This assurance 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 God'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.
+God's giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there
+must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. 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 God'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
+debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about
+Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God!
+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 noble" amongst them, some of them before
+their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and
+godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But "with God," as Jesus
+said, "all things are possible." _Faex urbis, lux orbis_: "the scum of
+the city is made the light of the world!" The force at work upon the
+minds of these degraded pagans--slaves, thieves, prostitutes, 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 anticipate 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 surpassed
+the utmost that the Church asked or thought.
+
+St Paul's reliance is not upon the "ability" alone, upon the abstract
+omnipotence of God. 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 God 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. God
+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 God. 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 God "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 God 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 God'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 God." 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 God a dimmed and partial glory. "With one accord, with one
+mouth" we are called to "glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." Wherefore the apostle bids us "receive one another, as Christ
+also received us, to the glory of God" (Rom. xv. 6, 7).
+
+The Church, being the creation of God'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 God'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 multitude,
+and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders,
+saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!" Each
+soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up
+the multitudinous harmony of the Church's praise to God.
+
+Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto
+God. The display of God'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 God 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 God. "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 God 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 God.
+
+The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is
+expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the
+passage 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 God'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 God's praise may
+resound in the Church "unto _all generations_," he no longer supposes
+that the mystery of God 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 God, 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: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought,
+Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God 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 God, 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 circumstance 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 God 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 God 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 God" (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?"
+
+(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes _ambition_:
+"Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness," he continues. Between
+the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man
+_of lowly mind_ habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his
+unworthiness as a sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a
+wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his temper and
+motives.--The _meek_ man thinks as little of his personal claims, as the
+humble man of his personal merits. He is willing to give place to others
+where higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest room
+and to be in men's eyes of no account. How many seeds of strife and
+roots of bitterness would be destroyed, if this mind were in us all.
+Self-importance, the love of office and power and the craving for
+applause must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the unity of
+the Spirit in the bond of peace.
+
+(3) When St Paul adds "with longsuffering, forbearing one another in
+love," he is opposing a cause of division quite different from the
+last,--to wit, _impatience and resentfulness_. A high Christian ideal
+and a strict self-judgement will render us more sensitive to wrong-doing
+in the world around us. Unless tempered with abundant charity, they may
+lead to harsh and one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to
+condemn, are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness. Humbleness and
+meekness are choice graces of the Spirit. But they are self-regarding
+virtues at the best, and may be found in a cold nature that has little
+of the patience which bears with men's infirmities, of the sympathetic
+insight that discovers the good often lying close to their faults.
+"Above all things"--above kindness, meekness, longsuffering,
+forgivingness--"put on love, which is the bond of perfectness" (Col.
+iii. 14). Love is the last word of St Paul's definition of the Christian
+temper in verse 2; it is the sum and essence of all that makes for
+Christian unity. In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter
+provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse,--offences that
+must needs arise in the purest society composed of infirm and sinful
+men. "Bind thyself to thy brother. Those who are bound together in love,
+bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. Both are
+in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend"
+(Chrysostom).
+
+Verses 1-3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of the Church is to be
+maintained. Verses 4-6 set forth the basis upon which it rests. This
+passage is a brief summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the
+"foundation of the apostles and prophets" asserted in chapter ii.
+20,--the groundwork of "every building" in God's holy temple, the
+foundation upon which Paul's Gentile readers, along with the Jewish
+saints, were growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven elements of
+unity St Paul enumerates: one _body_, _Spirit_, _hope_; one _Lord_,
+_faith_ and _baptism_; one _God and Father of all_. They form a chain
+stretching from the Church on earth to the throne and being of the
+universal Father in heaven.
+
+Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves
+into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity--the Spirit, the
+Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by
+two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed
+alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures--by His
+sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: "Who is over
+all, and through all, and in all" (comp. i. 23).
+
+The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to
+some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Paul's later epistles
+betray the same character;[98] and we know from chapter v. 19 and
+Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody.
+This epistle shows that St Paul was touched with the poetic as well as
+the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no
+reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have
+taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith
+in "hymns and spiritual songs." These lines, we could fancy, belonged to
+some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical
+creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.
+
+I. _One body_ there is, _and one Spirit_.
+
+The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single
+body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from
+their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now
+existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and
+the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much
+less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those "who
+profess and call themselves Christians" throughout the world. As against
+the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and
+Mohammedan rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics
+and all deniers of the Lord, we are "one body," and should feel and act
+as one.
+
+In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible
+evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realize their unity;
+they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the
+Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold
+in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force,
+the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our
+contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and
+present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in
+Christ--their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and
+discipline--is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and
+systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is
+there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It
+is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive
+creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different
+Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian
+literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and
+general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the
+increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to
+the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men,
+the more we realize the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and
+innumerable sects of Christendom.
+
+There is "one body and one Spirit": one body because, and so far as
+there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical
+frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What
+I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more
+than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body's
+shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward
+presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that
+clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the
+raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it,
+however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however
+diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life
+that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with
+one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand
+delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one
+body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit
+depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ,
+and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the
+Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and
+the furniture that are about it? "If any man have not the Spirit of
+Christ, he is none of His."
+
+He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The
+Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of
+God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and
+sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct
+of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to
+the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in
+God's dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which
+it received spiritual life and that travailed for its birth claim it by
+a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced
+without loss and peril.
+
+Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing, formative principle,
+it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit
+of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I
+prefer to walk with God.--God will not walk with men who do not care to
+walk with His people. He "loved the world"; and we must love it, or we
+displease Him. "This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God
+love his brother also."
+
+The oneness of communion amongst the people of Christ is governed by a
+unity of aim: "Even as also you were called in _one hope_ of your
+calling." Our fellowship has an object to realize, our calling a prize
+to win. All Christian organization is directed to a practical end. The
+old Pagan world fell to pieces because it was "without hope"; its
+golden age was in the past. No society can endure that lives upon its
+memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its privileges.
+Nothing holds men together like work and hope. This gives energy,
+purpose, progress to the fellowship of Christian believers. In this
+imperfect and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race still in
+bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for any purpose that does
+not bear on human improvement and salvation. The Church of Christ is a
+society for the abolition of sin and death. That this will be
+accomplished, that God's will shall be done on earth as in heaven, is
+_the hope of our calling_. To this hope we "were called" by the first
+summons of the gospel. "Repent," it cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is
+at hand!"
+
+For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity holds out a
+splendid crown of life. It promises our complete restoration to the
+image of God, the redemption of the body with the spirit from death, and
+our entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven. This
+hope, shared by us in common and affecting all the interests and
+relationships of daily life, is the ground of our communion. The
+Christian hope supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature in
+her most exalted forms,
+
+    "The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse,
+    The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul
+    Of all their moral being."
+
+Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master and servants, happy the
+circle of friends who live and work together as "joint-heirs of the
+grace of life." Well says Calvin here: "If this thought were fixed in
+our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of God may no more
+quarrel than the kingdom of heaven can be divided, how much more careful
+we should be in cultivating brotherly goodwill! What a dread we should
+have of dissensions, if we considered, as we ought to do, that those who
+separate from their brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God."
+
+But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind,--nay, for the entire
+universe. We labour for the regeneration of humanity. "We look for a new
+heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;" for the actual
+gathering into one in Christ of all things in all worlds, as they are
+already gathered in God's eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal
+salvation that we had to seek, Christian communion might appear to be an
+optional thing, and the Church no more than a society for mutual
+spiritual benefit. But seen in this larger light, Church membership is
+of the essence of our calling. As children of the household of faith, we
+are heirs to its duties with its possessions. We cannot escape the
+obligations of our spiritual any more than of our natural birth. One
+Spirit dwelling in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all
+our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the fellowship of Christ?
+This hope of our calling it is our calling to breathe into the dead
+world. Its virtue alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age.
+From the fountain of God's love in Christ springing up in the heart of
+the Church, there shall pour forth
+
+    "One common wave of thought and joy,
+    Lifting mankind again!"
+
+II. The first group of unities leads us to the second. If one Spirit
+dwells within us, it is _one Lord_ who reigns over us. We have one hope
+to work for; it is because we have _one faith_ to live by. A common
+fellowship implies a common creed.
+
+Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth in this list of
+unities, between hope and faith, between the Spirit and the Father. He
+is the centre of centres, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the
+Christ in the midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity
+with God and with our fellow-men. We find in Him the fulcrum of the
+forces that are raising the world, the corner-stone of the temple of
+humanity.
+
+But let us mark that it is the one _Lord_ in whom we find our unity. To
+think of Him as Saviour only is to treat Him as a means to an end. It is
+to make ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret of much of
+the isolation and sectarianism of modern Churches. Individualism is the
+negation of Church life. Men value Christ for what they can get from Him
+for themselves. They do not follow Him and yield themselves up to Him,
+for the sake of what He is. "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and
+I will give you rest": they listen willingly so far. But when He goes on
+to say "Take my yoke upon you," their ears are deaf. There is a subtle
+self-seeking and self-pleasing even in the way of salvation.
+
+From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection for the Church,
+the indifference to all Christian interests beyond the personal and
+local, which is worse than strife; for it is death to the body of
+Christ. The name of the "one Lord" silences party clamours and rebukes
+the voices that cry, "I am of Apollos, I of Cephas." It recalls
+loiterers and stragglers to the ranks. It bids each of us, in his own
+station of life and his own place in the Church, serve the common cause
+without sloth and without ambition.
+
+Christ's Lordship over us for life and death is signified by our
+_baptism_ in His name. We have received, most of us in infancy through
+our parents' reverent care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ.
+The baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from His apostles,
+has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this be in vain? Or do you now, by
+the faith of your heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith of
+your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf? If so, your faith
+saves you. Your obedience is at once accepted by the Lord to whom it is
+tendered; and the sign of God's redemption of the race which greeted you
+at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance and
+worth. It is the seal upon your brow, now stamped upon your heart, of
+your eternal covenant with Christ.
+
+But it is the seal of a _corporate_ life in Him. Christian baptism is no
+private transaction; it attests no mere secret vow passing between the
+soul and its Saviour. "For in one Spirit we were all baptized _into one
+body_, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made
+to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 13). Our baptism is the sign of a
+common faith and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His Church.
+
+_One_ baptism there has been through all the ages since the ascending
+Lord said to His disciples: "Go, make disciples of all the nations,
+baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
+Holy Spirit." The ordinance has been administered in different ways and
+under varying regulations; but with few exceptions, it has been observed
+from the beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment of the
+word of Christ, and in acknowledgement of His dominion. Those who
+insist on the sole validity of this or that mode or channel of
+administration, recognize at least the intention of Churches baptizing
+otherwise than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing His
+name; and so far admit that there is in truth "one baptism." Wherever
+Christ's sacraments are observed with a true faith, they serve as
+visible tokens of His rule.
+
+In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for men, and for all
+creatures. Our fellowship in the faith of Christ is deep as the nature
+of God; its blessedness rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal
+as His power.
+
+III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains. Add to our
+fellowship in the one Spirit and confession of the one Lord, our
+adoption by the _one God and Father of all_.
+
+To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was a new and
+marvellous thought. "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians," they had been
+used to shout; or haply, "Great is Aphrodit� of the Pergamenes," or
+"Bacchus of the Philadelphians." Great they knew was "Jupiter Best and
+Greatest" of conquering Rome; and great the _numen_ of the Caesar, to
+which everywhere in this rich and servile province shrines were rising.
+Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering hill had its
+local _genius_ or _daimon_, requiring worship and sacrificial honours.
+Every office and occupation, every function in life--navigation,
+midwifery, even thieving--was under the patronage of its special deity.
+These petty godships by their number and rivalries distracted the pious
+heathen with continual fear lest one or other of them might not have
+received due observance.
+
+With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception of "the one God
+and Father" rose above this vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley
+deities--some gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed
+beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness--which filled
+the imagination of the Graeco-Asiatic pagans. What rest there was for the
+mind, what peace and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities
+to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as tribute-payers, and needing
+to be served by human hands. He is the Father of men, pitying us as His
+children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our God is no local
+divinity, to be honoured here but not there, tied to His temple and
+images and priestly mediators; but the "one God and Father of all, who
+is above all, and through all, and in all." This was the very God whom
+the logic of Greek thought and the practical instincts of Roman law and
+empire blindly sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to the
+people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst the nations to bear His
+light. At last He declared His full name and purpose to the world in
+Jesus Christ. So the gods many and lords many have had their day. By His
+manifestation the idols are utterly abolished. The proclamation of one
+God and Father signifies the gathering of men into one family of God.
+The one religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.
+
+God is _over all_, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of
+His beneficent dominion. He is _through all_, and _in all_: an
+Omnipresence of love, righteousness and wisdom, actuating the powers of
+nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You
+need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His
+temple.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[98] See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii.
+11-13.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+_THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST._
+
+    "But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+    measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith: 'When He ascended
+    on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.' Now
+    this, 'He ascended,' what is it but that He also descended into the
+    lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that
+    ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
+    And He gave some _to be_ apostles; and some, prophets; and some
+    evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of
+    the saints for work of ministration, for the building up of the body
+    of Christ."--EPH. iv. 7-12.
+
+
+In verse 7 the apostle passes from the unities of the Church to its
+diversities, from the common foundation of the Christian life to the
+variety presented in its superstructure. "To each single one of us was
+the grace given." The great gift of God in Christ is manifold in its
+distribution. Its manifestations are as various and fresh as the
+idiosyncrasies of human personality. There is no capacity of our nature,
+no element of human society which the gospel of Christ cannot sanctify
+and turn to good account.
+
+All this the apostle keeps in view and allows for in his doctrine of the
+Church. He does not merge man in humanity, nor sacrifice the individual
+to the community. He claims for each believer direct fellowship with
+Christ and access to God. The earnestness with which in his earlier
+epistles St Paul insisted on the responsibilities of conscience and on
+the personal experience of salvation, leads him now to press the claims
+of the Church with equal vigour. He understands well that the person has
+no existence apart from the community, that our moral nature is
+essentially social and the religious life essentially fraternal. Its
+vital element is "the _communion_ of the Holy Spirit." Hence, to gather
+the real drift of this passage we must combine the first words of verse
+7 with the last of verse 12: "To each single one of us was the grace
+given--in order to build up the body of Christ." God's grace is not
+bestowed upon us to diffuse and lose itself in our separate
+individualities; but that it may minister to one life and work towards
+one end and build up one great body in us all. The diversity subserves a
+higher unity. Through ten thousand channels, in ten thousand varied
+forms of personal influence and action, the stream of the grace of God
+flows on to the accomplishment of the eternal purpose.
+
+Like a wise master in his household and sovereign in his kingdom, the
+Lord of the Church distributes His manifold gifts. His bestowments and
+appointments are made with an eye to the furtherance of the state and
+house that He has in charge. As God dispenses His wisdom, so Christ His
+gifts "according to plan" (iii. 11). The purpose of the ages, God's
+great plan for mankind, determines "the measure of the gift of Christ."
+Now, it is to illustrate this _measure_, to set forth the style and
+scale of Christ's bestowments within His Church, that the apostle brings
+in evidence the words of Psalm lxviii. 18. He interprets this ancient
+verse as he cites it, and weaves it into the texture of his argument.
+In the original it reads thus:
+
+    "Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led Thy captivity captive,
+    Thou hast received gifts among men,--
+    Yea, among the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell with
+        them." (R.V.)
+
+Let us go back for a moment to the occasion of the old Hebrew song.
+Psalm lxviii, is, as Ewald says, "the greatest, most splendid and
+artistic of the temple-songs of Restored Jerusalem." It celebrates
+Jehovah's entry into Zion. This culminating verse records, as the
+crowning event of Israel's history, the capture of Zion from the rebel
+Jebusites and the Lord's ascension in the person of His chosen to take
+His seat upon this holy hill. The previous verses, in which fragments of
+earlier songs are embedded, describe the course of the Divine Leader of
+Israel through former ages. In the beat and rhythm of the Hebrew lines
+one hears the footfall of the Conqueror's march, as He "arises and His
+enemies are scattered" and "kings of armies flee apace," while nature
+trembles at His step and bends her wild powers to serve His
+congregation. The sojourn in the wilderness, the scenes of Sinai, the
+occupancy of Canaan, the wars of the Judges were so many stages in the
+progress of Jehovah, which had Zion always for its goal. To Zion, the
+new and more glorious sanctuary, Sinai must now give place. Bashan and
+all mountains towering in their pride in vain "look askance at the hill
+which God has desired for His abode," where "Jehovah will dwell for
+ever." So the day of the Lord's desire has come! From the Kidron valley
+David leads Jehovah's triumph up the steep slopes of Mount Zion. A train
+of captives defiles before the Lord's anointed, who sits down on the
+throne that God gives him and receives in His name the submission of the
+heathen. The vanquished chiefs cast their spoil at his feet; it is laid
+up in treasure to build the future temple; while, upon this happy day of
+peace, "the rebellious also" share in Jehovah's grace and become His
+subjects.
+
+In this conquest David "gave to men" rather than "received"--gave even
+to his stubborn enemies (witness his subsequent transaction with Araunah
+the Jebusite for the site of the temple); for that which he took from
+them served to build amongst them God's habitation: "that," as the
+Psalmist sings, "the Lord God might dwell with them." St Paul's
+adaptation of the verse is both bold and true. If he departs from the
+letter, he unfolds the spirit of the prophetic words. That David's
+_giving_ signified a higher _receiving_, Jewish interpreters themselves
+seem to have felt, for this paraphrase was current also amongst them.
+
+The author of this Hebrew song has in no way exaggerated the importance
+of David's victory. The summits of the elect nation's history shine with
+a supernatural and prophetic light. The spirit of the Christ in the
+unknown singer "testified beforehand of the glory that should follow"
+His warfare and sufferings. From this victorious height, so hardly won,
+the Psalmist's verse flashes the light of promise across the space of a
+thousand years; and St. Paul has caught the light, and sends it on to us
+shining with a new and more spiritual brightness. David's "going up on
+high" was, to the apostle's mind, a picture of the ascent of Christ, his
+Son and Lord. David rose from deep humiliation to a high dominion; his
+exaltation brought blessing and enrichment to his people; and the spoil
+that he won with it went to build God's house amongst rebellious men.
+All this was true in parable of the dispensation of grace to mankind
+through Jesus Christ; and His ascension disclosed the deeper import of
+the words of the ancient Scripture. "Wherefore God saith" (and St Paul
+takes the liberty of putting in his own words _what_ He
+saith)--"wherefore He saith: He ascended on high; He led captivity
+captive; He gave gifts to men."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three short clauses of the citation supply, in effect, a threefold
+measure of the gifts of Christ to His Church. They are gifts _of the
+ascended Saviour_. They are gifts bestowed _from the fruit of His
+victory_. And they are gifts _to men_. Measure them, first, by the
+height to which He has risen--from what a depth! Measure them, again, by
+the spoils He has already won. Measure them, once more, by the wants of
+mankind, by the need He has undertaken to supply.--As He is, so He
+gives; as He has, so He gives; as He has given, so He will give till we
+are filled unto all the fulness of God.
+
+I. Think first, then, of Him. Think of what, and _where_ He is! Consider
+"what is the height" of His exaltation; and then say, if you can, "what
+is the breadth" of His munificence.
+
+We know well how He gave as a poor and suffering man upon earth--gave,
+with what affluence, pity and delight, bread to the hungry thousands,
+wine to the wedding-feast, health to the sick, sight to the blind,
+pardon to the sinful, sometimes life to the dead! Has His elevation
+altered Him? Too often it is so with vain and weak men like ourselves.
+Their wealth increases, but their hearts contract. The more they have to
+give, the less they love to give. They go up on high as men count it,
+and climb to places of power and eminence; and they forget the friends
+of youth and the ranks from which they sprang--low-minded men. Not so
+with our exalted Friend. "It is not one that went down, and another that
+went up," says Theodoret. "He that descended, _it is He_ also that
+ascended up far above all the heavens!" (ver. 10). Jesus of Nazareth is
+on the throne of God,--"the same yesterday and to-day!" But now the
+resources of the universe are at His disposal. Out of that treasure He
+can choose the best gifts for you and me.
+
+Mere authority, even Omnipotence, could not suffice to save and bless
+moral beings like ourselves; nor even the best will joined to
+Omnipotence. Christ gained by His humiliation, in some sense, a new
+fulness added to the fulness of the Godhead. This gain of His sufferings
+is implied in what the apostle writes in Colossians i. 19 concerning the
+risen and exalted Redeemer: "It was well-pleasing that _all_ the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him." His plenitude is that of the Ascended
+One _who had descended_. "If He ascended, what does it mean but that He
+also descended into the under regions of the earth?" (ver. 9). If He
+went up, why then He had been down!--down to the Virgin's womb and the
+manger cradle, wrapping His Godhead within the frame and the brain of a
+little child; down to the home and the bench of the village carpenter;
+down to the contradiction of sinners and the level of their scorn; down
+to the death of the cross,--to the nether abyss, to that dim populous
+underworld into which we look shuddering over the grave's edge! And from
+that lower gulf He mounted up again to the solid earth and the light of
+day and the world of breathing men; and up, and up again, through the
+rent clouds and the ranks of shouting angels, and under the lifted heads
+of the everlasting doors, until He took His seat at the right hand of
+the Majesty in the heavens.
+
+Think of the regions He has traversed, the range of being through which
+the Lord Jesus passed in descending and ascending, "that He might fill
+all things." Heaven, earth, hades--hades, earth, heaven again are His;
+not in mere sovereignty of power, but in experience and communion of
+life. Each He has annexed to His dominion by inhabitation and the right
+of self-devoting love, as from sphere to sphere He "travelled in the
+greatness of His power, mighty to save." He is Lord of angels; but still
+more of men,--Lord of the living, and of the dead. To them that sleep in
+the dust He has proclaimed His accomplished sacrifice and the right of
+universal judgement given Him by the Father.
+
+Nor did Abraham alone and Moses and Elijah have the joy of "seeing His
+day," but all the holy men of old, who had embraced its promise and
+"died in faith," who looked forward through their imperfect sacrifices
+"which could never quite take away sins" to the better thing which God
+provided for us, and for their perfection along with us.[99] On the two
+side-posts of the gate of death our great High Priest sprinkled His
+atoning blood. He turned the abode of corruption into a sweet and quiet
+sleeping chamber for His saints. Then at His touch those cruel doors
+swung back upon their hinges, and He issued forth the Prince of life,
+with the keys of death and hades hanging from His girdle. From the
+depths of the grave to the heaven of heavens His Mastership extends.
+With the perfume of His presence and the rich incense of His sacrifice
+Jesus Christ has "filled all things." The universe is made for us one
+realm of redeeming grace, the kingdom of the Son of God's love.
+
+    "So there crowns Him the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown;
+    And His love fills infinitude wholly, nor leaves up nor down
+    One spot for the creature to stand in!"[100]
+
+So "Christ is all things, and in all." And we are nothing; but we have
+everything in Him.
+
+How, pray, will He give who has thus given Himself,--who has thus
+endured and achieved on our behalf? Let our hearts consider; let our
+faith and our need be bold to ask. One promise from His lips is enough:
+"If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it."
+
+II. A second estimate of the gifts to be looked for from Christ, we
+derive from _His conquests already won_. David as he entered Zion's
+gates "led captivity captive,"--led, that is in Hebrew phrase, a great,
+a notable captivity. Out of the gifts thus received he enriched his
+people. The resources that victory placed at his disposal, furnished the
+store from which to build God's house. In like fashion Christ builds His
+Church, and blesses the human race. With the spoils of His battle He
+adorns His bride. The prey taken from the mighty becomes the strength
+and beauty of His sanctuary. The prisoners of His love He makes the
+servants of mankind.
+
+This "captivity" implies a warfare, even as the ascent of Christ a
+previous descending. The Son of God came not into His earthly kingdom as
+kings are said to have come sometimes disguised amongst their subjects,
+that they might learn better of their state and hear their true mind;
+nor as the Greeks fabled of their gods, who wandered unknown on earth
+seeking adventure and wearied haply of the cloying felicities of heaven,
+suffering contempt and doing to men hard service. He came, the Good
+Shepherd, to seek lost sheep. He came, the Mighty One of God, to destroy
+the works of the devil, to drive out "the strong one armed" who held the
+fortress of man's soul. He had a war to wage with the usurping prince of
+the world. In the temptations of the wilderness, in the strife with
+disease and demoniac powers, in the debate with Scribes and Pharisees,
+in the anguish of Gethsemane and Calvary that conflict was fought out;
+and by death He abolished him who holds the power of death, by His blood
+He "bought us for God." But with the spoils of victory, He bears the
+scars of battle,--tokens glorious for Him, humbling indeed to us, which
+will tell for ever how they pierced His hands and feet!
+
+For Him pain and conflict are gone by. It remains to gather in the spoil
+of His victory of love, the harvest sown in His tears and His blood. And
+what are the trophies of the Captain of our salvation? what the fruit of
+His dread passion? For one, there was the dying thief, whom with His
+nailed hands the Lord Jesus snatched from a felon's doom and bore from
+Calvary to Paradise. There was Mary the Magdalene, out of whom He had
+cast seven demons, the first to greet Him risen. There were the three
+thousand whom on one day, in the might of His Spirit, the ascended Lord
+and Christ took captive in rebel Jerusalem, "lifted from the earth" that
+He might draw all men unto Him. And there was the writer of this letter,
+once His blasphemer and persecutor. By a look, by a word, Jesus
+arrested Saul at the height of his murderous enmity, and changed him
+from a Pharisee into an apostle to the Gentiles, from the destroyer into
+the wise master-builder of His Church.
+
+St Paul's own case suggested, surely, the application he makes of this
+ancient text of the Psalter and lighted up its Messianic import. In the
+glory of His triumph Jesus Christ had appeared to make him captive, and
+put him at once to service. From that hour Paul was led along
+enthralled, the willing bond-slave of the Lord Jesus and celebrant of
+His victory. "Thanks be unto God," he cries, "who ever triumphs over us
+in the Christ, and makes manifest through us the savour of His knowledge
+in every place."[101]
+
+Such, and of such sort are the prisoners of the war of Jesus; such the
+gifts that through sinners pardoned and subdued He bestows upon
+mankind,--"patterns to those who should hereafter believe." Time would
+fail to follow the train of the captives of the love of Christ, which
+stretches unbroken and ever multiplying through the centuries to this
+day. We, too, in our turn have laid our rebel selves at His feet; and
+all that we surrender to Him, by right of conquest He gives over to the
+service of mankind.
+
+    "His love the conquest more than wins;
+      To all I shall proclaim:
+    Jesus the King, the Conqueror reigns;
+      Bow down to Jesu's name!"
+
+He gives out of the spoil of His war with evil,--gives what He receives.
+Yet He gives not _as_ He receives. Everything laid in His hands is
+changed by their touch. Publicans and Pharisees become apostles.
+Magdalenes are made queens and mothers in His Israel. From the dregs of
+our streets He raises up a host of sons to Abraham. From the ranks of
+scepticism and anti-Christian hate the Lord Christ wins new champions
+and captains for His cause. He coins earth's basest metal into heaven's
+fine gold. He takes weak things of the earth and foolish, to strike the
+mightiest blows of battle.
+
+What may we not expect from Him who has led captive such a captivity!
+What surprises of blessing and miracles of grace there are awaiting us,
+that shall fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with
+singing--gifts and succours coming to the Church from unlooked-for
+quarters and reinforcements from the ranks of the enemy. And what
+discomfitures and captivities are preparing for the haters of the
+Lord,--if, at least, the future is to be as the past; and if we may
+judge from the apostle's word, and from his example, of the measure of
+the gift of Christ.
+
+III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the last word of verse
+8, and is drawn out in verses 11 and 12. "He gave gifts _to men_--He
+gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and
+teachers, with a view to the full equipment of the saints for work of
+ministration, for building up of the body of Christ." Yes, and some
+martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and Christian statesmen,
+some poets, some deep thinkers and theologians, some leaders of
+philanthropy and helpers of the poor; all given for the same end--to
+minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with the means for
+carrying on its mission, and to enable every saint to contribute his
+part to the commonwealth of Christ according to the measure of Christ's
+gift to each.
+
+Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes,
+seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the
+second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The
+"work of ministering" and the "building up of the body of Christ" are
+not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling.
+Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see
+that the laity do their duty, of "the ministry" to make each saint a
+minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership
+of Christ's body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the
+Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times.
+Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best
+suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances.
+It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in
+58, and at Ephesus in 66 A.D. That is the best Church system, under any
+given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the
+spiritual energy of the body of Christ.
+
+The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds
+closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not
+profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The "deacons" are wanting;
+although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed
+in Pauline Churches. _Pastors_ (shepherds)--a title only employed here
+by the apostle--is a fitting synonym for the "bishops" (_i.e._,
+overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and
+largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were
+spiritual and disciplinary as well as administrative. Addressing the
+Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them
+"shepherd the Church of God."
+
+In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon
+his "fellow-elders," that they should "shepherd the flock of God, making
+themselves examples" to it; Christ Himself he has previously called
+"Shepherd and Bishop of souls" (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is
+derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true
+and false shepherd of God's flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,--words
+familiar and dear to His disciples.
+
+The office of _teaching_, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined with that
+of shepherding. From that passage we infer that the freedom of teaching
+so conspicuous in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was still
+recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made identical, nor inseparable
+functions, any more than in Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently
+associated, and hence are coupled together here.--Of apostolic
+_evangelists_ we have examples in Timothy and the second Philip;[102]
+men outside the rank of the apostles, but who, like them, preached the
+gospel from place to place. The name apostles (equivalent to our
+_missionaries_) served, in its wider sense, to include ministers of this
+class along with those directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus.[103]
+
+The _prophets_,[104] like the apostles and evangelists, belonged to the
+Church at large, rather than to one locality. But their gift of
+inspiration did not carry with it the claim to rule in the Church. This
+was the function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops,
+or elders, locally appointed.
+
+The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) linked Church
+to Church and served the entire body; the last two (pastors and
+teachers) had charge of local and congregational affairs. The apostles
+(the Twelve and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the
+Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the foundation was laid
+and the deposit of revealed truth was complete. The evangelistic and
+pastoral callings remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety of
+Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists, with apostles or
+missionaries, bring new souls to Christ and carry His message into new
+lands. Pastors and teachers follow in their train, tending the
+ingathered sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they shepherd
+and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.
+
+Marvellous were Christ's "gifts for men" bestowed in the apostolic
+ministry. What a gift to the Christian community, for example, was Paul
+himself! In his natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in his
+training and early experience, in the supernatural mode of his
+conversion, everything wrought together to give to men in the apostle
+Paul a man supremely fitted to be Christ's ambassador to the Pagan
+world, and for all ages the "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and
+truth." "A _chosen vessel_ unto me," said the Lord Jesus, "to bear my
+name."
+
+Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man of the most powerful
+intellect and will, master of the thought and life of his time. Long an
+alien from the household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle,
+and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the awful crisis of the
+fifth century, when the Roman empire was breaking up and the very
+foundations of life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this
+heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to re-establish
+faith in the Divine order of the world.
+
+Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the captive of justifying
+grace, won from the monastery and the bondage of Rome to set Germany and
+Europe free. What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to
+whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of the Reformation; and
+he blew a blast that waked the sleeping peoples of the North, and made
+the walls of Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift to
+Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul breathed the spirit of
+religion into the life of a nation, and gave it a body and organic form
+in which to dwell and work for centuries.
+
+Such a gift to England was John Wesley. Can we conceive a richer boon
+conferred by the Head of the Church upon the English race than the
+raising up of this great evangelist and pastor and teacher, at such a
+time as that of his appearance? Standing at the distance of a hundred
+years, we are able to measure in some degree the magnitude of this
+bestowment. In none of the leaders and commanders whom Christ has given
+to His people was there more signally manifest that combination of
+faculties, that concurrence of providences and adjustment to
+circumstances, and that transforming and attempering influence of grace
+in all--the "effectual working in the measure of each single part" of
+the man and his history, which marks those special gifts that Christ is
+wont to bestow upon His people in seasons of special emergency and
+need.
+
+We are passing into a new age, such as none of these great men dreamed
+of, an age as exigent and perilous as any that have gone before it. The
+ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement of the
+masses, the universal spread of education, the emancipation of critical
+thought, the gigantic growth of the press, the enormous increase and
+aggregation of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the
+world-wide facilities of intercourse,--these and other causes more
+subtle are rapidly transforming human society. Old barriers have
+disappeared; while new difficulties are being created, of a magnitude to
+overtask the faith of the strongest. The Church is confronted with
+problems larger far in their dimensions than those our fathers knew.
+Demands are being made on her resources such as she has never had to
+meet before. Shall we be equal to the needs of the coming times?--Nay,
+that is not the question; but will _He_?
+
+There is nothing new or surprising to the Lord Jesus in the progress of
+our times and the developments of modern thought, nothing for which He
+is not perfectly prepared. He has taken their measure long ere this, and
+holds them within His grasp. The government is upon His shoulders--"the
+weight of all this unintelligible world"--and He can bear it well. He
+has gifts in store for the twentieth century, when it arrives, as
+adequate as those He bestowed upon the first or fifth, upon the
+sixteenth or the eighteenth of our era. There are Augustines and Wesleys
+yet to come. Hidden in the Almighty's quiver are shafts as polished and
+as keen as any He has used, which He will launch forth in the war of the
+ages at the appointed hour. The need, the peril, the greatness of the
+time will be the measure of the gift of Christ.
+
+There is a danger, however, in waiting for great leaders and in looking
+for signal displays of Christ's power amongst men. His "kingdom comes
+not with observation," so that men should say, Lo here! or Lo there! It
+steals upon us unforeseen; it is amongst us before we know. "We looked,"
+says Rutherford, "that He should take the higher way along the
+mountains; and lo, He came by the lower way of the valleys!" While men
+listen to the earthquake and the wind rending the mountains, a still,
+small voice speaks the message of God to prepared hearts. Rarely can we
+measure at the first the worth of Christ's best gifts. When the fruit
+appears, after long patience, the world will haply discover when and how
+the seed was sown. But not always then.
+
+    "The sower, passing onward, was not known;
+    And all men reaped the harvest as their own."
+
+Those who are most ready to appraise their fellows are constantly at
+fault. Our last may prove Christ's first; our first His last! "Each of
+us shall give account of himself to God": each must answer for his own
+stewardship, and the grace that was given to each. "Let us not therefore
+judge one another any more." But let every man see to it that his part
+in the building of God's temple is well and faithfully done. Soon the
+fire will try every man's work, of what sort it is.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[99] Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10-14 with xi. 13-16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24;
+also vi. 12.
+
+[100] The words of David in Browning's _Saul_, turned from the future
+tense into the present.
+
+[101] 2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.
+
+[102] 2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26-40, xxi. 8.
+
+[103] In Acts xiv. 4, 14, _Barnabas and Paul_ are "apostles"; 1 Thess.
+ii. 6, _Paul and Silas and Timothy_. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23,
+xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.
+
+[104] Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association of _prophets_ with
+_apostles_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+_THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    "Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full
+    knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure
+    of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more
+    children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
+    doctrine in the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of
+    error; but dealing truly, in love may grow up in all things into
+    Him, which is the head, _even_ Christ; from whom all the body fitly
+    framed and knit together, through that which every juncture
+    supplieth, according to the working in _due_ measure of each several
+    part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself
+    in love."--EPH. iv. 13-16.
+
+
+We must spend a few moments in unravelling this knotty paragraph and
+determining the relation of its involved clauses to each other, before
+we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove St Paul's hand in the
+letter. No writer of equal power was ever so little of a literary
+craftsman. His epistles read, as M. Renan says, like "a rapid
+conversation stenographed." Sometimes, as in several places in
+Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed clauses, hardly
+more continuous than shorthand notes; often, as in this epistle, they
+pour in a full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and phrase
+heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that bewilders us. In his spoken
+address the interpretation of tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the
+syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul's written composition.
+
+The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church were bestowed to
+promote its corporate efficiency and to further its general growth (vv.
+11, 12). Now, the purpose of these endowments sets a _limit_ to their
+use. "Christ gave apostles, prophets," and the rest--"_till we all
+arrive_ at our perfect manhood and reach the stature of His fulness."
+Such is the connexion of verse 13 with the foregoing context. The aim of
+the Christian ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men
+beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings, apostolates and pastorates,
+the missions of the evangelist and the schools of the teacher will one
+day cease; their work will be done, their end gained, when all believers
+are brought "to the unity of faith, to the full knowledge of the Son of
+God." The work of Christ's servants can have no grander aim, no further
+goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not disclose an
+ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed in the previous sentence;
+it restates the same purpose. To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent
+our being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for which apostles,
+prophets, pastors, teachers are called to office. The goal marked out
+for all believers in the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ
+(ver. 13), is set up that it may direct the Church's course through
+dangers shunned and enemies vanquished (ver. 14) to the attainment of
+her corporate perfection (vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section
+turns upon the idea of "the perfecting of the saints" in verse 12. Verse
+16 looks backward to this; verse 7 looked forward to it.
+
+So much for the general construction of the period. As to its particular
+words and phrases, we must observe:--
+
+(1) The "perfect [full-grown] man" of verse 13 is the _individual_, not
+the generic man, not "the one [collective] new man" of chapter ii. 15.
+The Greek words for _man_ in these two places differ.[105] The apostle
+proposes to the Christian ministry the end that he was himself pursuing,
+viz., to "present _every man_ perfect in Christ."[106]
+
+(2) "_Sleight_ of men" (A.V. and R.V.) does not seem to us to express
+the precise meaning of the word so translated in verse 14. _Kubeia_
+(from _kubos_, a cube, or die) occurs only here in the New Testament; in
+classical Greek it appears in its literal sense of _dice-play_,
+_gambling_. The interpreters have drawn from this the idea of
+_trickery_, _cheating_--the common accompaniment of gambling. But the
+kindred verb (_to play dice_, _to gamble_) has another well-established
+use in Greek, namely, _to hazard_: this supplies for St Paul's noun the
+signification of _sport_ or _hazarding_, preferred by Beza among the
+older expositors and by von Soden amongst the newest. _In the sport of
+men_, says von Soden: "conduct wanting in every kind of earnestness and
+clear purpose. These men _play_ with religion, and with the welfare of
+Christian souls." This metaphor accords admirably with that of the
+restless waves and uncertain winds[107] just preceding it; while it
+leads fittingly to the further qualification "in craftiness," which is
+almost an idle synonym after "sleight."
+
+(3) Another rare word is found in this verse, not very precisely
+rendered as "wiles"--a translation suiting it better in chapter vi. 11.
+Here the noun is singular in number: _methodeia_. It signifies
+_methodizing_, _reducing to a plan_; and then, in a bad sense,
+_scheming_, _plotting_. "Error" is thus personified: it "schemes," just
+as in 2 Thessalonians ii. 7 it "works." Amid the restless speculations
+and the unscrupulous perversions of the gospel now disturbing the infant
+faith of the Asian Churches, the apostle saw the outline of a great
+system of error shaping itself. There was a method in this madness.
+_Unto the scheme of error_--into the meshes of its net--those were being
+driven who yielded to the prevailing tendencies of speculative thought.
+With all its cross currents and capricious movements, it was bearing
+steadily in one direction. Reckless pilots steered ignorant souls this
+way and that over the wind-swept seas of religious doubt; but they
+brought them at last to the same rocks and quicksands.
+
+(4) As the contrast between manhood and childhood links verses 13 and
+14, so it is by the contrast of error and craftiness with _truth_ that
+we pass from verse 14 to verse 15. "_Speaking_ truth" insufficiently
+renders the opening word of the latter verse. The "_dealing_ truly" of
+the Revised margin is preferable. In Galatians iv. 16 the apostle
+employs the same verb, signifying not truth of speech alone, but of deed
+and life (comp. Eph. v. 9). The expression resembles that of 1 John iii.
+19: "We are _of the truth_, and shall assure our hearts before Him,"
+where truth and love are found in the like union.
+
+(5) The last difficulty of this kind we have to deal with, lies in the
+connexion of the clauses of verse 16. "Through every joint of supply" is
+an incongruous adjunct to the previous clause, "fitly framed and knit
+together," although the rendering "joint" gives this connexion a
+superficial aptness. The apostle's word means _juncture_ rather than
+_joint_.[108] The _points of contact_ between the members of Christ's
+body form the channels of supply through which the entire frame receives
+nourishment. The clause "through every juncture of the supply"--an
+expression somewhat obscure at the best--points forwards, not backwards.
+It describes the means by which the Church of Christ, compacted in its
+general framework by those larger ligatures which its ministry furnishes
+(vv. 11, 12), builds up its inward life,--through a communion wherein
+"each single part" of the body shares, and every tie that binds one
+Christian soul to another serves to nourish the common life of grace. We
+may paraphrase the sentence thus: "Drawing its life from Christ, the
+entire body knit together in a well-compacted frame, makes use of every
+link that unites its members and of each particular member in his place
+to contribute to its sustenance, thus building itself up in love
+evermore."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These difficult verses unfold to us three main conceptions: _The goal of
+the Church's life_ (ver. 13), _the malady which arrests its development_
+(ver. 14), and _the means and conditions of its growth_ (vv. 15, 16).
+
+I. The mark at which the Church has to arrive is set forth, in harmony
+with the tenor of the epistle, in a twofold way,--in its _collective_
+and its _individual_ aspects. We must all "unitedly attain the oneness
+of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God"; and we must attain,
+each of us, "a perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ."
+
+The "one faith" of the Church's foundation (ver. 5) is, at the same
+time, its end and goal. The final unity will be the unfolding of the
+primal unity; the implicit will become explicit; the germ will be
+reproduced in the developed organism. "The faith" is still, in St Paul,
+the _fides qua credimus_, not _quam credimus_; it is the living faith of
+all hearts in the same Christ and gospel.[109] When "we all" believe
+heartily and understandingly in "the word of truth, the gospel of our
+salvation," the goal will be in sight. All our defects are, at the
+bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the
+fulness of God in Christ. Faith is the essence of the heart's life: it
+forms the common consciousness of the body of Christ.
+
+While faith is the central organ of the Church's life, _the Son of God_
+is its central object. The dangers assailing the Church and the
+divisions threatening its unity, touched His Person; and whatever
+touches the Head, vitally affects the health of the body and the
+well-being of every member in it. Many had believed in Jesus as the
+Christ and received blessing from Him, whose knowledge of Him as the Son
+of God was defective. This ignorance exposed their faith to perversion
+by the plausible errors circulating in the Churches of Asia Minor.[110]
+The haze of speculation dimmed His glory and distorted His image.
+Dazzled by the "philosophy and empty deceit" of specious talkers, these
+half-instructed believers formed erroneous or uncertain views of Christ.
+And a divided Christ makes a divided Church. We may hold divergent
+opinions upon many points of doctrine--in regard to Church order and the
+Sacraments, in regard to the nature of the future judgement, in regard
+to the mode and limits of inspiration, in regard to the dialect and
+expression of our spiritual life--and yet retain, notwithstanding, a
+large measure of cordial unity and find ourselves able to co-operate
+with each other for many Christian purposes. But when our difference
+concerns the Person of Christ, it is felt at once to be fundamental.
+There is a gulf between those who worship and those who do not worship
+the Son of God.
+
+"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in
+him and he in God" (1 John iv. 15). This is the touchstone of catholic
+truth that the apostles have laid down; and by this we must hold fast.
+The kingship of the Lord Jesus is the rallying-point of Christendom. In
+His name we set up our banners. There are a thousand differences we can
+afford to sink and quarrels we may well forget, if our hearts are one
+towards Him. Let me meet a man of any sect or country, who loves and
+worships my Lord Christ with all his mind and strength, he is my
+brother; and who shall forbid us "with one mind and one mouth to glorify
+the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"? It is nothing but our
+ignorance of Him, and of each other, that prevents us doing this
+already. Let us set ourselves again to the study of Christ. Let us
+strive "all of us" to "attain to the full knowledge of the Son of God";
+it is the way to reunion. As we approach the central revelation, and the
+glory of Christ who is the image of God shines in its original
+brightness upon our hearts, prejudices will melt away; the opinions and
+interests and sentiments that divide us will be lost in the transcendent
+and absorbing vision of the one Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+    "Names and sects and parties fall:
+    Thou, O Christ, art all in all!"
+
+The second and third _unto_ of verse 13 are parallel with the first, and
+with each other. A truer faith and better knowledge of Christ uniting
+believers to each other, at the same time develope in each of them a
+riper character. Jesus Christ was the "perfect man." In Him our nature
+attained, without the least flaw or failure, its true end,--which is to
+glorify God. In His fulness the plenitude of God is embodied; it is made
+human, and attainable to faith. In Jesus Christ humanity rose to its
+ideal stature; and we see what is the proper level of our nature, the
+dignity and worth to which we have to rise. We are "predestinated to be
+conformed to the image of God's Son." All the many brethren of Jesus
+measure themselves against the stature of the Firstborn; and they will
+have to say to the end with St Paul: "Not as though I had attained,
+either were already perfect. I follow after; I press towards the mark."
+A true heart that has seen perfection, will never rest short of it.
+
+"Till we arrive--till we _all_ arrive" at this, the work of the
+Christian ministry is incomplete. Teachers must still school us, pastors
+shepherd us, evangelists mission us. There is work enough and to spare
+for them all--and will be, to all appearance, for many a generation to
+come. The goal of the regenerate life is never absolutely won; it is hid
+with Christ in God. But there is to be a constant approximation to it,
+both in the individual believer and in the body of Christ's people. And
+a time is coming when that goal will be practically attained, so far as
+earthly conditions allow. The Church after long strife will be reunited,
+after long trial will be perfected; and Christ will "present her to
+Himself" a bride worthy of her Lord, "without spot or wrinkle or any
+such thing." Then this world will have had its use, and will give place
+to the new heavens and earth.
+
+II. The goal that the apostle marked out, did not appear to him to be in
+immediate prospect. The childishness of so many Christian believers
+stood in the way of its attainment. In this condition they were exposed
+to the seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by
+the evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long
+as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will
+remain subject to strife and corruption. When he says in verse 14, "that
+we may be _no longer children_ tossed to and fro," etc., this implies
+that many Christian believers at that time were of this childish sort,
+and were being so distracted and misled. The apostle writes on purpose
+to instruct these "babes" and to raise them to a more manly style of
+Christian thought and life.[111]
+
+It is a grievous thing to a minister of Christ to see those who for the
+time ought to be teachers, fit for the Church's strong meat and the
+harder tasks of her service, remaining still infantile in their
+condition, needing to be nursed and humoured, narrow in their views of
+truth, petty and personal in their aims, wanting in all generous feeling
+and exalted thought. Some men, like St Paul himself, advance from the
+beginning to a settled faith, to a large intelligence and a full and
+manly consecration to God. Others remain "babes in Christ" to the end.
+Their souls live, but never thrive. They suffer from every change in the
+moral atmosphere, from every new wind of doctrine. These invalids are
+objects full of interest to the moral pathologist; they are marked not
+unfrequently by fine and delicate qualities. But they are a constant
+anxiety to the Church. Till they grow into something more robust they
+must remain to crowd the Church's nursery, instead of taking part in her
+battle like brave and strenuous men.
+
+The appearance of false doctrine in the Asian Churches made their
+undeveloped condition a matter for peculiar apprehension to the apostle.
+The Colossian heresy, for example, with which he is dealing at this
+present moment, would have no attraction for ripe and settled
+Christians. But such a "scheme of error" was exactly suited to catch men
+with a certain tincture of philosophy and in general sympathy with
+current thought, who had embraced Christianity under some vague sense
+of its satisfaction for their spiritual needs, but without an
+intelligent grasp of its principles or a thorough experience of its
+power.
+
+St Paul speaks of "every wind of _the_ doctrine," having in his mind a
+more or less definite form of erroneous teaching, a certain "plan of
+error." Reading this verse in the light of the companion letter to
+Colossae and the letters addressed to Timothy when at Ephesus a few years
+later, we can understand its significance. We can watch the storm that
+was rising in the Graeco-Asiatic Churches. The characteristics of early
+Gnosticism are well defined in the miniature picture of verse 14. We
+note, in the first place, its protean and capricious form, half
+Judaistic, half philosophical--ascetic in one direction, libertine in
+another: "tossed by the waves, and carried about with every wind." In
+the next place, its intellectual spirit,--that of a loose and reckless
+speculation: "in the hazarding of men,"--not in the abiding truth of
+God. Morally, it was vitiated by "craftiness." And in its issue and
+result, this new teaching was leading "to the scheme of error" which the
+apostle four years ago had sorrowfully predicted, in bidding farewell to
+the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx.). This scheme was no other than
+the gigantic Gnostic system, which devastated the Eastern Churches and
+inflicted deep and lasting wounds upon them.
+
+The struggle with legalism was now over and past, at least in its
+critical phase. The apostle of the Gentiles had won the battle with
+Judaism and saved the Church in its first great conflict. But another
+strife is impending (comp. vi. 10); a most pernicious error has made its
+appearance within the Church itself. St Paul was not to see more than
+the commencement of the new movement, which took two generations to
+gather its full force; but he had a true prophetic insight, and he saw
+that the strength of the Church in the coming day of trial lay in the
+depth and reality of her knowledge of the Son of God.
+
+At every crisis in human thought there emerges some prevailing method of
+truth, or of error, the resultant of current tendencies, which unites
+the suffrages of a large body of thinkers and claims to embody the
+spirit of the age. Such a method of error our own age has produced as
+the outcome of the anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the
+doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or
+Agnosticism. While the Gnosticism of the early ages asserted the
+infinite distance of God from the world and the intrinsic evil of
+matter, modern Agnosticism removes God still further from us, beyond the
+reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature as the one positive
+and accessible reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and
+knowledge of the Son of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. The
+supernatural, it tells us, is an illusion; and we must resign ourselves
+to be once more without God in the world and without hope beyond death.
+
+This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the
+century. It is the living antagonist of Divine revelation. It supplies
+the appointed trial of faith for educated men of our generation, and the
+test of the intellectual vigour and manhood of the Church.
+
+III. In the midst of the changing perils and long delays of her history,
+the Church is called evermore to press towards the mark of her calling.
+The conditions on which her progress depends are summed up in verses 15
+and 16.
+
+To the craft of false teachers St Paul would have his Churches oppose
+the weapons only of _truth and love_. "Holding the truth in love," they
+will "grow up in all things into Christ." Sincere believers, heartily
+devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life
+instinctively repels disease. They "have an anointing from the Holy One"
+which is their protection (1 John ii. 20-29). In all that belongs to
+godliness and a noble manhood, such natures will expand; temptation and
+the assaults of error stimulate rather than arrest their growth. And
+with the growth and ripening in her fellowship of such men of God, the
+whole Church grows.
+
+Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of
+advancement,--viz., the full recognition of _the supremacy and
+sufficiency of Christ_. Christ assumes here two opposite relations to
+the members of His body. He is the Head _into_ (or _unto_) which we grow
+in all things; but at the same time, _from_ whom all the body derives
+its increase (ver. 16). He is the perfect ideal for us each; He is the
+common source of life and progress for us all. In our individual efforts
+after holiness and knowledge, in our personal aspirations and struggles,
+Jesus Christ is our model, our constant aim: we "grow into Him" (ver.
+15). But as we learn to live for others, as we merge our own aims in the
+life of the Church and of humanity we feel, even more deeply than our
+personal needs had made us do, our dependence upon Him. We see that the
+forces which are at work to raise mankind, to stay the strifes and heal
+the wounds of humanity, emanate from the living Christ (ver. 16). He is
+the head of the Church and the heart of the world.
+
+The third, practical condition of Church growth is brought out by the
+closing words of the paragraph. It is _organization_: "all the body
+fitly framed [comp. ii. 21] and knit together." Each local _ecclesia_,
+or assembly of saints, will have its stated officers, its regulated and
+seemly order in worship and in work. And within this fit frame, there
+must be the warm union of hearts, the frank exchange of thought and
+feeling, the brotherly counsel in all things touching the kingdom of
+God, by which Christian men in each place of their assembling are "knit
+together." From these local and congregational centres, the Christian
+fellowship spreads out its arms to embrace all that love our Lord Jesus
+Christ.
+
+A building or a machine is _fitted_ together by the adjustment of its
+parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive
+life, a sympathetic force _knitting_ it together: "knit together in
+love," the apostle says in Colossians ii. 2; and so it is "in love" that
+this "body builds up itself." The tense of the participles in the first
+part of verse 16 is present (continuous); we see a body in process of
+incorporation, whose several organs, imperfectly developed and
+imperfectly co-operant, are increasingly drawn to each other and bound
+more firmly in one as each becomes more complete in itself. The perfect
+Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them
+requires the other for its due realization.
+
+The rest of the sentence, following the comma that we place at "knit
+together," has its parallel in Colossians ii. 19: "All the body, through
+its junctures and bands being supplied and knit together, increaseth
+with the increase of God." According to St Paul's physiology, the
+"bands" knit the body together, but the "junctures" are its means of
+supply. Each point of contact is a means of nourishment to the frame.
+In touch with each other, Christians communicate the life flowing from
+the common Head. The apostle would make _Christian intercourse a
+universal means of grace_. No two Christian men should meet anywhere,
+upon any business, without themselves and the whole Church being the
+better for it.
+
+"Wherever two or three are met together in my name," said Jesus, "there
+am I in the midst." In the multitude of these obscure and humble
+meetings of brethren who love each other for Christ's sake, is the grace
+supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the Church lives and
+thrives. The vitality of the Church of Christ does not depend so much
+upon the large and visible features of its construction--upon Synods and
+Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the like, influential and
+venerable as these authorities may be; but upon the spiritual
+intercourse that goes on amongst the body of its people. "Each several
+part" of Christ's great body, "according to the measure" of its
+capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the common grace.
+
+However defective in other points of organization, the society in which
+this takes place fulfils the office of an ecclesiastical body. It will
+grow into the fulness of Christ; it "builds up itself in love." The
+primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be
+an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through
+the tissues and substance of the entire frame.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[105] =Eis hena kaino anthr�pon= (_homo_), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv.
+22, 24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Here =eis andra teleion=
+(_vir_); comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Church =an�r=
+would be highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor.
+xi. 2.
+
+[106] Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.
+
+[107] For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare: _Julius
+Caesar_, Act V., Scene 1:--
+
+    "Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!
+    The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!"
+
+[108] Vulgate: _per omnem juncturam ministrationis_. St Paul's word here
+is =dia pas�s haph�s=, _through every touching_. See Lightfoot's
+valuable note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek
+authors, in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).
+
+[109] Comp. ch. i. 13: "in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews]
+found hope"; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, "my true child according
+to _a common faith_."
+
+[110] See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8-10, 18, 19.
+
+[111] Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1-3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19;
+Heb. v. 11-14.
+
+
+
+
+ON CHRISTIAN MORALS.
+
+CHAPTER iv. 17--v. 21.
+
+    =En kainot�ti z��s peripat�s�men.=--ROM. vi. 4.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+_THE WALK OF THE GENTILES._
+
+    "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer
+    walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being
+    darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God
+    because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening
+    of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to
+    lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."--EPH. iv.
+    17-19.
+
+
+Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new
+world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order
+of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have
+therefore to walk in quite another way--"no longer as the Gentiles." St
+Paul does not say "as the other Gentiles" (A.V.); for his readers,
+though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and
+the city of God. They hold the franchise of the "commonwealth of
+Israel." As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a
+born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of "the Jews"
+as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from
+"the Gentiles" who were their natural kindred.
+
+When he "testifies," with a pointed emphasis, "that _you_ no longer walk
+as do indeed the Gentiles," and when in verse 20 he exclaims, "But
+_you_ did not thus learn the Christ," it appears that there were those
+bearing Christ's name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus
+walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians
+(ch. iii. 18, 19): "Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now
+tell you even weeping,--the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is
+their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things."
+We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in
+verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose
+seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor,
+tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples,
+and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of
+life.[112]
+
+The connexion between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on
+which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the
+Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old
+world of Gentile society had formed the "old man" as he then existed,
+the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world
+is abolished, and a "new man" is born. The world in which the Asian
+Christians once lived as "Gentiles in the flesh," is dead to them.[113]
+They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus
+Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the
+following paragraphs. His ideal "new man" is no mere ego, devoted to
+his personal perfection; he is part and parcel of the redeemed society
+of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and
+commonwealth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us
+is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid
+picture of Romans i. 18-32. While this delineation is comparatively
+brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than
+does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the
+description, as they bring into view in turn the _mental_, _spiritual_,
+and _moral_ characteristics of the existing Paganism. Man's intellect
+was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and
+shameless.
+
+I. "The Gentiles walk," the apostle says, "in _vanity of their
+mind_"--with reason frustrate and impotent; "being _darkened in their
+understanding_"--with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of
+life. Similarly, he wrote in Romans i. 21: "They were frustrated in
+their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." But here he
+seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the "reasonings" to
+the "reason" (_nous_) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its
+foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has
+forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects
+so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable
+and ruinous.
+
+The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from popular beliefs,
+for the most part confessed that their philosophies were speculative and
+futile, that certainty in the greatest and most serious matters was
+unattainable. Pilate's question, "What is truth?"--no jesting question
+surely--passed from lip to lip and from one school of thought to
+another, without an answer. Five centuries before this time the human
+intellect had a marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of Greece
+sprang into their glorious life, like Athen� born from the head of Zeus,
+full-grown and in shining armour. With such leaders as Pericles and
+Phidias, as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing was
+impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius of our race had
+blossomed; rich and golden fruit would surely follow, to be gathered
+from the tree of life. But the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as
+rottenness. Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry was
+little more than a trick of words; philosophy, a wrangling of the
+schools. Rome towered in the majesty of her arms and laws above the
+faded glory of Greece. She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a
+rule of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty. But this dream
+vanished, like the other. The age of the Caesars was an age of
+disillusion. Scepticism and cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of
+the future possessed men's minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old and new
+Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans disputed the palm of wisdom in
+mere strife of words. Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their
+own systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned was "to hear some
+new thing," for of the old things all thinking men were weary. Only
+rhetoric and scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest
+constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again. "On the whole,
+this last period of Greek philosophy, extending into the Christian era,
+bore the marks of intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of
+despair in the solution of its high problem" (D�llinger). The world
+itself admitted the apostle's reproach that "by wisdom it knew not God."
+It knew nothing, therefore, to sure purpose, nothing that availed to
+satisfy or save it.
+
+Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic method unknown to
+the ancient world. The old metaphysical systems failed; but we have
+relaid the foundations of life and thought upon the solid ground of
+nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis of positive and demonstrated
+knowledge, whose value is independent of religious belief. Scientific
+discovery has put us in command of material forces that secure the race
+against any such relapse as that which took place in the overthrow of
+the Graeco-Roman civilization. _Pessimism_ answers these pretensions made
+for physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the nemesis of
+irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow palsy over the highest and
+ablest minds that reject the Christian hope. What avails it to yoke
+steam to our chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to wing
+our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts are no happier or
+worthier than before?
+
+"Civilization contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude.
+Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave" (F.
+W. Robertson). Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of lavish
+wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what science grimly calls the
+_proletariate_, a barbarism more vicious and dangerous than the old,
+that is generated by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing
+regime of industrial science.
+
+Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity for evil or good;
+culture makes him more sensitive; refinement more delicate in his
+virtues or his vices. But there is no tendency in these forces as we
+see them now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline, to
+make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge supplies nothing to bind
+society together, no force to tame the selfish passions, to guard the
+moral interests of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to the
+forces acting on civilized men; it cannot change or elevate their
+character. It puts new and potent instruments into our hands; but
+whether those instruments shall be tools to build the city of God or
+weapons for its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the
+wielders. In the midst of his splendid machinery, master of the planet's
+wealth and lord of nature's forces, the civilized man at the end of this
+boastful century stands with a dull and empty heart--without God. Poor
+creature, he wants to know whether "life is worth living"! He has gained
+the world, but lost his soul.
+
+In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men stumble onwards to the
+end of life, to the end of time. The world's wisdom and the lessons of
+its history give no hope of any real advance from darkness to light
+until, as Plato said, "We are able more safely and securely to make our
+journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine word."[114] Such a
+vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching. The
+moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its guidance. And that
+moral progress has created the conditions and given the stimulus to
+which our material and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives
+permanence and value to all man's acquisitions. Both of this world and
+of that to come "godliness holds the promise." We are only beginning to
+learn how much was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as "the
+light of the world." He brought into the world a light which was to
+shine through all the realms of human life.
+
+II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked, resulted in a
+settled state of _estrangement from God_. They were "alienated from the
+life of God."
+
+"Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel," St Paul said in chapter ii.
+12,[115] using, as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which
+denotes an abiding fact. These two alienations generally coincide.
+Outside the religious community, we are outside the religious life. This
+expression gathers to a point what was said in verses 11, 12 of chapter
+ii., and further back in verses 1-3; it discloses the spring of the
+soul's malady and decay in its separation from the living God. When
+shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may exist without God,
+as a tree cast out in the desert, or a body wasting in the grave; but
+that is not _life_.
+
+Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who seemed to him
+dead--joyless, empty-hearted, weary of an idle learning or lost in
+sullen ignorance, caring only to eat and drink till they should die like
+the beasts. Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in which
+the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to believe. The ancient
+natural pieties--not wholly untouched by the Spirit of God, despite
+their idolatry--that peopled with fair fancies the Grecian shores and
+skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his manfulness and hallowed his love
+of home and city, were all but extinguished. Death was at the heart of
+Pagan religion; corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who
+believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power behind the veil
+of sense. The Roman augurs laughed at their own auspices; the priests
+made a traffic of their temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was
+rife, as rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the day were
+the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported from Egypt and Syria. A
+hundred years before, the Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his
+burning indignation, the disposition of earnest and high-minded men
+towards the creeds of the later classic times:--
+
+    "Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret,
+    In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,
+    Quae caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat
+    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
+    Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
+    Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra."[116]
+
+    _De Rerum Natura_: Bk. I., 62-67.
+
+How alienated from the life of God were those who conceived such
+sentiments, and those whose creed excited this repugnance. And when
+amongst ourselves, as it occurs in some unhappy instances, a similar
+bitterness is cherished, it is matter of double sorrow,--of grief at
+once for the alienation prompting thoughts so dark and unjust towards
+our God and Father, and for the misshapen guise in which our holy
+religion has been presented to make this aversion possible.
+
+The phrase "alienated from the life of God" denotes an objective
+position rather than a subjective disposition, the state and place of
+the man who is far from God and and his true life. God exiles sinners
+from His presence. By a necessary law, their sin acts as a sentence of
+deprivation. Under its ban they go forth, like Cain, from the presence
+of the Lord. They can no longer partake of the light of life which
+streams forth evermore from God and fills the souls that abide in His
+love.
+
+And this banishment was due to the cause already described,--to the
+radical perversion of the Gentile mind, which is re-affirmed in the
+double prepositional clause of verse 18: "because of the ignorance that
+is in them, because of the hardening of their heart." The repeated
+preposition (_because of_) attaches the two parallel clauses to the same
+predicate. Together they serve to explain this sad estrangement from the
+Divine life; the second _because_ supplements the first. It is the
+ingrained "ignorance" of men that excludes them from the life of God;
+and this ignorance is no misfortune or unavoidable fate, it is due to a
+positive "hardening of the heart."
+
+Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of indevotion. If men knew
+God, they would certainly love and serve Him. St Paul agreed with
+Socrates and Plato in holding that virtue is knowledge. The debasement
+of the heathen world, he declares again and again, was due to the fact
+that it "knew not God."[117] The Corinthian Church was corrupted and its
+Christian life imperilled by the presence in it of some who "had not the
+knowledge of God" (1 Cor. xv. 33, 34). At Athens, the centre of heathen
+wisdom, he spoke of the Pagan ages as "the times of ignorance" (Acts
+xvii. 30); and found in this want of knowledge a measure of excuse. But
+the ignorance he censures is not of the understanding alone; nor is it
+curable by philosophy and science. It has an intrinsic
+ground,--"existing _in_ them."
+
+Since the world's creation, the apostle says, God's unseen presence has
+been clearly visible (Rom. i. 20). Yet multitudes of men have always
+held false and corrupting views of the Divine nature. At this present
+time, in the full light of Christianity, men of high intellect and wide
+knowledge of nature are found proclaiming in the most positive terms
+that God, if He exists, is unknowable. This ignorance it is not for us
+to censure; every man must give account of himself to God. There may be
+in individual cases, amongst the enlightened deniers of God in our own
+days, causes of misunderstanding beyond the will, obstructing and
+darkening circumstances, on the ground of which in His merciful and wise
+judgement God may "overlook" that ignorance, even as He did the
+ignorance of earlier ages. But it is manifest that while this veil
+remains, those on whose heart it lies cannot partake in the life of God.
+Living in unbelief, they walk in darkness to the end, knowing not
+whither they go.
+
+The Gentile ignorance of God was attended, as St Paul saw it, with an
+_induration of heart_, of which it was at once the cause and the effect.
+There is a wilful stupidity, a studied misconstruction of God's will,
+which has played a large part in the history of unbelief. The
+Israelitish people presented at this time a terrible example of such
+guilty callousness (Rom. xi. 7-10, 25). They professed a mighty zeal for
+God; but it was a passion for the deity of their partial and corrupt
+imagination, which turned to hatred of the true God and Father of men
+when He appeared in the person of His Son. Behind their pride of
+knowledge lay the ignorance of a hard and impenitent heart.
+
+In the case of the heathen, hardness of heart and religious ignorance
+plainly went together. The knowledge of God was not altogether wanting
+amongst them; He "left Himself not without witness," as the apostle told
+them (Acts xiv. 17). Where there is, amid whatever darkness, a mind
+seeking after truth and right, some ray of light is given, some gleam of
+a better hope by which the soul may draw nigh to God,--coming whence or
+how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of Christ finds in every new land
+souls waiting for God's salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in
+hearts touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its first
+messengers discovered everywhere,--a remnant in Israel and a great
+multitude amongst the heathen.
+
+But the Jewish nation as a whole, and the mass of the pagans, remained
+at present obstinately disbelieving. They had no perception of the life
+of God, and felt no need of it; and when offered, they thrust it from
+them. Theirs was another god, "the god of this world," who "blinds the
+minds of the unbelieving" (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). And their "ungodliness and
+unrighteousness" were not to be pitied more than blamed. They might have
+known better; they were "holding down the truth in unrighteousness,"
+putting out the light that was in them and contradicting their better
+instincts. The wickedness of that generation was the outcome of a
+hardening of heart and blinding of conscience that had been going on for
+generations past.
+
+III. By two conspicuous features the decaying Paganism of the Christian
+era was distinguished,--its unbelief and its _licentiousness_. In his
+letter to the Romans St Paul declares that the second of these
+deplorable characteristics was the consequence of the former, and a
+punishment for it inflicted by God. Here he points to it as a
+manifestation of the hardening of heart which caused their ignorance of
+God: "Having lost all feeling, they gave themselves up to
+lasciviousness, so as to commit every kind of uncleanness in
+greediness."
+
+Upon that brilliant classic civilization there lies a shocking stain of
+impurity. St Paul stamps upon it the burning word _Aselgeia
+(lasciviousness)_, like a brand on the harlot's brow. The habits of
+daily life, the literature and art of the Greek world, the atmosphere of
+society in the great cities was laden with corruption. Sexual vice was
+no longer counted vice. It was provided for by public law; it was
+incorporated into the worship of the gods. It was cultivated in every
+luxurious and monstrous excess. It was eating out the manhood of the
+Greek and Latin races. From the imperial Caesar down to the horde of
+slaves, it seemed as though every class of society had abandoned itself
+to the horrid practices of lust.
+
+The "greediness" with which debauchery was then pursued, is at the
+bottom self-idolatry, self-deification; it is the absorption of the
+God-given passion and will of man's nature in the gratification of his
+appetites. Here lies the reservoir and spring of sin, the burning deep
+within the soul of him who knows no God but his own will, no law above
+his own desire. He plunges into sensual indulgence, or he grasps
+covetously at wealth or office; he wrecks the purity, or tramples on the
+rights of others; he robs the weak, he corrupts the innocent, he
+deceives and mocks the simple--to feed the gluttonous idol of self that
+sits upon God's seat within him. The military hero wading to a throne
+through seas of blood, the politician who wins power and office by the
+sleights of a supple tongue, the dealer on the exchange who supplants
+every competitor by his shrewd foresight and unscrupulous daring, and
+absorbs the fruit of the labour of thousands of his fellow-men, the
+sensualist devising some new and more voluptuous refinement of
+vice,--these are all the miserable slaves of their own lust, driven on
+by the insatiate craving of the false god that they carry within their
+breast.
+
+For the light-hearted Greeks, lovers of beauty and of laughter, self was
+deified as Aphrodit�, goddess of fleshly desire, who was turned by their
+worship into _Aselgeia_,--she of whom of old it was said, "Her house is
+the way to Sheol." Not such as the chaste wife and house-keeping mother
+of Hebrew praise, but La�s with her venal charms was the subject of
+Greek song and art. Pure ideals of womanhood the classic nations had
+once known--or never would those nations have become great and famous--a
+Greek Alcestis and Antigon�, Roman Cornelias and Lucretias, noble maids
+and matrons. But these, in the dissolution of manners, had given place
+to other models. The wives and daughters of the Greek citizens were shut
+up to contempt and ignorance, while the priestesses of vice--_hetaerae_
+they were called, or _companions_ of men--queened it in their voluptuous
+beauty, until their bloom faded and poison or madness ended their fatal
+days.
+
+Amongst the Jews whom our Lord addressed, the choice lay between "God
+and Mammon"; in Corinth and Ephesus, it was "Christ or Belial." These
+ancient gods of the world--"mud-gods," as Thomas Carlyle called
+them--are set up in the high places of our populous cities. To the
+slavery of business and the pride of wealth men sacrifice health and
+leisure, improvement of mind, religion, charity, love of country, family
+affection. How many of the evils of English society come from this root
+of all evil!
+
+Hard by the temple of Mammon stands that of Belial. Their votaries
+mingle in the crowded amusements of the day and rub shoulders with each
+other. Aselgeia flaunts herself, wise observers tell us, with increasing
+boldness in the European capitals. Theatre and picture-gallery and novel
+pander to the desire of the eye and the lust of the flesh. The daily
+newspapers retail cases of divorce and hideous criminal trials with
+greater exactness than the debates of Parliament; and the appetite for
+this garbage grows by what it feeds upon. It is plain to see whereunto
+the decay of public decency and the revival of the animalism of pagan
+art and manners will grow, if it be not checked by a deepened Christian
+faith and feeling.
+
+_Past feeling_ says the apostle of the brazen impudicity of his time.
+The loss of the religious sense blunted all moral sensibility. The
+Greeks, by an early instinct of their language, had one word for
+_modesty_ and _reverence_, for self-respect and awe before the Divine.
+There is nothing more terrible than the loss of shame. When immodesty is
+no longer felt as an affront, when there fails to rise in the blood and
+burn upon the cheek the hot resentment of a wholesome nature against
+things that are foul, when we grow tolerant and familiar with their
+presence, we are far down the slopes of hell. It needs only the kindling
+of passion, or the removal of the checks of circumstance, to complete
+the descent. The pain that the sight of evil gives is a divine shield
+against it. Wearing this shield, the sinless Christ fought our battle,
+and bore the anguish of our sin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[112] "The persons here denounced," says Lightfoot on Phil. iii. 18,
+"are not the Judaizing teachers, but the antinomian reactionists.... The
+stress of Paul's grief lies in the fact that they degraded the true
+doctrine of liberty, so as to minister to their profligate and worldly
+living." Comp. 1 Peter iv. 3, 4; 2 Peter ii. 18-22.
+
+[113] Comp. Col. ii. 20-iii. 4; Gal. vi. 14, 15.
+
+[114] _Phaeao_: � xxxv.
+
+[115] See p. 129.
+
+[116] "When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed
+down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters
+of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece
+ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to
+withstand her to her face" (Munro).
+
+[117] 1 Thess. iv. 5; 2 Thess. i. 8; Gal. iv. 8, 9.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+_THE TWO HUMAN TYPES._
+
+    "But ye did not so learn the Christ; if so be that ye heard Him, and
+    were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as
+    concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth
+    corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the
+    spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath
+    been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth."--EPH. iv.
+    20-24.
+
+
+_But as for you!_--The apostle points us from heathendom to Christendom.
+From the men of blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the
+cleansed and instructed. "Not thus did _you_ learn the Christ"--not to
+remain in the darkness and filth of your Gentile state.
+
+The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in this letter so exuberant
+in expression, yet on occasion is as concise as in Galatians. One is
+tempted, as Beza suggested[118] and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at
+this point and to read: "But with you it is not so:[119] you learned the
+Christ!" In spite of its abruptness, this construction would be
+necessary, if it were only "the Gentiles" of verse 17 with whose "walk"
+St Paul means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we have seen, he
+has before his eye a third class of men, unprincipled Christian teachers
+(ver. 14), men who had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in
+Gentile ways and were leading others back to them.[120] Verse 20, after
+all, forms a coherent clause. It points an antithesis of solemn import.
+There are genuine, and there are supposed conversions; there are true
+and false ways of learning Christ.
+
+Strictly speaking, it is not _Christ_, but _the Christ_ whom St Paul
+presumes his readers to have duly learnt.[121] The words imply a
+comprehending faith, that knows who and what Christ is and what
+believing in Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To such a
+faith, which views Christ in the scope and breadth of His redemption,
+this epistle throughout appeals; for its impartation and increase St
+Paul prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter. When he writes
+not simply, "You have believed in Christ," but "You have _learned the
+Christ_," he puts their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of
+approved disciples in Christ's school. For such men the "philosophy and
+vain deceit" of Colossae and the plausibilities of the new "scheme of
+error" will have no charm. They have found the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge that are hidden in Christ.
+
+The apostle's confidence in the Christian knowledge of his readers is,
+however, qualified in verse 21 in a somewhat remarkable way: "If verily
+it is He whom you heard, and in Him that you were taught, as truth is in
+Jesus." We noted at the outset the bearing of this sentence on the
+destination of the letter. It would never occur to St Paul to question
+whether the _Ephesian_ Christians were taught Christ's true doctrine.
+If there were any believers in the world who, beyond a doubt, had heard
+the truth as in Jesus in its certainty and fulness, it was those amongst
+whom the apostle had "taught publicly and from house to house," "not
+shunning to declare all the counsel of God" and "for three years night
+and day unceasingly with tears admonishing each single one" (Acts xx.
+18-35). To suppose these words written in irony, or in a modest
+affectation, is to credit St Paul with something like an ineptitude.
+Doubt was really possible as to whether all his readers had heard of
+Christ aright, and understood the obligations of their faith. Supposing,
+as we have done, that the epistle was designed for the Christians of the
+province of Asia generally, this qualification is natural and
+intelligible.
+
+There are several considerations which help to account for it. When St
+Paul first arrived at Ephesus, eight years before this time, he "found
+certain disciples" there who had been "baptized into John's baptism,"
+but had not "received the Holy Spirit" nor even heard of such a thing
+(Acts xix. 1-7). Apollos formerly belonged to this company, having
+preached and "taught carefully the things about Jesus," while he "knew
+only the baptism of John" (Acts xviii. 25). One very much desires to
+know more about this Church of the Baptist's disciples in Asia Minor.
+Its existence so far away from Palestine testifies to the power of
+John's ministry and the deep impression that his witness to the
+Messiahship of Jesus made on his disciples. The ready reception of
+Paul's fuller gospel by this little circle indicates that their
+knowledge of Jesus Christ erred only by defect; they had received it
+from Judaea by a source dating earlier than the day of Pentecost. The
+partial knowledge of Jesus current for so long at Ephesus, may have
+extended to other parts of the province, where St Paul had not been able
+to correct it as he had done in the metropolis.
+
+Judaistic Christians, such as those who at Rome "preached Christ of envy
+and strife," were also disseminating an imperfect Christian doctrine.
+They limited the rights of uncircumcised believers; they misrepresented
+the Gentile apostle and undermined his influence. A third and still more
+lamentable cause of uncertainty in regard to the Christian belief of
+Asian Churches, was introduced by the rise of Gnosticizing error in this
+quarter. Some who read the epistle had, it might be, received their
+first knowledge of Christ through channels tainted with error similar to
+that which was propagated at Colossae. With the seed of the kingdom the
+enemy was mingling vicious tares. The apostle has reason to fear that
+there were those within the wide circle to which his letter is
+addressed, who had in one form or other heard a different gospel and a
+Christ other than the true Christ of apostolic teaching.
+
+Where does he find the test and touchstone of the true Christian
+doctrine?--In the historical Jesus: "as there is truth _in Jesus_." Not
+often, nor without distinct meaning, does St Paul use the birth-name of
+the Saviour by itself. Where he does, it is most significant. He has in
+mind the facts of the gospel history; he speaks of "the Jesus"[122] of
+Nazareth and Calvary. The Christ whom St Paul feared that some of his
+readers might have heard of was not the veritable _Jesus_ Christ, but a
+shadowy and notional Christ, lost amongst the crowd of angels, such as
+was now being taught to the Colossians. This Christ was neither the
+image of God, nor the true Son of man. He supplied no sufficient
+redemption from sin, no ideal of character, no sure guidance and
+authority to direct the daily walk. Those who followed such a Christ
+would fall back unchecked into Gentile vice. Instead of the light of
+life shining in the character and words of Jesus, they must resort to
+"the doctrines and commandments of men" (Col. ii. 8-23).
+
+Amongst the Gnostics of the second century there was held a distinction
+between the human (fleshly and imperfect) _Jesus_ and the Divine
+_Christ_, who were regarded as distinct beings, united to each other
+from the time of the baptism of Jesus to His death. The critics who
+assert the late and non-Pauline authorship of the epistle, assert that
+this peculiar doctrine is aimed at in the words before us, and that the
+identification of Christ with Jesus has a polemical reference to this
+advanced Gnostic error. The verses that follow show that the writer has
+a different and entirely practical aim. The apostle points us to our
+true ideal, to "the Christ" of all revelation manifest in "the Jesus" of
+the gospel. Here we see "the new man created after God," whose nature we
+must embody in ourselves. The counteractive of a false spiritualism is
+found in the incarnate life of the Son of God. The dualism which
+separated God from the world and man's spirit from his flesh, had its
+refutation in "the Jesus" of Paul's preaching, whom we see in the Four
+Gospels. Those who persisted in the attempt to graft the dualistic
+theosophy upon the Christian faith, were in the end compelled to divide
+and destroy the Christ Himself. They broke up into _Jesus and Christ_
+the unity of His incarnate Person.
+
+It is an entire mistake to suppose that the apostle Paul was indifferent
+to the historical tradition of Jesus; that the Christ he taught was a
+product of his personal inspiration, of his inward experience and
+theological reflection. This preaching of an abstract Christ, distinct
+from the actual Jesus, is the very thing that he condemns. Although his
+explicit references in the epistles to the teaching of Jesus and the
+events of His earthly life are not numerous, they are such as to prove
+that the Churches St Paul taught were well instructed in that history.
+From the beginning the apostle made himself well acquainted with the
+facts concerning Jesus, and had become possessor of all that the earlier
+witnesses could relate. His conception of the Lord Jesus Christ is
+living and realistic in the highest degree. Its germ was in the visible
+appearance of the glorified Jesus to himself on the Damascus road; but
+that expanding germ struck down its roots into the rich soil of the
+Church's recollections of the incarnate Redeemer as He lived and taught
+and laboured, as He died and rose again amongst men. Paul's Christ was
+the Jesus of Peter and of John and of our own Evangelists; there was no
+other. He warns the Church against all unhistorical, subjective Christs,
+the product of human speculation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Asian Christians who held a true faith, had received Jesus as the
+Christ. So accepting Him, they accepted a fixed standard and ideal of
+life for themselves. With Jesus Christ evidently set forth before their
+eyes, let them look back upon their past life; let them contrast what
+they had been with what they are to be. Let them consider what things
+they must "put off" and what "put on," so that they may "be found in
+Him."
+
+Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan world; keenly its
+light smote on that gross darkness. There stood the Word made
+flesh--purity immaculate, love in its very self--shaped forth in no
+dream of fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man Christ Jesus,
+born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate,--truth expressed
+
+            "In loveliness of perfect deeds,
+    More strong than all poetic thought."
+
+And this life of Jesus, living in those who loved Him (2 Cor. iv. 11),
+ended not when He passed from earth; it passed from land to land,
+speaking many tongues, raising up new witnesses at every step as it
+moved along. It was not a new system, a new creed, but _new men_ that it
+gave the world in Christ's disciples, men redeemed from all iniquity,
+noble and pure as sons of God. It was the sight of Jesus, and of men
+like Jesus, that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and hardened
+in its sin. In vain she summoned the gates of death to silence the
+witnesses of Jesus. At last
+
+    "She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword,
+      And laid her sceptre down;
+    Her stately purple she abhorred,
+      And her imperial crown.
+    She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,
+      Her artists could not please;
+    She tore her books, she shut her courts,
+      She fled her palaces;
+    Lust of the eye and pride of life--
+      She left it all behind,
+    And hurried, torn with inward strife,
+      The wilderness to find" (_Obermann once more_).
+
+The Galilean conquered! The new man was destined to convict and destroy
+the old. "God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for
+sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. viii. 3). When Jesus lived, died,
+and rose again, an inconceivable revolution in human affairs had been
+effected. The cross was planted on the territory of the god of this
+world; its victory was inevitable. The "grain of wheat" fell into the
+ground to die: there might be still a long, cruel winter; many a storm
+and blight would delay its growth; but the harvest was secure. Jesus
+Christ was the type and the head of a new moral order, destined to
+control the universe.
+
+To see the new and the old man side by side was enough to assure one
+that the future lay with Jesus. Corruption and decrepitude marked every
+feature of Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice,--"wasting away in
+its deceitful lusts."
+
+St Paul had before his eyes, as he wrote, a conspicuous type of the
+decaying Pagan order. He had appealed as a citizen of the empire to
+_Caesar_ as his judge. He was in durance as _Nero's_ prisoner, and was
+acquainted with the life of the palace (Phil. i. 13). Never, perhaps,
+has any line of rulers dominated mankind so absolutely or held in their
+single hand so completely the resources of the world as did the Caesars
+of St Paul's time. Their name has ever since served to mark the summit
+of autocratic power. It was, surely, the vision of Tiberius sitting at
+Rome that Jesus saw in the wilderness, when "the devil showed Him all
+the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and said, All this hath been
+delivered to me, and to whomsoever I will I give it." The Emperor was
+the topstone of the splendid edifice of Pagan civilization, that had
+been rearing for so many ages. And Nero was the final product and
+paragon of the Caesarean house!
+
+At this epoch, writes M. Renan,[123] "_Nero and Jesus_, Christ and
+Antichrist, stand opposed, confronting each other, if I may dare to say
+so, like heaven and hell.... In face of Jesus there presents itself a
+monster, who is the ideal of evil as Jesus of goodness.... Nero's was an
+evil nature, hypocritical, vain, frivolous, prodigiously given to
+declamation and display; a blending of false intellect, profound
+wickedness, cruel and artful egotism carried to an incredible degree of
+refinement and subtlety.... He is a monster who has no second in
+history, and whose equal we can only find in the pathological annals of
+the scaffold.... The school of crime in which he had grown up, the
+execrable influence of his mother, the stroke of parricide forced upon
+him, as one might say, by this abominable woman, by which he had entered
+on the stage of public life, made the world take to his eyes the form of
+a horrible comedy, with himself for the chief actor in it. At the moment
+we have now reached [when St Paul entered Rome], Nero had detached
+himself completely from the philosophers who had been his tutors. He had
+killed nearly all his relations. He had made the most shameful follies
+the common fashion. A large part of Roman society, following his
+example, had descended to the lowest level of debasement. The cruelty of
+the ancient world had reached its consummation.... The world had touched
+the bottom of the abyss of evil; it could only reascend."
+
+Such was the man who occupied at this time the summit of human power and
+glory,--the man who lighted the torch of Christian martyrdom and at
+whose sentence St Paul's head was destined to fall, the Wild Beast of
+John's awful vision. Nero of Rome, the son of Agrippina, embodied the
+triumph of Satan as the god of this world. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
+Mary, reigned only in a few loving and pure hearts. Future history, as
+the scroll of the Apocalypse unfolded it, was to be the battle-field of
+these confronting powers, the war of Christ with Antichrist.
+
+Could it be doubtful, to any one who had measured the rival forces, on
+which side victory must fall? St Paul pronounces the fate of the whole
+kingdom of evil in this world, when he declares that "the old man" is
+"perishing, according to the lusts of deceit." It is an application of
+the maxim he gave us in Galatians vi. 8: "He that soweth to his own
+flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." In its mad sensuality and
+prodigal lusts, the vile Roman world he saw around him was speeding to
+its ruin. That ruin was delayed; there were moral forces left in the
+fabric of the Roman State, which in the following generations
+re-asserted themselves and held back for a time the tide of disaster;
+but in the end Rome fell, as the ancient world-empires of the East had
+fallen, through her own corruption, and by "the wrath" which is
+"revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
+men." For the solitary man, for the household, for the body politic and
+the family of nations the rule is the same. "Sin, when it is finished,
+bringeth forth death."
+
+The passions which carry men and nations to their ruin are "lusts _of
+deceit_." The tempter is the liar. Sin is an enormous fraud. "You shall
+not die," said the serpent in the garden; "Your eyes will be opened, and
+you will be as God!" So forbidden desire was born, and "the woman _being
+deceived_ fell into transgression."
+
+    "So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud
+    Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree
+    Of prohibition, root of all our woe."
+
+By its baits of sensuous pleasure, and still more by its show of freedom
+and power to stir our pride, sin cheats us of our manhood; it sows life
+with misery, and makes us self-despising slaves. It knows how to use
+God's law as an incitement to transgression, turning the very
+prohibition into a challenge to our bold desires. "Sin taking occasion
+by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me." Over the pit of
+destruction play the same dancing lights that have lured countless
+generations,--the glitter of gold; the purple robe and jewelled coronet;
+the wine moving in the cup; fair, soft faces lit with laughter. The
+straying foot and hot desires give chase, till the inevitable moment
+comes when the treacherous soil yields, and the pursuer plunges beyond
+escape into sin's reeking gulfs. Then the illusion is over. The gay
+faces grow foul; the glittering prize proves dust; the sweet fruit turns
+to ashes; the cup of pleasure burns with the fire of hell. And the
+sinner knows at last that his greed has cheated him, that he is as
+foolish as he is wicked.
+
+Let us remember that there is but one way of escape from the
+all-encompassing deceit of sin. It is in "learning Christ." Not in
+learning _about_ Christ, but in learning _Him_. It is a common artifice
+of the great deceit to "wash the outside of cup and platter." The old
+man is improved and civilized; he is baptized in infancy and called a
+Christian. He puts off many of his old ways, he dresses himself in a
+decorous garb and style; and so deceives himself into thinking that he
+is new, while his heart is unchanged. He may turn ascetic, and deny this
+or that _to_ himself; and yet never deny _himself_. He observes
+religious forms and makes charitable benefactions, as though he would
+compound with God for his unforsaken sin. But all this is only a
+plausible and hateful manifestation of the lusts of deceit. To learn the
+Christ, is to learn the way of the cross. "Take my yoke upon you, and
+learn of me," He bids us; "for I am meek and lowly in heart." Till we
+have done this, we are not even at the beginning of our lesson.
+
+From the perishing old man the apostle turns, in verses 23, 24, to the
+new. These two clauses differ in their form of expression more than the
+English rendering indicates.[124] When he writes, "that ye be renewed in
+the spirit of your mind," it is a _continual rejuvenation_ that he
+describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that
+of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the "new man" to be
+"put on" (ver. 24) is of a _new kind and order_; and in this instance
+the verb is of the aorist tense signifying an event, not a continuous
+act. The new man is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted,
+when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. We
+"put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14), who covers and absorbs
+the old self, even as those who await in the flesh His second advent
+will "put on the house from heaven," when "the mortal" in them will be
+"swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. v. 2-4). Thus two distinct conceptions of
+the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one
+hand, of a quickening, constantly renewed, in the springs of our
+individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption
+of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the Divine character
+and form of its being.
+
+Borne on the stream of his evil passions, we saw "the old man" in his
+"former manner of life," hastening to the gulf of ruin. For the man
+renewed in Christ the stream of life flows steadily in the opposite
+direction, and with a swelling tide moves upward to God. His knowledge
+and love are always growing in depth, in refinement, in energy and joy.
+Thus it was with the apostle in his advancing age. The fresh impulses of
+the Holy Spirit, the unfolding to his spirit of the mystery of God, the
+fellowship of Christian brethren and the interests of the work of the
+Church renewed Paul's youth like the eagle's. If in years and toil he is
+old, his soul is full of ardour, his intellect keen and eager; the
+"outward man decays, but the inward man is renewed day by day."
+
+This new nature had a new birth. The soul reanimating itself perpetually
+from the fresh springs that are in God, had in God the beginning of its
+renovated life. We have not to create or fashion for ourselves the
+perfect life, but to _adopt_ it,--to realize the Christian ideal (ver.
+24). We are called to put on the new type of manhood as completely as we
+renounce the old (ver. 22). The new man is there before our eyes,
+manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom we live henceforth.
+When we "learn the Christ," when we have become His true disciples, we
+"put on" His nature and "walk in Him." The inward reception of His
+Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our
+calling amongst men.
+
+Now, the character of Jesus is human nature as God first formed it. It
+existed in His thoughts from eternity. If it be asked whether St Paul
+refers, in verse 24, to the creation of Adam in God's likeness, or to
+the image of God appearing in Jesus Christ, or to the Christian nature
+formed in the regenerate, we should say that, to the apostle's mind, the
+first and last of these creations are merged in the second. The Son of
+God's love is His primeval image. The race of Adam was created in Christ
+(Col. i. 15, 16). The first model of that image, in the natural father
+of mankind, was marred by sin and has become "the old man" corrupt and
+perishing. The new pattern replacing this broken type is the original
+ideal, displayed "in the likeness of sinful flesh"--wearing no longer
+the charm of childish innocence, but the glory of sin vanquished and
+sacrifice endured--in the Son of God made perfect through suffering.
+Through all there has been only one image of God, one ideal humanity.
+The Adam of Paradise was, within his limits, what the Image of God had
+been in perfectness from eternity. And Jesus in His human personality
+represented, under the changed circumstances brought about by sin, what
+Adam might have grown to be as a complete and disciplined man.
+
+The qualities which the apostle insists upon in the new man are two:
+"_righteousness_ and _holiness_ [or _piety_] of the truth." This is the
+Old Testament conception of a perfect life, whose realization the devout
+Zacharias anticipates when he sings how God has "shown mercy to our
+fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, ... that we being
+delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in
+holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life."
+Enchanting vision, still to be fulfilled! "Righteousness" is the sum of
+all that should be in a man's relations towards God's law; "holiness" is
+a right disposition and bearing towards God Himself. This is not St
+Paul's ordinary word for holiness (_sanctification_, _sanctity_), which
+he puts so often at the head of his letters, addressing his readers as
+"saints" in Christ Jesus. That other term designates Christian believers
+as devoted persons, claimed by God for His own;[125] it signifies
+holiness as a calling. The word of our text denotes specifically the
+holiness of temper and behaviour--"that becometh saints." The two words
+differ very much as _devotedness_ from _devoutness_.[126]
+
+A religious temper, a reverent mind marks the true child of grace. His
+soul is full of the loving fear of God. In the new humanity, in the type
+of man that will prevail in the latter days when the truth as in Jesus
+has been learnt by mankind, justice and piety will hold a balanced sway.
+The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic: he will
+be devout. He will not be narrow and self-seeking; he will not be
+pharisaic and pretentious, practising the world's ethics with the
+Christian's creed: he will be upright and generous, manly and godlike.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[118] Quid si post =hout�s= distinctionem ascribas? _Vos autem non ita_
+(subaudi _facere convenit_), _qui didicistis_, etc.
+
+[119] Comp. Numb. xii. 7; Ps. i. 4; Luke xxii. 26, for this Hebraistic
+turn of expression.
+
+[120] Comp. Phil. iii. 2, 18; Titus i. 16.
+
+[121] See pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[122] =Esti al�theia en t� I�sou.= The article with the proper name is
+most significant. It points to the definite image of Jesus, in His
+actual person, that was made familiar by the preaching of Paul and the
+other apostles.
+
+[123] _L'Ant�christ_, pp. i. ii. 1, 2. This is a powerful and impressive
+work, of whose value those who know only the _Vie de J�sus_ can have
+little conception. Renan's faults are many and deplorable; but he is a
+writer of genius and of candour. His rationalism teems with precious
+inconsistencies. One hears in him always the Church bells ringing under
+the sea, the witness of a faith buried in the heart and never silenced,
+to which he confesses touchingly in the Preface to his _Souvenirs_.
+
+[124] =ananeousthai de t� pneumati tou noos hym�n, kai endysasthai to
+kainon anthr�pon, to kata Theo ktisthenta.=
+
+[125] Comp. pp. 29, 30.
+
+[126] It is important to distinguish the Greek adjectives =hagios= and
+=hosios=, with their derivatives. See Cremer's _N. T. Lexicon_ on these
+words, and Trench's _N. T. Synonyms_, � lxxxviii. Of the latter word, 1
+Thess. ii. 10; 1 Tim. i. 9, ii. 8; 2 Tim. iii. 3; Tit. i. 8 are the only
+examples in St Paul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+_DISCARDED VICES._
+
+    "Wherefore, having put away falsehood, 'speak ye truth each one with
+    his neighbour': for we are members one of another.
+
+    "'Be ye angry, and sin not': let not the sun go down upon your
+    provocation: neither give place to the devil.
+
+    "Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour,
+    working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have
+    whereof to give to him that hath need.
+
+    "Let no worthless speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is
+    good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them
+    that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were
+    sealed unto the day of redemption.
+
+    "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing
+    be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to
+    another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in
+    Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved
+    children; and walk in love, even as the Christ also loved you, and
+    gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an
+    odour of a sweet smell.
+
+    "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not
+    even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor
+    foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not befitting: but rather
+    giving of thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator,
+    nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any
+    inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you
+    with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of
+    God upon the sons of disobedience."--EPH. iv. 25--v. 6.
+
+
+The transformation described in the last paragraph (vv. 17-24) has now
+to be carried into detail. The vices of the old heathen self must be
+each of them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new man in
+Christ Jesus.
+
+The peculiarity of the instructions given by the apostle for this
+purpose does not lie in the virtues enjoined, but in the light in which
+they are set and the motives by which they are inculcated. The common
+conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness; they were
+denounced with eloquence by heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New
+Testament differed in many respects from the best moral philosophy: in
+its direct appeal to the conscience, in its vigour and decision, in the
+clearness with which it traced our maladies to the heart's alienation
+from God; but most of all, in the remedy which it applied, the new
+principle of faith in Christ. The surgeon's knife lays bare the root of
+the disease; and the physician's hand pours in the healing balm.
+
+Let us observe at the outset that St Paul deals with the actual and
+pressing temptations of his readers. He recalls what they had been, and
+forbids them to be such again. The associations and habits of former
+life, the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile society,
+and added to all this, as we discover from chapter v. 6, the persuasions
+of the sophistical teachers now beginning to infest the Church, tended
+to draw the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break down the
+moral distinctions that separated them from the pagan world.
+
+Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile life, the following
+are here distinguished: _lying_, _theft_, _anger_, _idle speech_,
+_malice_, _impurity_, _greed_. These may be reduced to sins of temper,
+of word, and of act. Let us discuss them in the order in which they are
+brought before us.
+
+1. "The falsehood"[127] of verse 25 is the antithesis of "the truth"
+from which righteousness and holiness spring (ver. 24). In accepting the
+one, Paul's Gentile readers "had put off" the other. When these heathen
+converts became Christians, they renounced the great lie of idolatry,
+the system of error and deceit on which their lives were built. They
+have passed from the realm of illusion to that of truth. "Now," the
+apostle says, "let your daily speech accord with this fact: you have
+bidden farewell to falsehood; _speak_ truth each with his neighbour."
+The true religion breeds truthful men; a sound faith makes an honest
+tongue. Hence there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing more
+shocking than the conduct of those who defend what they call "the truth"
+by disingenuous arts, by tricks of rhetoric and the shifts of an
+unscrupulous partizanship. "Will you speak unrighteously for God, and
+talk deceitfully for Him?" _As Christ's truth is in me_ cries the
+apostle, when he would give the strongest possible assurance of the fact
+he wishes to assert.[128] The social conventions and make-believes, the
+countless simulations and dissimulations by which the game of life is
+carried on belong to the old man with his lusts of deceit, to the
+universal lie that runs through all ungodliness and unrighteousness,
+which is in the last analysis the denial of God.
+
+St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16, in which the
+prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that
+they should "speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and
+the judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you," he
+continues, "imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no
+false oath. For all these things do I hate, saith the Lord." Such is the
+law of the New Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the
+intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command
+and adds the reason, "For we are _members one of another_." But the word
+_neighbour_, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited
+import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When
+the apostle bids his converts "Follow what is good towards one another,
+and towards all" (1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly
+obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.
+
+Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces
+all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to
+his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should
+conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other.
+Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his
+neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all
+intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect
+truthfulness is scarcely possible. "Self-respect will never destroy
+self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible
+to the temptations of falsehood" (Harless).
+
+2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old
+Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. "_Be ye angry_, and sin
+not": so the words of Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the
+margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, "Stand in awe, and
+sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." The
+apostle's further injunction, that anger should be stayed before
+nightfall, accords with the Psalmist's words; the calming effect of the
+night's quiet the apostle anticipates in the approach of evening. As the
+day's heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should
+die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at
+evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St
+Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: "If at any time
+they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the
+sun set they would take each other's hands and embracing make up their
+quarrel." If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be
+delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those many facts of
+Gentile life which "show the work of the law written in their hearts"
+(Rom. ii. 15). The passion which outlives the day, on which the angry
+man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his
+breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.
+
+There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood
+over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a "place given" to the
+tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the
+soul, from which he may shoot his "fire-tipped darts" (vi. 16). Let us
+dismiss with each day the day's vexations, commending as evening falls
+our cares and griefs to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for
+ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness and a
+better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience
+and charity, to bring into the world's turmoil a calm and generous
+wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall
+be called sons of God.
+
+Still the apostle says: "_Be angry_, and sin not." He does not condemn
+anger in itself, nor wholly forbid it a place within the breast of the
+saint. Wrath is a glorious attribute of God,--perilous, indeed, for the
+best of men; but he who cannot be angry has no strength for good. The
+apostle knew this holy passion, the flame of Jehovah that burns
+unceasingly against the false and foul and cruel. But he knew its
+dangers--how easily an ardent soul kindled to exasperation forgets the
+bounds of wisdom and love; how strong and jealous a curb the temper
+needs, lest just indignation turn to sin, and Satan gain over us a
+double advantage, first by the wicked provocation and then by the
+uncontrolled resentment it excites.
+
+3. From anger we pass to _theft_.
+
+The eighth commandment is put here in a form indicating that some of the
+apostle's readers had been habitual sinners against it. Literally his
+words read: "Let him _that steals_ play the thief no more." The Greek
+present participle does not, however, necessarily imply a pursuit now
+going on, but an habitual or characteristic pursuit, that by which the
+agent was known and designated: "Let the thief no longer steal!" From
+the lowest dregs of the Greek cities--from its profligate and criminal
+classes--the gospel had drawn its converts (comp. 1 Cor. vi. 9-11). In
+the Ephesian Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity had
+to make of them honest workmen.
+
+The words of verse 28, addressed to a company of thieves, vividly show
+the transforming effect of the gospel of Christ: "Let him toil, working
+with his hands what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him
+that is in need." The apostle brings the loftiest motives to bear
+instantly upon the basest natures, and is sure of a response. He makes
+no appeal to self-interest, he says nothing of the fear of punishment,
+nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for their fellows, the
+spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity is to set those pilfering and
+violent hands to unaccustomed toil. The appeal was as wise as it was
+bold. Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded. Preach to
+them thrift and self-improvement, show them the pleasures of an ordered
+home and the advantages of respectability, they will still feel that
+their own way of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine
+spark of charity be kindled in their breast--let the man have love and
+pity and not self to work for, and he is a new creature. His indolence
+is conquered; his meanness changed to the noble sense of a common
+manhood. Love never faileth.
+
+4. We have passed from speech to temper, and from temper to act; in the
+warning of verses 29, 30 we come back to speech again.
+
+We doubt whether _corrupt talk_ is here intended. That comes in for
+condemnation in verses 2 and 3 of the next chapter. The Greek adjective
+is the same that is used of the "_worthless_ fruit" of the "_worthless_
+[_good-for-nothing_] tree" in Matthew xii. 33; and again of the "_bad_
+fish" of Matthew xiii. 48, which the fisherman throws away not because
+they are corrupt or offensive, but because they are useless for food. So
+it is against _inane_, inept and useless talk that St Paul sets his
+face. Jesus said that "for _every idle word_ men must give account to
+God" (Matt. xii. 36).
+
+Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of the gift of speech.
+"By thy words," He said to His disciples, "thou shalt be justified, and
+by thy words condemned." The possession of a human tongue is an immense
+responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. (With the
+tongue we should include the pen, as being the tongue's deputy.) Who
+shall say how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the
+irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of spirit, the
+destruction of Christian fellowship that is due to thoughtless speech
+and writing? The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words, he puts
+an embargo on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough to
+say: "My chatter does nobody harm; if there is no good in it, there is
+no evil." He replies: "If you cannot speak to profit, be silent till you
+can."
+
+Not that St Paul requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious.
+Many a true word is spoken in jest; and "grace" may be "given to the
+hearers" by words clothed in the grace of a genial fancy and playful
+wit, as well as in the direct enforcement of solemn themes. It is the
+mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous--spoken from the pulpit or the
+easy chair--the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless,
+graceless, unprofitable utterance that St Paul desires to arrest: "let
+it not proceed out of your mouth." Such speech must not "escape the
+fence of the teeth." It is an oppression to every serious listener; it
+is an injury to the utterer himself. Above all, it "grieves the Holy
+Spirit."
+
+The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of God's possession in
+us;[129] it is the assurance to ourselves that we are His sons in
+Christ and heirs of life eternal. From the day it is affixed to the
+heart, this seal need never be broken nor the witness withheld, "until
+the day of redemption." Dwelling within the Church as the guard of its
+communion, and loving us with the love of God, the Spirit of grace is
+hurt and grieved by foolish words coming from lips that He has
+sanctified. As Israel in its ancient rebellions "vexed His Holy Spirit"
+(Isai. lxiii. 10), so do those who burden Christian fellowship and who
+enervate their own inward life by speech without worth and purpose. As
+His fire is quenched by distrust (1 Thess. v. 19), so His love is vexed
+by folly. His witness grows faint and silent; the soul loses its joyous
+assurance, its sense of the peace of God. When our inward life thus
+declines, the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless speech. Or
+we have listened willingly and without reproof to "words that may do
+hurt," words of foolish jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and
+backbiting. The Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated
+temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is purged and the
+wilful tongue bends to the yoke of Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy
+Spirit, that He be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray
+evermore: "Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my
+lips."
+
+5. In his previous reproofs the apostle has glanced in various ways at
+love as the remedy of our moral disorders and defects. Falsehood, anger,
+theft, misuse of the tongue involve disregard of the welfare of others;
+if they do not spring from positive ill-will, they foster and aggravate
+it. It is now time to deal directly with this evil that assumes so many
+forms, the most various of our sins and companion to every other: "Let
+all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put
+away from you, with all malice."
+
+The last of these terms is the most typical. _Malice_ is badness of
+disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any
+special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath.
+_Bitterness_ is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the
+exasperating object. _Wrath_ and _anger_ are synonymous, the former
+being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the
+settled indignation of the aggrieved soul: this passion was put under
+restraint already in verses 26, 27. _Clamour_ and _railing_ give audible
+expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud
+self-assertion of the angry man, who will make every one hear his
+grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his
+enemy's camp, and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult.
+
+These sins of speech were rife in heathen society; and there were some
+amongst Paul's readers, doubtless, who found it hard to forgo their
+indulgence. Especially difficult was this when Christians suffered all
+manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and former friends; it cost
+a severe struggle to be silent and "keep the mouth as with a bridle"
+under fierce and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and
+railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing,--this was one of the
+lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.
+
+_Kindness_ in act, _tenderheartedness_ of feeling are to take the place
+of malice with its brood of bitter passions. Where injury used to be met
+with reviling and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the new
+life will be found "forgiving one another, even as God in Christ
+forgave" them. Here we touch the spring of Christian virtue, the master
+motive in the apostle's theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is
+the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology. The sacrifice of
+Calvary, while it is the ground of our salvation, supplies the standard
+and incentive of moral attainment. It makes life _an imitation of God_.
+
+The commencement of the new chapter at this point makes an unfortunate
+division; for its first two verses are in close consecution with the
+last verse of chapter iv. By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by
+readiness to forgive, God's "beloved children" will "show themselves
+imitators" of their Father. The apostle echoes the saying of his Master,
+in which the law of His kingdom was laid down: "Love your enemies, and
+do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and
+you shall be called children of the Highest: for He is kind to the
+thankless and evil. Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful"
+(Luke vi. 35, 36). Before the cross of Jesus was set up, men could not
+know how much God loved the world and how far He was ready to go in the
+way of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love displayed in
+the Father's daily providence. He bids us imitate Him who makes His sun
+shine and His rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the
+good. To the insight of Jesus, nature's impartial bounties in which
+unbelief sees only moral indifference, spoke of God's compassion; they
+proceed from the same love that gave His Son to taste death for every
+man.
+
+In chapter iv. 32-v. 2 the Father's love and the Son's self-sacrifice
+are spoken of in terms precisely parallel. They are altogether one in
+quality. Christ does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father to
+love His children; it is the Divine compassion in Christ that dictates
+and carries into effect the sacrifice. At the same time it was "an
+_offering_ and a _sacrifice_ to God." God is love; but love is not
+everything in God. Justice is also Divine, and absolute in its own
+realm. Law can no more forgo its rights than love forget its
+compassions. Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to
+mark out its path of obedience, or it remains an effusive, ineffectual
+sentiment, helpless to bless and save. Christ's feet followed the stern
+and strait path of self-devotion; "He humbled Himself and became
+obedient," He was "born under law." And the law of God imposing death as
+the penalty for sin, which shaped Christ's sacrifice, made it acceptable
+to God. Thus it was "an odour of a sweet smell."
+
+Hence the love which follows Christ's example, is love wedded with duty.
+It finds in an ordered devotion to the good of men the means to fulfil
+the all-holy Will and to present in turn its "offering to God." Such
+love will be above the mere pleasing of men, above sentimentalism and
+indulgence; it will aim higher than secular ideals and temporal
+contentment. It regards men in their kinship to God and obligation to
+His law, and seeks to make them worthy of their calling. All human
+duties, for those who love God, are subordinate to this; all commands
+are summed up in one: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The
+apostle pronounced the first and last word of his teaching when he said:
+_Walk in love, as the Christ also loved us._
+
+6. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile world of that time with
+infamy,--its _uncleanness_.
+
+St Paul has stigmatized this already in the burning words of verse 19.
+There we saw this vice in its intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set
+in the light of Christ's love on the one hand (ver. 2), and of the final
+judgement on the other (vv. 5, 6). Thus it is banished from the
+Christian fellowship in every form--even in the lightest, where it
+glances from the lips in words of jest: "Fornication and all
+uncleanness, let it not even be named among you." Along with
+"filthiness, foolish talk and jesting" are to be heard no more. Passing
+from verse 2 to verse 3 by the contrastive _But_, one feels how
+repugnant are these things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the
+sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens our life on earth;
+its grace drives wanton and selfish passions from the heart, and
+destroys the pestilence of evil in the social atmosphere. Lust cannot
+breathe in the sight of the cross.
+
+The "good-for-nothing speech" of chapter iv. 29 comes up once more for
+condemnation in the _foolish speech_ and _jesting_ of this passage. The
+former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both,
+under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness.
+Loose speech easily becomes low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence,
+finds a tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations of
+life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and jests that
+desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid open grossness.
+
+St Paul's word for "jesting" is one of the singular terms of this
+epistle. By etymology it denotes a _well-turned_ style of expression,
+the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and
+aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the
+polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word
+describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and
+persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated,--the
+wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. "The very profligate old
+man in the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus (iii. I. 42-52), who prides
+himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and
+refinement [_cavillator lepidus_, _facetus_], is exactly the
+=eutrapelos=. And keeping in mind that =eutrapelia=, being only once
+expressly and by name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians,
+it is not a little notable to find him urging that all this was to be
+expected from him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:--
+
+    Post _Ephesi sum natus_; non enim in Apulia, non Animulae."[130]
+
+In place of senseless prating and wanton jests--things unbefitting to a
+rational creature, much more to a saint--the Asian Greeks are to find in
+_thanksgiving_ employment for their ready tongue. St Paul's rule is not
+one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue that disported itself in
+unhallowed and frivolous utterance, may be turned into a precious
+instrument for God's service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the
+jester's lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise which once
+poured out dishonour to its Maker and shame to His image in man.
+
+7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning
+(iv. 19), uncleanness is joined with _covetousness_, or _greed_.
+
+This, too, is "not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints."
+_Money! property!_ these are the words dearest and most familiar in the
+mouths of a large class of men of the world, the only themes on which
+they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from
+the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the
+trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even
+into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation,
+it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is
+becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an "idolater" of
+
+    "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+    From heaven."
+
+The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator and the
+unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the
+god of this world exclude themselves from their "inheritance in the
+kingdom of Christ and of God."
+
+A serious warning this for all who handle the world's wealth. They have
+a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in
+their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its
+slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,--the passion for
+accumulation, the lust of property? None are found more dead to the
+claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ
+and God, none more "closely wrapped" within their "sensual fleece" than
+rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen
+and won his kingdom. He "receives in his lifetime his good things";
+afterwards he must look for "torments."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[127] =Dio apothemenoi to pseudos.= Despite the commentators, we must
+hold to it that _the lie_, _the falsehood_ is objective and concrete;
+not _lying_, or _falsehood_ as a subjective act, habit, or
+quality,--which would have been rather =pseudologia= (comp. =m�rologia=,
+v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv. 2, =pseudolog�n=), or =to pseudes=. So in Rom. i.
+25, =to pseudos= is "the [one great] lie" which runs through all
+idolatry; and in 2 Thess. ii. 11 it denotes "the lie" which Antichrist
+imposes on those ready to believe it,--viz., that he himself is God.
+Accordingly, we take the participle =apothemenoi= to signify not what
+the readers are to do, but what they _had done_ in renouncing
+heathenism. The apostle requires consistency: "Since you are now of the
+truth, be truth-speaking men."
+
+[128] 2 Cor. i. 18, 19, xi. 10.
+
+[129] See ch. i. 13, 14, and 18 (last clause).
+
+[130] Trench: _N. T. Synonyms_, � xxxiv.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+_DOCTRINE AND ETHICS._
+
+    "We are members one of another....
+
+    "Let the thief labour ... that he may have whereof to give to him
+    that hath need....
+
+    "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the
+    day of redemption....
+
+    "Forgive each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be ye
+    imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as the
+    Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a
+    sacrifice to God....
+
+    "No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an
+    idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
+    God."--EPH. iv. 25-v. 6.
+
+
+The homily that we have briefly reviewed in the last Chapter demands
+further consideration. It affords a striking and instructive example of
+St Paul's method as a teacher of morals, and makes an important
+contribution to evangelical ethics. The common vices are here prohibited
+on specifically Christian grounds. The new nature formed in Christ casts
+them off as alien and dead things; they are the sloughed skin of the old
+life, the discarded dress of the old man who was slain by the cross of
+Christ and lies buried in His grave.
+
+The apostle does not condemn these sins as being contrary to God's law:
+that is taken for granted. But the legal condemnation was ineffectual
+(Rom. viii. 3). The wrath revealed from heaven against man's
+unrighteousness had left that unrighteousness unchastened and defiant.
+The revelation of law, approved and echoed by conscience, taught man his
+guilt; it could do no more. All this St Paul assumes; he builds on the
+ground of law and its acknowledged findings.
+
+Nor does the apostle make use of the principles of philosophical ethics,
+which in their general form were familiar to him as to all educated men
+of the day. He says nothing of the rule of nature and right reason, of
+the intrinsic fitness, the harmony and beauty of virtue; nothing of
+expediency as the guide of life, of the inward contentment that comes
+from well-doing, of the wise calculation by which happiness is
+determined and the lower is subordinated to the higher good. St Paul
+nowhere discountenances motives and sanctions of this sort; he
+contravenes none of the lines of argument by which reason is brought to
+the aid of duty, and conscience vindicates itself against passion and
+false self-interest. Indeed, there are maxims in his teaching which
+remind us of each of the two great schools of ethics, and that make room
+in the Christian theory of life both for the philosophy of experience
+and that of intuition. The true theory recognizes, indeed, the
+experimental and evolutional as well as the fixed and intrinsic in
+morality, and supplies their synthesis.
+
+But it is not the apostle's business to adjust his position to that of
+Stoics and Epicureans, or to unfold a new philosophy; but to teach the
+way of the new life. His Gentile disciples had been untruthful,
+passionate in temper, covetous, licentious: the gospel which he preached
+had turned them from these sins to God; from the same gospel he draws
+the motives and convictions which are to shape their future life and to
+give to the new spirit within them its fit expression. St Paul has no
+quarrel with ethical science, much less with the inspired law of his
+fathers; but both had proved ineffectual to keep men from iniquity, or
+to redeem them fallen into it. Above them both, above all theories and
+all external rules he sets the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.
+
+The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does not lie in its
+detailed precepts. There is not one, it may be, even of the noblest
+maxims of Jesus that had not been uttered by some previous moralist.
+With the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible to collect from
+non-Christian sources--from Greek philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud,
+from Egyptian sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius--a moral
+anthology which thus sifted out of the refuse of antiquity, like
+particles of iron drawn by the magnet, may bear comparison with the
+ethics of Christianity. If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we should
+expect Him to gather into one all that is highest in the thoughts and
+aspirations of mankind. Addressing the Athenians on Mars' Hill, the
+apostle could appeal to "certain of your own poets" in support of his
+doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The noblest minds in all ages witness
+to Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be, in some sort, of His
+kindred.
+
+      "They are but broken lights of Thee;
+    And Thou, O Lord, art more than they!"
+
+It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the soul with Him
+and with the living God through Him, that forms the vital and
+constitutive factor of Christianity. Here is the secret of its moral
+efficacy. The Christ is the centre root and of the race; He is the
+image of God in which we were made. The life-blood of mankind flowed in
+Him as in its heart, and poured forth from Him as from its fountain in
+sacrifice for the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and restored
+the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand fragments; but He did much
+more than this. While He re-created in His personal character our lost
+manhood, by His death and resurrection He has gained for that ideal a
+transcendent power that seizes upon men and regenerates and transforms
+them. "With unveiled face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord,
+we are changed into the same image, [receiving the glory that we see] as
+from the Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+There is, therefore, an evangelical ethics, a Christian science of life.
+"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" has a system and method
+of its own. It has a rational solution and explanation to render for our
+moral problems. But its solution is given, as St Paul and as his Master
+loved to give it, in practice, not in theory. It teaches the art of
+living to multitudes to whom the names of ethics and moral science are
+unknown. Those who understand the method of Christ best are commonly too
+busy in its practice to theorize about it. They are physicians tending
+the sick and the dying, not professors in some school of medicine. Yet
+professors have their use, as well as practitioners. The task of
+developing a Christian science of life, of exhibiting the truth of
+revelation in its theoretical bearings and its relations to the thought
+of the age, forms a part of the practical duties of the Church and
+touches deeply the welfare of souls. For other times this work has been
+nobly accomplished by Christian thinkers. Shall we not pray the Lord of
+the harvest that He will thrust forth into this field fit labourers;
+that He will raise up men mighty through God to overthrow every high
+thing that exalts itself against His knowledge, and wise to build up to
+the level of the times the great fabric of Christian ethics and
+discipline?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There emerge in this exhortation four distinct principles, which lay at
+the basis of St Paul's views of life and conduct.
+
+I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of _the Fatherhood of God_,
+"Be imitators of God," he writes, "as beloved children." And in chapter
+iv. 24: "Put on the new man, which _was created after God_."
+
+Man's life has its law, for it has its source, in the nature of the
+Eternal. Behind our race-instincts and the laws imposed on us in the
+long struggle for existence, behind those imperatives of practical
+reason involved in the structure of our intelligence, is the presence
+and the active will of Almighty God our heavenly Father. His image we
+see in the Son of man.
+
+Here is the fountainhead of truth, from which the two great streams of
+philosophical thought upon morals have diverged. If man is the child of
+a Being absolutely good, then moral goodness belongs to the essence of
+his nature; it is discoverable in the instincts of his reason and will.
+Were not our nature warped by sin, such reasoning must have commanded
+immediate assent and led to consistent and self-evident results. Again,
+if man is the _child_ of God, the finite of the Infinite, his moral
+character must, presumably, have been in the beginning germinal rather
+than complete, needing--even apart from sin and its
+malformations--development and education, the discipline of a fatherly
+providence, inculcating the lessons and forming the habits which belong
+to his ripe manhood and full-grown stature. Intuitional morals bear
+witness to the God of creation; experimental morals to the God of
+providence and history. The Divine Fatherhood is the keystone of the
+arch in which they meet.
+
+The command to "be imitators of God" makes _personality_ the sovereign
+element in life. If consciousness is a finite and passing phenomenon, if
+God be but a name for the sum of the impersonal laws that regulate the
+universe, for the "stream of tendency" in the worlds, _Father_ and
+_love_ are meaningless terms applied to the Supreme and religion
+dissolves into an impalpable mist. Is the universe governed by personal
+will, or by impersonal force? Is reason, or is gravitation the index to
+the nature of the Absolute? This is the vital question of modern
+thought. The latter is the answer given by a large, if not a
+preponderant body of philosophical opinion in our own day,--as it was
+given, virtually, by the natural philosophers of Greece in the dawn of
+science. Man's triumphs over nature and the splendour of his discoveries
+in the physical realm bewilder his reason. The scientists, like other
+conquerors, have been intoxicated with victory. The universe, it seemed,
+was about to yield to them its last secrets; they were prepared to
+analyze the human soul and resolve the conception of God into its
+material elements. Religion and conscience, however, prove to be
+intractable subjects in the physical laboratory; they are coming out of
+the crucible unchanged and refined. We are able by this time to take a
+more sober measure of the possibilities of the scientific method, and to
+see what inductive logic and natural selection can do for us, and what
+they cannot do. We can walk in the light of the new revelation, without
+being dazzled by it. Things are less altered than we thought. The old
+boundaries reappear. The spirit resumes its place, and rules a wider
+realm than before. Reason refuses to be the victim of its own success,
+and to immolate itself for the deification of material law. "Forasmuch
+as we are God's offspring," we ought not to think, and we will not think
+that the Godhead is like to blind forces and reasonless properties of
+matter. Love, thought, will in us raise our being above the realm of the
+impersonal; and these faculties point us upward to Him from whom they
+came, the Father of the spirits of all flesh.
+
+The great tide of joy, the victorious energy which the sense of God's
+love brings into the life of a Christian, is evidence of its reality.
+The believer is a child walking in the light of his Father's
+smile--dependent, ignorant, but the object of an Almighty love. A
+thousand tokens speak to him of the Divine care; his tasks and trials
+are sweetened by the confidence that they are appointed for wise ends
+beyond his present knowledge. To another in that same house there is no
+heavenly Father, no unseen hand that guides, no gleam of a brighter and
+purer day lighting up its dull chambers. There are human companions,
+weak, erring and wearying like oneself. There is work to do, with the
+night coming swiftly; and the brave heart girds itself to duty, finding
+in the service of man its motive and employment--but, alas, with how
+poor success and how faint a hope!
+
+It is not the loss of strength for human service, nor the dying out of
+joy which unbelief entails, that is its chief calamity; but the
+unbelief itself. The sun in the soul's heaven is put out. The personal
+relationship to the Supreme which gave dignity and worth to our
+individual being, which imparted sacredness and enduring power to all
+other ties, is destroyed. The heart is orphaned; the temple of the
+spirit desolate. The mainspring of life is broken.
+
+    "Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth!
+              Hide not Thy face from me,
+      Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit!"
+
+II. _The solidarity of mankind in Christ_ furnishes the apostle with a
+powerful lever for raising the ethical standard of his readers. The
+thought that "we are members one of another" forbids deceit. That he may
+"have whereof to give to the needy" is the purpose that provokes the
+thief to industry. The desire to "give grace" to the hearers and to
+"build them up" in truth and goodness imparts seriousness and elevation
+to social intercourse. The irritations and injuries we inflict on each
+other, with or without purpose, furnish occasion for us to "be kind one
+to another, good-hearted, _forgiving yourselves_"--for this is the
+expression the apostle uses in chapter iv. 32, and in Colossians iii.
+13. Self is so merged in the community, that in dealing censure or
+forgiveness to an offending brother the Christian man feels as though he
+were dealing with himself--as though it were the hand that forgave the
+foot for tripping, or the ear that pardoned some blunder of the eye.
+
+_Showing-grace_ is what the apostle literally says here, speaking both
+of human and Divine forgiveness.[131] In this lies the charm and power
+of true forgiveness. The forgiver after the order of grace does not
+pardon like a judge moved by magnanimity or pity for transgressors, but
+in love to his own kind and desire for their amendment. He identifies
+himself with the wrong-doer, weighs his temptation and all that drew him
+into error. Such forgiveness, while it never ignores the wrong, admits
+every qualifying circumstance and just extenuation. This is the kind of
+pardon that touches the sinner's heart; for it goes to the heart of the
+sin, isolating it from all other feelings and conditions that are not
+sin; it takes the wrong upon itself in understanding and perception; it
+puts its finger upon the aching, festering spot where the criminality
+lies and applies to that its healing balm.
+
+"Even as God in Christ forgave you." And how did God forgive? Not by a
+grand imperial decree, as of some monarch too exalted to resent the
+injuries of men or to inquire into their futile proceedings. Had such
+forgiveness been possible to Divine justice, it could have wrought in us
+no real salvation. Our forgiveness is that of God in Christ. The
+Forgiver has sat down by the prisoner's side, has felt his misery and
+the force of his temptations, and in everything but the actual sin has
+made Himself one with the sinner, even to bearing the extreme penalty of
+his guilt. In the act of making sacrifice, Jesus prayed for those that
+slew Him: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!" This
+intercession breathed the spirit of the new forgiveness. There is a real
+remission of sins, a release granted justly and upon due satisfaction;
+but it is the act of justice charged with love, of a justice as tender
+and considerate as it is strong, and which eagerly takes account of all
+that bespeaks in the offender a possibility of better things. It is a
+forgiveness that does justice to the humanity as well as the criminality
+in the sinner.
+
+To proclaim by word and deed this forgiveness of God to the sinful world
+is the vocation of the Church. And where she does thus declare it, by
+whatever means or ministry, Christ's promise to her is verified:
+"Whose-soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them." We may so
+reconcile men to ourselves, as to bring them back to God. Has some one
+done you a wrong? there is your opportunity of saving a soul from death
+and hiding a multitude of sins. Thus Christ used the great wrong we all
+did Him. It is your privilege to show the wrong-doer that you and he are
+made one by the blood of Christ.
+
+"Walk in love," St Paul says, "as the Christ also loved us and gave up
+Himself for us a sacrifice." When the apostle writes _the Christ_, he
+points us along the whole line of the revelation of the cross.[132] We
+think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness of such love as
+this. Christ's was a representative and exemplary love, with its
+forerunners and its followers all walking in one path. "The Christ loved
+_and gave_"; for love that does not give, that prompts to no effort and
+puts itself to no sacrifice, is but a luxury of the heart,--useless and
+even selfish. And He "gave up _Himself_"--the only gift that could
+suffice. The rich who bestow many gifts in furtherance of humanitarian
+and religious work and still do not bestow themselves, their sympathetic
+thought, their presence and personal aid, are withholding the best
+thing, the one thing required to make their bounties efficacious. In
+what we give and forgive, it is the accent of sympathy, the giving of
+the heart with it that adds grace to the act. "Though I dole out all my
+goods, though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it
+profiteth me nothing." We do a thousand things to serve and benefit our
+fellow-men, and yet evade the real sacrifice,--which is simply to love
+them.
+
+In studying this epistle, we have felt increasingly that the Church is
+the centre of humanity. The love born and nourished in the household of
+faith goes out into the world with a universal mission. The solidarity
+of moral interests that is realized there, embraces all the kindreds of
+the earth. The incarnation of Christ knits all flesh into one redeemed
+family. The continents and races of mankind are members one of another,
+with Jesus Christ for head. We are brothers and sisters of humanity: He
+our elder brother, and God our common Father in heaven,--His Father and
+ours.
+
+Auguste Comte writes in his _System of Positive Polity_: "The promises
+of supernatural religion appealed exclusively to man's selfish
+instincts.... The sympathetic instincts found no place in the
+theological synthesis."[133] It would be impossible to affirm anything
+more completely at variance with the truth, anything more absolutely
+opposed to the doctrine of Christ and the theological synthesis of the
+apostles. And yet it was upon this ground that the great French thinker
+renounced Christianity, proposing his new religion of humanity as a
+substitute for a selfish and effete supernaturalism! Why did he not go
+to the New Testament itself to find out what Christianity means? "To
+combine permanently concert with independence," Comte excellently says,
+"is the capital problem of society, a problem which religion alone can
+solve, by love primarily, then by faith on a basis of love."[134]
+Precisely so; and this is the solution offered by Jesus Christ. His
+self-sacrificing love is the basis on which our faith rests; and that
+faith works by love in all those who truly possess it. This is the
+evangelical theory. The morale of the Church, it is true, has fallen
+shamefully below its doctrine; but this doctrine is, after all, the one
+fruitful and progressive moral force in the world; and it is certain to
+be carried into effect.
+
+In the darkest hour of Israel's oppression and of international hate,
+one of her great prophets thus described the triumph of supernatural
+religion: "In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria,
+a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that the LORD of hosts hath
+blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work
+of my hands, and Israel my inheritance" (Isai. xix. 24, 25). This is our
+programme still.
+
+III. Another of St Paul's ruling ideas lying at the basis of Christian
+ethics, is his conception of _man's future destiny_. The apostle warns
+his readers that they "grieve not the Holy Spirit, in whom they were
+sealed till the day of redemption." He tells them that "the impure and
+the covetous have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."
+
+There is thus disclosed a world beyond the world, a life growing out of
+life, an eternal and invisible kingdom of whose possession the Spirit
+that lives in Christian men is the earnest and firstfruits. This kingdom
+is the joint inheritance of the sons of God, brethren with Christ and in
+Christ, who are conformed to His image and found worthy to "stand before
+the Son of man." Those are excluded from the inheritance, who by their
+moral nature are alien to it: "Without are dogs, sorcerers,
+whoremongers, idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie."
+This revelation has had a most powerful influence on the progress of
+ethics. It has given a momentous importance to individual conduct, a new
+grandeur to the moral issues of the present life. "Man's life," viewed
+in the light of the Christian gospel, "has duties that are alone great,
+that go up to Heaven, and down to Hell." The tangled skein is at last to
+be unravelled, the mysterious problem of mortal life will have its
+solution at the judgement-seat of Jesus Christ.
+
+It is true that the wicked flourish and spread themselves like green
+trees in the sunshine; and the covetous boast of their hearts' desire.
+To see this was the trial of ancient faith; and the good man had to
+charge himself constantly that he should not fret because of evil-doers.
+It required an heroic faith to believe in God's kingdom and
+righteousness, when the visible course of things made all against them,
+and there was no clear light beyond. God's saints had to learn first
+that God is Himself the sufficient good, and must be trusted to do
+right. But this was the faith of defence rather than of victory,--of
+endurance, not enthusiasm. In the knowledge of Christ's victory over
+death and entrance on our behalf into the heavenly world, "in hope of
+life eternal which God who cannot lie hath promised," men have fought
+against their own sins, have struggled for the right and spent
+themselves to save their fellows with a vigour and success never
+witnessed before, and in numbers far exceeding those that all other
+creeds and systems have enlisted in the holy cause of humanity.
+
+Human reason had guessed and hope had dreamed of the soul's
+immortality. Christianity gives this hope certainty, and adds to it the
+assurance of the resurrection of the body. Man's entire nature is thus
+redeemed. Chastity takes its due place amongst the virtues, and becomes
+the mark of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan life. "The body is
+not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God
+who raised up the Lord Jesus, will raise us also through His power. Your
+bodies are limbs of Christ, ... a temple of the Holy Spirit which you
+have from God.... Glorify God in your body." So St Paul exhorts the
+Christians of Corinth (1 Ep. vi.), living in the centre and shrine of
+heathen vice. This doctrine of the sanctity of the body has been the
+salvation of the family. It has saved civilization from perishing
+through sexual corruption, and is still our chief defence against this
+fearful evil.
+
+Our bodily dress, we now learn, is one with the spirit that it infolds.
+We shall lay it aside only to resume it,--transfigured, but with a form
+and impress continuous with its present being. This identical self, the
+same both in its outward and inward personality, will appear before the
+tribunal of Christ, that it may "receive the things done in the body."
+This announcement gives reasonableness and distinctness to the
+expectation of future judgement. The judgement assumes, with its solemn
+grandeur, a matter-of-fact reality, an immediate bearing on the daily
+conduct of life, which lends a powerful reinforcement to the conscience,
+while it supplies a fitting and glorious conclusion to our course as
+moral beings.
+
+IV. Finally, _the atonement of the cross_ stamps its own character and
+spirit on the entire ethics of Christianity. The Fatherhood of God, the
+unity and solidarity of mankind, the issues of eternal life or death
+awaiting us in the unseen world--all the great factors and fundamentals
+of revealed religion gather about the cross of Christ; they lend to it
+their august significance, and gain from it new import and
+impressiveness.
+
+The fact that Christ "gave Himself up for us an offering and sacrifice
+to God"--gave Himself, as it is put elsewhere, "for our sins"--throws an
+awful light upon the nature of human transgression. The blood spilt in
+the strife with our sin and shed to wash out its stain, reveals its
+foulness and malignity. All that inspired men had taught, that good men
+had believed and felt and penitent men confessed in regard to the evil
+of human sin, is more than verified by the sacrifice which the Holy One
+of God has undergone in order to put it away. It was felt that "the
+blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins," that the
+sacrifices man could offer for himself, or the creatures on his behalf,
+were ineffectual; the guilt was too real to be expiated in this fashion,
+the wound too deep to be healed by those poor appliances. But who had
+suspected that such a remedy as this was needed, and forthcoming? How
+deep the resentment of eternal Justice against the transgressions of
+men, if the blood of God's own Son alone could make propitiation! How
+rank the offence against the Divine holiness, if to purge its
+abomination the vessel containing the most sweet fragrance of His
+sinless nature must be broken! What tears of contrition, what cleansing
+fires of hate against our own sins, what scorn of their baseness, what
+stern resolves against them are awakened by the sight of the cross of
+our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+This negative side of the ethical bearing of Christ's sacrifice is
+implied in the words of the apostle in the second verse, and in the
+contrast indicated between its sweet savour and those unclean things
+whose very names it should banish from our midst (ver. 3). On its
+positive effects--the love and self-devotion it inspires, the conformity
+of our lives to its example--we have dwelt already. Let us add, however,
+that the sacrifice of Christ demands from us, above all, _devotion to
+Christ Himself_. Our first duty as Christians is to love Christ, to
+serve and follow Christ. "He died for all," says the apostle, "that the
+living should live no longer to themselves, but to Him that died for
+them and rose again." When Mary of Bethany poured on the Saviour's head
+her box of precious ointment, the Master accepted the tribute and
+approved the act; and the poor have been gainers by it a thousand times
+the pence which Judas deemed wasted on the head he was watching to
+betray. There is no conflict between the claims of Christ and those of
+philanthropy, between the needs of His worship and the needs of the
+destitute and suffering in our streets. Every new subject won to the
+kingdom of Christ is another helper won for His poor. Every act of love
+rendered to Him deepens the channel of sympathy by which relief and
+blessing come to sorrowful humanity.
+
+Let the gospel of Christ's kingdom be preached in word and deed to all
+nations, let the love of Christ be brought to bear upon the great masses
+of mankind, and the time of the world's salvation will be come. Its sin
+will be hated, forsaken, forgiven. Its social evils will be banished;
+its weapons of war turned to ploughshares and pruning hooks. Its
+scattered races and nations will be reunited in the obedience of faith,
+and formed into one Christian confederacy and commonwealth of the
+peoples, a peaceful kingdom of the Son of God's love.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[131] =Charizomenoi eautois, kath�s kai ho Theos en Christ� echarisato
+hymin.= So in Col. ii. 13, iii. 13; Rom. viii. 32; 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10;
+Luke vii. 42, 43.
+
+[132] Comp. pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[133] Vol. iv., pp. 22, 41 (Eng. Trans.).
+
+[134] Comte, vol. iv., p. 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+_THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT._
+
+    "Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness,
+    but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the
+    fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
+    proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship
+    with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them.
+    For the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even
+    to speak of; but all things when they are reproved are made manifest
+    by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light.
+    Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;
+      And the Christ shall shine upon thee.'"
+
+    EPH. v. 7-14.
+
+
+The contrast between the Christian and heathen way of life is now,
+finally, to be set forth under St Paul's familiar figure of _the light
+and the darkness_. He bids his Gentile readers not to be
+"joint-partakers with them"--with the sons of disobedience upon whom
+God's wrath is coming (ver. 6)--for he has hailed them already, in
+chapter iii. 6, as "joint-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
+through the gospel." "Once" indeed they shared in the lot of the
+disobedient; but for them the darkness has past, and the true light now
+shineth.
+
+In wrath or promise, in hope of life eternal or in the fearful looking
+for of judgement they, and we, must partake. This future participation
+depends upon present character. "Do not," the apostle entreats, "cast
+in your lot again with the unclean and covetous. Their ways you have
+renounced, and their doom you have exchanged for the heritage of the
+saints. Let no vain words deceive you into supposing that you may keep
+your new inheritance, and yet return to your old sins. Show yourselves
+worthy of your calling. Walk as children of the light, and you will
+possess the eternal kingdom." Each man carries with him into the next
+state of being the entail of his past life. That heritage depends on his
+own choice; yet not upon his individual will working by itself, but on
+the grace and will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted or
+rejected. He has light: he must walk in it; and he will reach the realm
+of light. Thus the apostle, in verses 7 and 8, concludes his warning
+against relapse into heathen sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 delineate _the character of the children of the light_:
+verses 11-14 set forth _their influence upon the surrounding darkness_.
+Into these two divisions the exposition of this paragraph naturally
+falls.
+
+I. "The fruit _of the light_" (not _of the Spirit_) is the true text of
+verse 9, as it stands in the older Greek copies, Versions, and Fathers.
+Calvin showed his judgement and independence in preferring this reading
+to that of the received Greek text. Similarly Bengel,[135] and most of
+the later critics. The sentence is parenthetical, and contains a
+singular and instructive figure. It is one of those sparks from the
+anvil, in which great writers not unfrequently give us their finest
+utterances,--sentences that get a peculiar point from the eagerness with
+which they are struck off in the heat and clash of thought, as the mind
+reaches forward to some thought lying beyond. The clause is an epitome,
+in five words, of Christian virtue, whose qualities, origin and method
+are all defined. It sums up exquisitely the moral teaching of the
+epistle. Galatians v. 22, 23 (_the fruit of the Spirit_) and Philippians
+iv. 8 (_Whatsoever things are true_, etc.) are parallel to this passage,
+as Pauline definitions, equally perfect, of the virtues of a Christian
+man. This has the advantage of the others in brevity and epigrammatic
+point.
+
+"You are light in the Lord," the apostle said; "walk as children of the
+light." But his readers might ask: "What does this mean? It is poetry:
+let us have it translated into plain prose. How shall we walk as
+children of the light? Show us the path."--"I will tell you," the
+apostle answers: "the fruit of the light is in all goodness and
+righteousness and truth. Walk in these ways; let your life bear this
+fruit; and you will be true children of the light of God. So living, you
+will find out what it is that pleases God, and how joyful a thing it is
+to please Him (ver. 10). Your life will then be free from all complicity
+with the works of darkness. It will shine with a brightness clear and
+penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness and transform
+the darkness itself. It will speak with a voice that all must hear,
+bidding them awake from the sleep of sin to see in Christ their light of
+life." Such is the setting in which this delightful definition stands.
+
+But it is more than a definition. While this sentence declares what
+Christian virtue is, it signifies also whence it comes, how it is
+generated and maintained. It asserts the connexion that exists between
+Christian character and Christian faith. The fruit cannot be grown
+without the tree, any more than the tree can grow soundly without
+yielding its proper fruit. _Right is the fruit of light._
+
+The principle that religion is the basis of moral virtue, is one that
+many moralists disputed in St Paul's time; and it has fallen into some
+discredit in our own. In philosophical theory, and to a large extent in
+popular maxim and belief, it is assumed that faith and morals, character
+and creed, are not only distinct but independent things and that there
+is no necessary connexion between the two. Christians are themselves to
+blame for this fallacy, through the discrepancy not seldom visible
+between their creed and life. Our narrowness of view and the harshness
+of our ethical judgements have helped to foster this grave error.
+
+Great Christian teachers have spoken of the virtues of the heathen as
+"splendid sins." But Christ and His apostles never said so. He said:
+"Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold." And they said: "In
+every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted
+of Him." The Christian creed has no jealousy in regard to human
+excellence. "Whatsoever things are true and honourable and just and
+pure," wherever and in whomsoever they are found, our faith honours and
+delights in them, and accepts them to the utmost of their worth. But
+then it claims them all for its own,--as the fruit of the one "true
+light which lighteth every man." Wherever this fruit appears, we know
+that that light has been, though its ways are past finding out. Through
+secret crevices, by subtle refractions and multiplied reflections, the
+true light reaches many a life lying far outside its visible course.
+
+All goodness has one source; for, said Jesus, "there is none good but
+one, that is God." The channels may be tortuous, obstructed and obscure:
+the stream is always one. There is nothing more touching, and nothing
+more encouraging to our faith in God's universal love and His will that
+all men should be saved, than to see, as we do sometimes under
+conditions most adverse and in spots the most unlikely, features of
+moral beauty and Christlike goodness appearing like springs in the
+desert or flowers blooming in Alpine snows,--signs of the universal
+light,
+
+    "Which yet in the absolutest drench of dark
+    Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
+    To the despair of hell!"
+
+The action of God's grace in Christ is by no means limited to the sphere
+of its recognized working. All the more earnestly on this account do we
+vindicate this grace against those who deny its necessity or the
+permanence of its moral influence. The fruit, in the main, they approve.
+But they would cut down the plant from which it came; they seek to
+quench the light under which it grew. They are like men who should take
+you to some lofty tree that has flourished for ages rooted in the rock,
+and who should say: "See how wide its branches and how stout its stem,
+how firmly it stands upon its native soil! Let us cut it loose from
+those dark and ugly roots--that mysterious theology, those superstitions
+of the past. The human mind has outgrown them. Virtue can support itself
+on its own proper basis. It is time to assert the dignity of man, and to
+proclaim the independence of morality." If these men have their way, and
+if European society renounces the authority of God, how quickly will
+that tree of the Lord's planting, the vast growth of Christian virtue
+and beneficence, wither to its topmost bough; and the next storm will
+bring it to the ground, with all its stately strength and summer beauty.
+Unbelief in God lays the axe at the root of human society. Our life--the
+life of individuals, of families and nations--is rooted in the unseen
+and hid with Christ in God. Thence it draws its vitality and virtue,
+through those spiritual fibres by which we are linked to God and lay
+hold on eternal life. Since Christ Jesus our forerunner entered the
+heavenly places, the anchor of human hopes has been cast within the
+veil; if that anchor drags, there is no other that will hold. The rocks
+are plain to see on which our richly freighted ship of life will
+founder. Without the religion of Jesus Christ, our civilization is not
+worth a hundred years' purchase.
+
+Moral effects do not follow upon their causes as rapidly as physical
+effects: they follow as certainly. We live largely upon the accumulated
+ethical capital of our forefathers. When that is spent, we are left to
+our intrinsic poverty of soul, to our faithlessness and feebleness. The
+scepticism of one generation bears fruit in the immorality of the next,
+or the next after that; the unbelief and cynicism of the teacher in the
+vice of his disciple. Such fruit of blasting and mildew the decay of
+faith has never failed to bear.
+
+The corresponding truth will be at once acknowledged. There is no real
+religion without virtue. If the godly man is not a good man, if he is
+not a sincere and pure-hearted man, "that man's religion is vain": no
+matter what his professions or his emotions, no matter what his
+services to the Church. He is one of those to whom Jesus Christ will
+say: "I know you not; depart from me, all ye that work iniquity." There
+is a flaw in him somewhere, a rift within the lute that spoils all its
+music. "A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit."
+
+In Christ's garden there forms in clustered beauty and perfectness the
+ripe growth of virtue, which in the sunshine of His love and under the
+freshening breath of His Spirit sends forth its spices and "yieldeth its
+fruit every month." In it there abide _goodness_, _righteousness_,
+_truth_--these three; and who shall say which of them is greatest?
+
+I. _Goodness_ stands first, as the most visible and obvious form of
+Christian excellence,--that which every one looks for in a religious
+man, and which every one admires when it is to be seen. Righteousness,
+regarded by itself, is not so readily appreciated. There is something
+austere and forbidding in it. "For a righteous man scarcely would one
+die"--you respect, even revere him; but you do not love him: "but for
+the good man peradventure, one would even dare to die."
+
+Christian goodness is the sanctification of the heart and its
+affections, renewed and governed by the love of God in Christ. It is,
+notwithstanding, but seldom inculcated in the New Testament;[136]
+because it is referred to its spring and principle in _love_. Goodness
+is love embodied. Now love, as the Christian knows it, is of God. "We
+love," says the apostle John, "because He first loved us.... He loved
+us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This is the
+faith that makes good men,--the best the world has ever known, the best
+that it holds now. Vanity, selfishness, evil temper and desire are
+shamed and burnt out of the soul by the holy fire of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ our Lord. In the warm, tender light of the cross the heart
+is softened and cleansed, and expanded to the widest charity. It becomes
+the home of all generous instincts and pure affections. So "the fruit of
+the light is in all goodness."
+
+2. And _righteousness_.
+
+This second and central definition applies a searching test to all
+spurious forms of goodness, superficial or sentimental,--to the goodness
+of mere good manners, or good nature. The principle of righteousness,
+fully understood, includes everything in moral worth, and is often used
+to denote in one word the entire fruit of God's grace in man. For
+righteousness is the sanctification of the conscience. It is loyalty to
+God's holy and perfect law. It is no mere outward keeping of formal
+rules, such as the legal righteousness of Judaism, no submission to
+necessity or calculation of advantages: it is a love of the law in a
+man's inmost spirit; it is the quality of a heart one with that law,
+reconciled to it as it is reconciled to God Himself in Jesus Christ.
+
+At the bottom, therefore, righteousness and goodness are one. Each is
+the counterface and complement of the other. Righteousness is to
+goodness as the strong backbone of principle, the firm hand and the
+vigorous grasp of duty, the steadfast foot that plants itself on the
+eternal ground of the right and true and stands against a world's
+assault. Goodness without righteousness is a weak and fitful sentiment:
+righteousness without goodness is a dead formality. He cannot love God
+or his neighbour truly, who does not love God's law; and he knows
+nothing aright of that law, who does not know that it is the law of
+love.
+
+This also, this above all is "the fruit of the light." Two watchwords we
+have from the lips of Jesus, two mottoes of His own life and
+mission,--the one given at the end, the other at the beginning of His
+course: "Greater _love_ hath none than this, that one lay down his life
+for his friends"; and, "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all
+_righteousness_." By a double flame was He consumed a sacrifice upon the
+cross,--by the passion of His zeal for God's righteousness, and by the
+passion of His pity for mankind. In that twofold light we see light, and
+become "light in the Lord." Therefore the fruit of the light, the moral
+product of a true faith in the gospel, is in all _goodness and
+righteousness_.
+
+There is a danger of merging the latter in the former of these
+attributes. Evangelical piety is credited with an excess of the
+sentimental and emotional disposition, cultivated at the expense of the
+more sterling elements of character. High principle, scrupulous honour,
+stern fidelity to duty are no less essential to the image of Christ in
+the soul than are warm feeling and zealous devotion to His service.
+_Jesus Christ the righteous_, as His apostles loved to call Him, is the
+pattern of a manly faith, up to which we must grow in all things. "_He_
+is the propitiation for our sins." Never was there an act of such
+unswerving integrity and absolute loyalty to the law of right as the
+sacrifice of Calvary. God forbid that we should magnify love at the
+expense of law, or make good feeling a substitute for duty.
+
+3. _Truth_ comes last in this enumeration, for it signifies the inward
+reality and depth of the other two.
+
+Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of the lips. Heathen
+honesty goes as far as this. Men of the world expect as much from each
+other, and brand the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires a
+reality behind itself. The acted falsehood is excluded, the hinted and
+intended lie no less than that expressly uttered. Beyond all this, it is
+the truth of the man that God requires--speech, action, thought, all
+consistent, harmonious and transparent, with the light of God's truth
+shining through them. Truth is the harmony of the inward and the
+outward, the correspondence of what the man is in himself with that
+which he appears and wishes to appear to be.
+
+Now, it is only children of the light, only men thoroughly good and
+upright who can, in this strict sense, be men of truth. So long as any
+malice or iniquity is left in our nature, we have something to conceal.
+We cannot afford to be sincere. We are compelled to pay, by very shame,
+the degrading tribute which vice renders to virtue, the homage of
+hypocrisy. But find a man whose intellect, whose heart and will, tried
+at whatever point, ring sound and true, in whom there is no affectation,
+no make-believe, no pretence or exaggeration, no discrepancy, no discord
+in the music of his life and thought, "an Israelite indeed, in whom is
+no guile"--there is a saint for you, and a man of God; there is one whom
+you may "grapple to your soul with hoops of steel."
+
+Truth is the hall-mark of entire sanctification; it is the highest and
+rarest attainment of the Christian life. It is equally the charm of an
+innocent, unspoilt childhood, and of a ripe and purified old age. The
+apostle John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," is the most perfect
+embodiment, after his Master, of this consummating grace. In him
+righteousness and love were blended in the translucence of an utter
+simplicity and truth.
+
+We must beware of giving a subjective and merely personal aspect to this
+divine quality. While truth is the unity of the outward and inward, of
+heart and act and word in the man, it is at the same time the agreement
+of the man with the reality of things as they exist in God. The former
+kind of truth rests upon the latter; the subjective upon the objective
+order. The truth of God makes us true. We magnify our own sincerity,
+until it becomes vitiated and pretentious. In our eagerness to realize
+and express our own convictions, we give too little pains to form them
+upon a sound basis; we make a great virtue of _speaking out_ what is in
+our hearts, but take small heed of what _comes in_ to the heart, and
+speak out of a loose self-confidence and idolatry of our own opinions.
+So the Pharisees were true, who called Christ an impostor. So every
+careless slanderer, and scandalmonger credulous of evil, who believes
+the lies he propagates. "Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in
+which every one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he
+thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the Palace of Truth.
+A palace of veracity, if you will; but no temple of the truth. A place
+where each one would be at liberty to utter his own crude unrealities,
+to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half-formed, hasty judgements;
+where the depraved ear would reckon discord harmony, and the depraved
+eye mistake colour; the depraved moral taste take Herod or Tiberius for
+a king, and shout beneath the Redeemer's cross, 'Himself He cannot
+save!' A temple of the truth? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious
+falsehoods, a Babel of confused sounds, in which egotism would rival
+egotism, and truth would be each man's own lie."[137] In the pride of
+our veracity, we miss the verity of things; we are true only to our
+blind self, false to the light of God. "Every one that is of the truth
+heareth my voice:" so said He who was Truth incarnate, making His word a
+law for all true men.
+
+"In _all_ goodness and righteousness and truth," says the apostle. Let
+us seek them all. We are apt to become specialists in virtue, as in
+other departments of life. Men will endeavour even to compensate by
+extreme efforts in one direction for deficiencies in some other
+direction, which they scarcely desire to make good. So they grow out of
+shape, into oddities and moral malformations. There is a want of balance
+and of finish about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who
+have long and steadily pursued the way of faith. We have sweetness
+without strength, and strength without gentleness, and truth spoken
+without love, and words of passionate zeal without accuracy and
+heedfulness.
+
+All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to the cause of our
+religion.
+
+    "It is the little rift within the lute
+    That by-and-by will make the music mute,
+      And ever widening slowly silence all;
+    The little rift within the lover's lute,
+    Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
+      That rotting inward slowly moulders all."
+
+Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us count
+no wrong a trifle. Let us never imagine that our defects in one kind
+will be atoned for by excellencies in another. Our friends may say
+this, in charity, for us; it is a fatal thing when a man begins to say
+so to himself. "May the God of peace sanctify you fully. May your whole
+spirit, soul, and body in blameless integrity be preserved to the coming
+of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. v. 23).
+
+II. The _effect_ upon surrounding darkness of the light of God in
+Christian lives is described in verses 11-14, in words which it remains
+for us briefly to examine.
+
+Verse 12 distinguishes "the things secretly done" by the Gentiles, "of
+which it is a shame even to speak," from the open and manifest forms of
+evil in which they invite their Christian neighbours to join (ver. 11).
+Instead of doing this and "having fellowship with the unfruitful works
+of darkness," they must "rather reprove them." Silent absence, or
+abstinence is not enough. Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all
+hazards be rebuked. On the other hand, St Paul does not warrant
+Christians in prying into the hidden sins of the world around them and
+playing the moral detective. Publicity is not a remedy for all evils,
+but a great aggravation of some, and the surest means of disseminating
+them. "It is a shame"--a disgrace to our common nature, and a grievous
+peril to the young and innocent--to fill the public prints with the
+nauseous details of crime and to taint the air with its putridities.
+
+"But all things," the apostle says--whether it be those open works of
+darkness, profitless of good, which expose themselves to direct
+conviction, or the depths of Satan that hide their infamy from the light
+of day--"all things being reproved by the light, are made manifest"
+(ver. 13). The fruit of the light convicts the unfruitful works of
+darkness. The daily life of a Christian man amongst men of the world is
+a perpetual reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word is
+spoken, of which the reprover never guesses, as well as against open and
+unblushing vices.
+
+"This is the condemnation," said Jesus, "that light is come into the
+world." And this condemnation every one who walks in Christ's steps, and
+breathes His Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on,
+more frequently in silence than by spoken argument. Our unconscious and
+spontaneous influence is the most real and effective part of it. Life is
+the light of men--words only as the index of the life from which they
+spring. Just so far as our lives touch the conscience of others and
+reveal the difference between darkness and light, so far do we hold
+forth the word of life and carry on the Holy Spirit's work in convincing
+the world of sin. "Let your light so shine."
+
+This manifestation leads to a transformation: "For everything that is
+made manifest _is light_" (ver. 13). "You are light in the Lord," St
+Paul says to his converted Gentile readers,--you who were "once
+darkness," once wandering in the lusts and pleasures of the heathen
+around you, without hope and without God. The light of the gospel
+disclosed, and then dispelled the darkness of that former time; and so
+it may be with your still heathen kindred, through the light you bring
+to them. So it will be with the night of sin that is spread over the
+world. The light which shines upon sin-laden and sorrowful hearts,
+shines on them to change them into its own nature. _The manifested is
+light_: in other words, if men can be made to see the true nature of
+their sin, they will forsake it. If the light can but penetrate their
+conscience, it will save them. "Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    Awake, O sleeper; and arise from out of the dead!
+      And the Christ shall dawn upon thee!"
+
+The speaker of this verse can be no other than God, or the Spirit of God
+in Scripture. The sentence is no mere quotation. It re-utters, in the
+style of Mary's or Zechariah's song, the promise of the Old Covenant
+from the lips of the New. It gathers up the import of the prophecies
+concerning the salvation of Christ, as they sounded in the apostle's
+ears and as he conveyed them to the world. Isaiah lx. 1-3 supplies the
+basis of our passage, where the prophet awakens Zion from the sleep of
+the Exile and bids her shine once more in the glory of her God and show
+forth His light to the nations: "Arise," he cries, "shine, for thy light
+is come!" There are echoes in the verse, besides, of Isaiah li. 17,
+xxvi. 19; perhaps even of Jonah i. 6: "What meanest thou, O sleeper?
+arise, and call upon thy God!" We seem to have here, as in chapter iv.
+4-6, a snatch of the earliest Christian hymns. The lines are a free
+paraphrase from the Old Testament, formed by weaving together Messianic
+passages--belonging to such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in the
+Pauline Churches. Certainly those Churches did not wait until the second
+century to compose their hymns and spiritual songs (comp. ver. 19). Our
+Lord's sublime announcement (John v. 25), already verified, that "the
+hour had come when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God, and
+they that heard should live," gave the key to the prophetic sayings
+which promised through Israel the light of life to all nations.
+
+With this song on her lips the Church went forth, clad in the armour of
+light, strong in the joy of salvation; and darkness and the works of
+darkness fled before her.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[135] Mr. Wesley adopted this and other emendations from Bengel, "that
+great light of the Christian world," in the translation accompanying his
+_Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament_. He there supplied the
+Methodist preachers with many of the most valuable improvements made in
+the Revised Version, a hundred years before the time.
+
+[136] The word belongs to Paul's vocabulary; it is found besides in 2
+Thess. i. 11; Rom. xv. 14; and Gal. v. 22. See the Commentary on this
+last epistle in the _Expositor's Bible_, pp. 384, 385.
+
+[137] F. W. Robertson: _Sermons_ (First Series), xix., on "The Kingdom
+of the Truth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+_THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT._
+
+    "Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
+    redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not
+    foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
+
+    "And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with
+    the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and
+    spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the
+    Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord
+    Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to
+    another in the fear of Christ."--EPH. v. 15-21.
+
+
+Very solemnly did the moral homily to the Asian Christians begin in
+chapter iv. 17: "This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you
+must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk." So much has now been said and
+testified in the intervening paragraphs, by way both of dehortation and
+exhortation. Here the apostle pauses; and casting his eye over the whole
+pathway of life he has marked out in this discourse, he bids his
+readers: "Look then carefully how you walk. Show that you are not fools,
+but wise to observe your steps and to seize your opportunities in these
+evil times,--days so perilous that you need your best wisdom and
+knowledge of God's will to save you from fatal stumbling."
+
+So far St Paul's renewed exhortation, in verses 15-17, inculcates care
+and wary discretion,--the skill that in the strategy of life finds its
+vantage in unequal ground, that makes opposing winds help forward the
+seafarer. In this sober wisdom it is likely the Asian Christians were
+deficient. In many ways, both directly and indirectly, the need of
+increased thoughtfulness on the readers' part has been indicated. But
+there is another side to the Christian nature: it has its moods of
+exhilaration, as well as of caution and reflection; ardent emotion,
+eager speech and exultant song are things proper to a high religious
+life. For these the apostle makes room in verses 18-20, while the three
+foregoing verses enjoin the circumspection and vigilance that become the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus.
+
+A striking contrast thus arises between the _sobriety_ and the
+_excitement_ that mark the life of grace. We see with what strictness we
+must watch over ourselves, and guard the character and interests of the
+Church; and with what joyousness and holy freedom we may take our part
+in its communion. Temperament and constitution modify these injunctions
+in their personal application. The Holy Spirit does not enable us all to
+speak with equal fervour and freedom, nor to sing with the same
+tunefulness. His power operates in the limbs of Christ's body "according
+to the measure of each single part." But the self-same Spirit works in
+both these contrasted ways,--in the sanguine and the melancholic
+disposition, in the demonstrative and in the reserved, in the quick play
+of fancy and the brightness and impulsiveness of youth no less than in
+the sober gait and solid sense of riper age. Let us see how the two
+opposite aspects of Christian experience are set out in the apostle's
+words.
+
+I. First of all, upon the one side, _heedfulness_ is enjoined. The
+children of light must use the light to see their way. To "stumble at
+noonday" is a proof of folly or blindness. So misusing our light, we
+shall quickly lose it and return to the paths of darkness.
+
+According to the preferable (Revised) order of the words, the qualifying
+adverb "carefully" belongs to the "look," not to the "walk." The
+circumspect _look_ precedes the wise step. The spot is marked on which
+the foot is to be planted; the eye ranges right and left and takes in
+the bearings of the new position, forecasting its possibilities. "Look
+before you leap," our sage proverb says. According to the carefulness of
+the look, the success of the leap is likely to be.
+
+There is no word in the epistle more apposite than this to
+
+                        "our day
+    Of haste, half-work, and disarray."
+
+We are too restless to think, too impatient to learn. Everything is
+sacrificed to speed. The telegraph and the daily newspaper symbolize the
+age. The public ear loves to be caught quickly and with new sensations:
+a premium is set on carelessness and hurry. Earnest men, eager for the
+triumph of a good cause, push forward with unsifted statements and
+unweighed denunciations, that discredit Christian advocacy and wound the
+cause of truth and charity. Time, thus wronged and driven beyond her
+pace, has her revenge; she deals hardly with these light judgements of
+the hour. They are as the chaff which the wind carrieth away. After all,
+it is still truth that lives; thorough work that lasts; accuracy that
+hits the mark. And the time-servers are "unwise," both intellectually
+and morally. They are most unwise who think to succeed in life's high
+calling without self-distrust, and without scrupulous care and pains in
+all work they do for the kingdom of God.
+
+In the evil of his own times St Paul sees a special reason for
+heedfulness: "Walk not as unwise, but as wise, buying up the
+opportunity, _because the days are evil_." In Colossians iv. 5 the
+parallel sentence shows that in giving this caution he is thinking of
+the relation of Christians to the world outside: "Walk in wisdom toward
+those without, buying up the opportunity." Evil days they were, when
+Paul lay in Nero's prison; when that wild beast was raging against
+everything that resisted his mad will or reproved his monstrous vices.
+With supreme power in the hands of such a creature of Satan, who could
+tell what fires of persecution were kindling for the people of Christ,
+or what terrible revelation of God's anger against the present evil
+world might be impending. At Ephesus the spirit of heathenism had shown
+itself peculiarly menacing. Here, too, in the rich and cultivated
+province of Asia where the currents of Eastern and Western thought met,
+heresy and its corruptions made their first decided appearance in the
+Churches of the Gentiles. Conflicts are approaching which will try to
+the uttermost the strength of the Christian faith and the temper of its
+weapons (vi. 10-16).
+
+As wise men, reading thoughtfully the signs of the times, the Asian
+Christians will "redeem the [present] season." They will use to the
+utmost the light given them. They will employ every means to increase
+their knowledge of Christ, to confirm their faith and the habits of
+their spiritual life. They are like men expecting a siege, who
+strengthen their fortifications and furbish their weapons and practise
+their drill and lay up store of supplies, that they may "stand in the
+evil day." Such wisdom Ecclesiastes preaches to the young man: "Remember
+now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come."
+
+Within a year after this epistle was penned, Rome was burnt and the
+crime of its burning washed out, at Nero's caprice, in Christian blood.
+In four years more St Paul and St Peter had died a martyr's death at
+Rome; and Nero had fallen by the assassin's hand. At once the Empire was
+convulsed with civil war; and the year 68-69 was known as that of the
+Four Emperors. Amid the storms threatening the ruin of the Roman State,
+the Jewish war against Rome was carried on, ending in the year 70 with
+the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple and
+nationality. These were the days of tribulation of which our Lord spoke,
+"such as had not been since the beginning of the world" (Matt. xxiv. 21,
+22). The entire fabric of life was shaken; and in the midst of
+earthquake and tempest, blood and fire, Israel met its day of judgement
+and the former age passed away. In the year 63, when the apostle wrote,
+the sky was everywhere red and lowering with signs of coming storm. None
+knew where or how the tempest might break, or what would be its issue.
+
+When men amid evil days and portents of danger must be told not to be
+"foolish" nor "drunken with wine," one is disposed to tax them with
+levity. It was difficult for these Asian Greeks to take life seriously,
+and to realize the gravity of their situation. St Paul appeals to them
+by their duty, still more than by their danger: "Be not foolish, but
+understand what _the will of the Lord_ is." As he bade the Thessalonians
+consider that chastity was not matter of choice and of their own
+advantage only, it was "God's will" (1 Ep. iv. 3), so the Ephesians
+must understand that Christ is no mere adviser, nor the Christian life
+an optional system that men may adopt when and so far as it suits them.
+He is our Lord; and it is our business to understand, in order that we
+may execute, His designs. For this Christ's servants require a watchful
+eye and an alert intelligence. They must be no dullards nor simpletons,
+who would enter into the Divine Master's plans; no triflers, no
+creatures of sentiment and impulse, who are to be the agents of His
+will. He can and does employ every sincere heart that gives itself in
+love to Him. But His nobler tasks are for the wise taught by His Spirit,
+for those who can "understand," with penetrating sympathy and breadth of
+comprehension, "what the will of the Lord is." Hence the distinction of
+St Paul himself, and of John the beloved disciple, amongst His ministers
+and witnesses,--men great in mind as they were in heart, whose thoughts
+about Christ were as grand as their love to Him was fervent.
+
+Nowhere does the apostle say so much of "the will of God" in regard to
+the dispensation of grace as he does in this epistle.[138] For he sees
+life and salvation here in their largest bearings and proportions. He
+prayed at the outset that the Gentile readers might realize the value
+that God puts upon them, and the mighty forces He has set at work for
+their salvation (i. 18-20); and again, that they might comprehend the
+vast dimensions of His plan for the building of the Church (iii. 18).
+Now that he has shown the relation of this eternal purpose to the
+character and everyday life of the converted Gentiles, "the will of God"
+becomes matter of immediate import; it is revealed in its bearing upon
+conduct, upon the affairs of business and society. It is not the
+purpose, the promises, the doctrine of the Lord alone, but "the _will_
+of the Lord" that they have to understand, as it touches their spirit
+and behaviour day by day. They must realize the practical demands of
+their religion,--how it is to make them truthful, gracious, pure and
+wise. They must translate creed into life and act. Such is the wisdom
+which their apostle strives to instil into the Asian Christians. Their
+first need was spiritual enlightenment; their second need was moral
+intelligence. Might they only have sense to understand and loyalty to
+obey the will of Christ.--And oh may we!
+
+II. There were converted thieves in the Ephesian Church, who still
+needed to be warned against their old propensities (iv. 28); there were
+men who had been sorcerers and fortune-tellers (Acts xix. 18, 19). It
+appears that there were in this circle converted _drunkards_ also, men
+to whom the apostle is obliged to say: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein
+is riot."
+
+In view of the following context (vv. 19-21), and remembering how the
+Lord's table was defiled by excess at Corinth (1 Cor. xi. 17-34), it
+seems to us probable that the warning of verse 18 had special reference
+to the Christian assemblies. The institution of the common meal, the
+_Agap�_ or Lovefeast accompanying the Lord's Supper, suited the manners
+of the early Christians, and was long continued. The cities of Asia
+Minor were full of trade-guilds and clubs for various social and
+religious purposes, in which the common supper, or club-feast, furnished
+usually by each member bringing his contribution to the table, was a
+familiar bond of fellowship. This afforded to the Church a natural and
+pleasant means of intercourse; but it must be purified from sensual
+indulgence. _Wine_ was its chief danger.
+
+The eastern coast of the Aegean is an ancient home of the vine. And the
+Greeks of the Asian towns, on those bright shores and under their genial
+sky, were a light-hearted, sociable race. They sought the wine-cup not
+for animal indulgence, but as a zest to good-fellowship and to give a
+freer flow to social joys. This was the influence that ruled their
+feasts, that loosened their tongues and inspired their gaiety. Hence
+their wit was prone to become ribaldry (ver. 4); and their songs were
+the opposite of the "spiritual songs" that gladden the feasts of the
+Church (ver. 19). The quick imagination and the social instincts of the
+Ionian Greeks, the aptness for speech and song native to the land of
+Homer and Sappho, were gifts not to be repressed but sanctified. The
+lyre is to be tuned to other strains; and poetry must draw its
+inspiration from a higher source. Dionysus and his reeling Fauns give
+place to the pure Spirit of Jesus and the Father. "The Aonian mount"
+must now pay tribute to "Sion hill"; and the fountain of Castalia yields
+its honours to
+
+            "Siloa's brook that flowed
+    Fast by the oracle of God."
+
+Our nature craves excitement,--some stimulus that shall set the pulses
+dancing and thrill the jaded frame, and lift the spirit above the
+taskwork of life and the dreary and hard conditions which make up the
+daily lot of multitudes. It is this craving that gives to strong drink
+its cruel fascination. Alcohol is a mighty magician. The tired labouring
+man, the household drudge shut up in city courts refreshed by no
+pleasant sight or cheering voice, by its aid can leave fretted nerves
+and aching limbs and dull care behind, and taste, if it be only for a
+feverish moment, of the joy of bounding life. Can such cravings be
+hindered from seeking their relief? The removal of temptation will
+accomplish little, unless higher tastes are formed and springs of purer
+pleasure opened to the masses for whom our civilization makes life so
+drab and colourless. "One finds traces of the primitive greatness of our
+nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as impurity proceeds at
+the bottom from an abuse of the craving for love, so drunkenness betrays
+a certain demand for ardour and enthusiasm, which in itself is natural
+and even noble.... Man loves to _feel_ himself alive; he would fain live
+twice his life at once; and he would rather draw excitement from
+horrible things than have no excitement at all" (Monod).
+
+For the drunkards of Ephesus the apostle finds a cure in the joys of the
+Holy Ghost. The mightiest and most moving spring of feeling is in the
+spirit of man kindred to God. There is a deep excitement and
+refreshment, a "joy that human thought transcends," in the love of God
+shed abroad in the heart and the communion of true saints, which makes
+sensuous delights cheap and poor. Toil and care are forgotten, sickness
+and trouble seem as nothing; we can glory in tribulation and laugh in
+the face of death, when the strong wine of God's consolations is poured
+into the soul.
+
+"Be filled with the Spirit," says the apostle--or more strictly, "filled
+_in_ the Spirit"; since the Holy Spirit of God is the element of the
+believer's life, surrounding while it penetrates his nature: it is the
+atmosphere that he breathes, the ocean in which he is immersed. As a
+flood fills up the river-banks, as the drunkard is filled with the wine
+that he drains without limit, so the apostle would have his readers
+yield themselves to the tide of the Spirit's coming and steep their
+nature in His influence. The Greek imperative, moreover, is present, and
+"describes this influence as ever going forth from the Spirit" (Beet).
+This is to be a continual replenishment. Paul has prayed that we may "be
+filled unto all the fulness of God" (iii. 19), and has bidden us grow
+"to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (iv. 13) in
+whom we "are made full" (Col. ii. 9): in the replenishment of the Spirit
+the fulness of God in Christ is sensibly imparted. God's fulness is the
+hidden and eternal spring of all that can fill our nature; Christ's
+fulness is its revelation and renewed communication to the race; the
+Holy Spirit's fulness is its abiding energy within the soul and within
+the Church. Thus possessed, the Church is truly the body of Christ (iv.
+4), and the habitation of God (ii. 21, 22).
+
+The words of verses 19, 20 show that St Paul is thinking of that
+presence of the Spirit in the Christian community, which is the spring
+of its affections and activities. The Spirit of Jesus, the Son of man,
+is a kindly and gracious Spirit, the guardian of brotherhood and
+friendship, the inspirer of pure social joys and genial converse. The
+joy in the Holy Ghost that in its warmth and freshness filled the hearts
+of the first Christians, soared upward on the wings of song. Their very
+talk was music: they "spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and
+spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the
+Lord." Love loves to sing. Its joys
+
+            "from out our hearts arise,
+    And speak and sparkle in our eyes,
+      And vibrate on our tongue."
+
+All exalted sentiment tends to rhythmical expression. There is a
+mystical alliance, which is amongst the most significant facts in our
+constitution, between emotion and art. The rudest natures, touched by
+high feeling, will shape themselves to some sort of beauty, to some
+grace and refinement of expression. Each new stirring of the pulse of
+man's common life has been marked by a re-birth of poetry and art. The
+songs of Mary and Zechariah were the parents and patterns of a multitude
+of holy canticles. In the Psalms of Scripture the New Testament Church
+found already an instrument of wide compass strung and tuned for her
+use. We can imagine the delight with which the Gentile Christians would
+take up the Psalter and draw out one and another of its pearls, and
+would in turn recite them at their meetings, and adapt them to their
+native measures and modes of song. After a while, they began to mix with
+the praise-songs of Israel newer strains--"hymns" to the glory of Christ
+and the Father, such as that with which this epistle opens, needing but
+little change in form to make it a true poem, and such as those which
+break in upon the dread visions of the Apocalypse; and added to these,
+"spiritual songs" of a more personal and incidental character, like
+Simeon's _Nunc dimittis_ or Paul's swan-song in his last letter to
+Timothy. In verse 14 above we detected, as we thought, an early Church
+paraphrase of the Old Testament. In later epistles addressed to Ephesus,
+there are fragments of just such artless chants as the Asian Christians,
+exhorted and taught by their apostle, were wont to sing in their
+assemblies: see 1 Timothy iii. 16, and 2 Timothy ii. 11-13.
+
+Upon this congenial soil, we trace the beginnings of Christian
+psalmody. The parallel text of Colossians (iii. 16) discloses in the
+songs of the Pauline Churches a didactic as well as a lyric character.
+The apostle bids his readers "_teach and admonish_ one another by
+psalms, hymns, spiritual songs." The form of the sentence of chapter iv.
+4-6 in this letter, and of 1 Timothy iii. 16, suggests that these
+passages were destined for use as a chanted rehearsal of Christian
+belief. Thus "the word of Christ dwelling richly" in the heart, poured
+itself freely from the lips, and added to its grave discourse the charms
+of gladdening and spirit-stirring song.
+
+As in their heathen days they were used to "speak to each other," in
+festive or solemn hours, with hymns to Artemis of the Ephesians, or
+Dionysus giver of the vine, or to Persephon� sad queen of the dead--in
+songs merry and gay, too often loose and wanton; in songs of the dark
+underworld and the grim Furies and inexorable Fate, that told how life
+fleets fast and we must pluck its pleasures while we may;--so now the
+Christians of Ephesus and Colossae, of Pergamum and of Smyrna would sing
+of the universal Father whose presence fills earth and sky, of the Son
+of His love, His image amongst men, who died in sacrifice for their sins
+and asked grace for His murderers, of the joys of forgiveness and the
+cleansed heart, of life eternal and the treasure laid up for the just in
+the heavenly places, of Christ's return in glory and the judgement of
+the nations and the world quickly to dissolve and perish, of a
+brotherhood dearer than earthly kindred, of the saints who sleep in
+Jesus and in peace await His coming, of the Good Shepherd who feeds His
+sheep and leads them to fountains of living water calling each by his
+name, of creation redeemed and glorified by His love, of pain and
+sorrow sanctified and the trials that make perfect in Christ's
+discipline, of the joy that fills the heart in suffering for Him, and
+the vision of His face awaiting us beyond the grave. So reciting and
+chanting--now in single voice, now in full chorus--singing the Psalms of
+David to their Greek music, or hymns composed by their leaders, or
+sometimes improvised in the rapture of the moment, the Churches of
+Ephesus and of the Asian cities lauded and glorified "the name of our
+Lord Jesus Christ" and the counsels of redeeming love. So their worship
+and fellowship were filled with gladness. Thus in their great Church
+meetings, and in smaller companies, many a joyous hour passed; and all
+hearts were cheered and strengthened in the Lord.
+
+"Singing and _playing_," says the apostle. For music aided song; voice
+and instrument blended in His praise whose glory claims the tribute of
+all creatures. But it was "with the heart," even more than with voice or
+tuneful strings, that melody was made. For this inward music the Lord
+listens. Where other skill is wanting and neither voice nor hand can
+take its part in the concert of praise, He hears the silent gratitude,
+the humble joy that wells upward when the lips are still or the full
+heart cannot find expression.
+
+But the Spirit who dwelt in the praises of the new Israel, was not
+confined to its public assemblings. The people of Christ should be
+"_always giving thanks_, for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." It is one of St Paul's commonest injunctions. "In _everything_
+give thanks," he wrote to the Thessalonians in his earliest extant
+letter (1 Ep. v. 18). "For all things," he says to the
+Ephesians,--"though fallen on evil days." Do we not "know that to them
+that love God all things work together for good"--evil days as well as
+good days? Nothing comes altogether amiss to the child of God. In the
+heaviest loss, the severest pain, the sharpest sting of injury--"in
+everything" the ingenuity of love and the sweetness of patience will
+find some token of mercy. If the evil is to our eyes all evil and we can
+see in it no reason for thanksgiving, then faith will give thanks for
+that which we "know not now, but shall know hereafter."
+
+_Always_, the apostle says,--_for all things_! No room for a moment's
+discontent. In this perfecting of praise he had himself undergone a long
+schooling in his four years' imprisonment. Now, he tells us, he "has
+learnt the secret of contentment, in whatsoever state" (Phil. iv. 12).
+Let us try to learn it from him. These words, which we treat, almost
+unconsciously, as the exaggeration of homiletical appeal, state no more
+than the sober possibility, the experience attained by many a Christian
+in circumstances of the greatest suffering and deprivation. The love of
+God in Jesus Christ our Lord suffices for the life and joy of man's
+spirit.
+
+The twenty-first verse, which seems to belong to a different line of
+thought, in reality completes the foregoing paragraph. In the Corinthian
+Church, as we remember, with its affluence of spiritual gifts, there
+were so many ready to prophesy, so many to sing and recite, that
+confusion arose and the Church meetings fell into disedifying uproar (1
+Cor. xiv. 26-34). The apostle would not have such scenes occur again.
+Hence when he urges the Asian Christians to seek the full inspiration of
+the Spirit and to give free utterance in song to the impulses of their
+new life, he adds this word of caution: "being subject to one another in
+fear of Christ." He reminds them that "God is not the author of
+confusion." His Spirit is a spirit of seemliness and reverence. "In fear
+of Christ," the unseen witness and president of its assemblies, the
+Church will comport herself with the decorum that befits His bride. The
+spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets. The voices of
+the singers and the hands of them that play upon the strings of the harp
+or the keys of the organ, will keep tune with the worship of Christ's
+congregation. Each must consider that it is his part to serve and not
+rule in the service of God's house.
+
+In our common work and worship, in all the offices of life this is the
+Christian law. No man within Christ's Church, however commanding his
+powers, may set himself above the duty of submitting his judgement and
+will to that of his fellows. In mutual subjection lies our freedom, with
+our strength and peace.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[138] See ch. i. 5-11, ii. 21, iii. 11, v. 10, vi. 6; comp. Col. i. 9,
+27, iv. 12; Phil. ii. 13,--epistles of the same group.
+
+
+
+
+_ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    =Thel� de hymas eidenai hoti pantos andros h� kephal� ho Christos
+    estin, kephal� de gynaikos ho an�r, kephal� de tou Christou ho
+    Theos.=--1 COR. xi. 3.
+
+    "And pure Religion breathing household laws."
+
+    W. WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+_CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE._
+
+    "Wives, _be in subjection_ to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
+    For the husband is the head of the wife, as the Christ also is the
+    head of the Church, _being_ Himself the saviour of the body. But as
+    the Church is subject to the Christ, so let the wives also _be_ to
+    their husbands in everything.
+
+    "Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the
+    Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her,
+    having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He
+    might present the Church to Himself a glorious _Church_, not having
+    spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and
+    without blemish.
+
+    "Even so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own
+    bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever
+    hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the
+    Christ also the Church; because we are members of His body. 'For
+    this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave
+    to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh.' This mystery is
+    great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the Church.
+    Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as
+    himself; and _let_ the wife _see_ that she fear her husband."--EPH.
+    v. 22-33.
+
+
+In mutual subjection the Christian spirit has its sharpest trials and
+attains its finest temper. "Be subject one to another," was the last
+word of the apostle's instructions respecting the "walk" of the Asian
+Churches. By its order and subjection the gifts of all the members of
+Christ's body are made available for the upbuilding of God's temple. The
+inward fellowship of the Spirit becomes a constructive and organizing
+force, reconstituting human life and framing the world into the kingdom
+of Christ and God. "In fear of Christ" the loyal Christian man submits
+himself to the community; not from the dread of human displeasure, but
+knowing that he must give account to the Head of the Church and the
+Judge of the last day, if his self-will should weaken the Church's
+strength and interrupt her holy work. "For the Lord's sake" His freemen
+submit to every ordinance of men. This is such a fear as the servant has
+of a good master (vi. 5), or the true wife for a loving husband (ver.
+33),--not that which "perfect love casts out," but which it deepens and
+sanctifies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this subjection to Christ the relationship of marriage furnishes an
+example and a mirror. St Paul passes on to the new topic without any
+grammatical pause, verse 22 being simply an extension of the participial
+clause that forms verse 21: "Being in subjection to one another in fear
+of Christ--ye wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord." The relation
+of the two verses is not that of the particular to the general, so much
+as that of image and object, of type and antitype. Submission to Christ
+in the Church suggests by analogy that of the wife to her husband in the
+house. Both have their origin in Christ, in whom all things were
+created, the Lord of life in its natural as well as in its spiritual and
+regenerate sphere (Col. i. 15-17). The bond that links husband and wife,
+lying at the basis of collective human existence, has in turn its ground
+in the relation of Christ to humanity.
+
+The race springs not from a unit, but from a united pair. The history of
+mankind began in wedlock. The family is the first institution of
+society, and the mother of all the rest. It is the life-basis, the
+primitive cell of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic. In the
+health and purity of household life lies the moral wealth, the vigour
+and durability of all civil institutions. The mighty upgrowth of nations
+and the great achievements of history germinated in the nursery of home
+and at the mother's breast. Christian marriage is not an expedient--the
+last of many that have been tried--for the satisfaction of desire and
+the continuance of the human species. The Institutor of human life laid
+down its principle in the first frame of things. Its establishment was a
+great prophetic mystery (ver. 32). Its law stands registered in the
+eternal statutes. And the Almighty Father watches over its observance
+with an awful jealousy. Is it not written: "Fornicators and adulterers
+God will judge"; and again, "The Lord is an avenger concerning all these
+things"?
+
+St Paul rightly gives to this subject a conspicuous place in this
+epistle of Christ and the Church. The corner-stone of the new social
+order which the gospel was to establish in the world lies here. The
+entire influence of the Church upon society depends upon right views on
+the relationship of man and woman and on the ethics of marriage.
+
+In wedlock there are blended most completely the two principles of
+association amongst moral beings,--viz., authority and love, submission
+and self-surrender.
+
+I. On the one side, _submission to authority_.
+
+"Wives, be in subjection, as to the Lord,"--as is fitting in the Lord
+(Col. iii. 18). Again, in 1 Timothy ii. 11, 12, the apostle writes: "I
+suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion," or (as the word may
+rather signify) "to act independently of the man." Were these directions
+temporary and occasional? Were they due, as one hears it suggested, to
+the uneducated and undeveloped condition of women in the apostle's time?
+Or do they not affirm a law that is deeply seated in nature and in the
+feminine constitution? The words of 1 Corinthians xi. 2-15 show that, in
+the apostle's view of life, this subordination is fundamental. "The head
+of woman is the man," as "the head of every man is the Christ" and "the
+head of Christ is God." "The woman," he says, "is of the man," and "was
+created because of the man." Whether these sentences square with our
+modern conceptions or not, there they stand, and their import is
+unmistakable.[139] They teach that in the Divine order of things it is
+the man's part to lead and rule, and the woman's part to be ruled. But
+the Christian woman will not feel that there is any loss or hardship in
+this. For in the Christian order, ambition is sin. To obey is better
+than to rule. She remembers who has said: "I am amongst you as he that
+serveth." The children of the world strive for place and power; but "it
+shall not be so amongst you."
+
+Such subordination implies no inferiority, rather the opposite. A free
+and sympathetic obedience--which is the true submission--can only
+subsist between equals. The apostle writes: "Children, obey; ...
+Servants, obey" (vi. 1, 5); but "Wives, submit yourselves to your own
+husbands, as to the Lord." The same word denotes submission within the
+Church, and within the house. It is here that Christianity, in contrast
+with Paganism, and notably with Mohammedanism, raises the weaker sex to
+honour. In soul and destiny it declares the woman to be man, endowed
+with all rights and powers inherent in humanity. "In Christ Jesus there
+is no male and female," any more than there is "Jew and Greek" or "bond
+and free." The same sentence which broke down the barriers of Jewish
+caste, and in course of time abolished slavery, condemned the odious
+assumptions of masculine pride. It is one of the glories of our faith
+that it has enfranchised our sisters, and raises them in spiritual
+calling to the full level of their brothers and husbands. Both sexes are
+children of God by the same birthright; both receive the same Holy
+Spirit, according to the prediction quoted by St Peter on the day of
+Pentecost: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.... Yea, on my
+servants and on my handmaidens in those days will I pour out of my
+Spirit, saith the Lord" (Acts ii. 17, 18). This one point of headship,
+of public authority and guidance, is reserved. It is the point on which
+Christ forbids emulation amongst His people.
+
+Christian courtesy treats the woman as "the glory of the man"; it
+surrounds her from girlhood to old age with protection and deference.
+This homage, duly rendered, is a full equivalent for the honour of
+visible command. When, as it happens not seldom in the partnership of
+life, the superior wisdom dwells with the weaker vessel, the golden gift
+of persuasion is not wanting, by which the official ruler is guided, to
+his own advantage, and his adviser accomplishes more than she could do
+by any overt leadership. The chivalry of the Middle Ages, from which the
+refinement of European society takes its rise, was a product of
+Christianity grafted on the Teutonic nature. Notwithstanding the folly
+and excess that was mixed with it, there was a beautiful reverence in
+the old knightly service and championship of women. It humanized the
+ferocity of barbarous times. It tamed the brute strength of warlike
+races and taught them honour and gentleness. Its prevalence marked a
+permanent advance in civilization.
+
+Shall we say that this law of St Paul is that laid down specifically for
+_Christian_ women? is it not rather a law of nature--the intrinsic
+propriety of sex, whose dictates are reinforced by the Christian
+revelation? The apostle takes us back to the creation of mankind for the
+basis of his principles in dealing with this subject (ver. 31). The new
+commandments are the old which were in the world from the beginning,
+though concealed and overgrown with corruption. Notwithstanding the
+debasement of marriage under the non-Christian systems, the instincts of
+natural religion taught the wife her place in the house and gave rise to
+many a graceful and appropriate custom expressive of the honour due from
+one sex to the other. So the apostle regarded the man's bared and
+cropped head and the woman's flowing tresses as symbols of their
+relative place in the Divine order (1 Cor. xi. 13-15). These and such
+distinctions--between the dignities of strength and of beauty--no
+artificial sentiment and no capricious revolt can set aside, while the
+world stands. St Paul appeals to the common sense of mankind, to that
+which "nature itself teaches," in censuring the forwardness of some
+Corinthian women who appeared to think that the liberty of the gospel
+released them from the limitations of their nature.
+
+Some earnest promoters of women's rights have fallen into the error that
+Christianity, to which they owe all that is best in their present
+status, is the obstacle in the way of their further progress. It is an
+obstacle to claims that are against nature and against the law of
+God,--claims only tolerable so long as they are exceptional. But the
+barriers imposed by Christianity, against which these people fret, are
+their main protection. "The moment Christianity disappears, the law of
+strength revives; and under that law women can have no hope except that
+their slavery may be mild and pleasant." To escape from the "bondage of
+Christian law" means to go back to the bondage of paganism.
+
+"As unto the Lord" gives the pattern and the principle of the Christian
+wife's submission. Not that, as Meyer seems to put it, the husband in
+virtue of marriage "represents Christ to the wife." Her relation to the
+Lord is as full, direct, and personal as his. Indeed, the clause
+inserted at the end of verse 23 seems expressly designed to guard
+against this exaggeration. The qualification that Christ is "Himself
+Saviour of the body," thrown in between the two sentences comparing the
+marital headship to that which Christ holds towards the Church, has the
+effect of limiting the former.[140] The subjection of the Christian wife
+to her husband reserves for Christ the first place in the heart and the
+undiminished rights of Saviourship. St Paul indicates a real, and not
+unfrequent danger. The husband may eclipse Christ in the wife's soul,
+and be counted as her all in all. Her absorption in him may be too
+complete. Hence the brief guarding clause: "He Himself [and no other]
+Saviour of the body [to which all believers alike belong]." As the
+Saviour of the Church, Christ holds an unrivalled and unqualified
+lordship over every member of the same.
+
+"Nevertheless, as the Church is subject to the Christ, so also wives
+[should be] to their husbands in everything" (ver. 24). Again, in verse
+33: "Let the wife see that she fear her husband"--with the reverent and
+confiding fear which love makes sweet. As the Christian wife obeys the
+Lord Christ in the spiritual sphere, in the sphere of marriage she is
+subject to her husband. The ties that bind her to Christ, bind her more
+closely to the duties of home. These duties illustrate for her the
+submissive love that Christ's people, and herself as one of them, owe to
+their Divine Head. Her service in the Church, in turn, will send her
+home with a quickened sense of the sacredness of her domestic calling.
+It will lighten the yoke of obedience; it will check the discontent that
+masculine exactions provoke; and will teach her to win by patience and
+gentleness the power within the house that is her queenly crown.
+
+II. The apostle alludes to submission as the wife's duty; for she might,
+possibly, be tempted to think this superseded by the liberty of the
+children of God. Love he need not enjoin upon her; but he writes:
+"Husbands, _love your wives_, even as the Christ also loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her" (comp. Col. iii. 18, 19).
+
+The danger of selfishness lies on the masculine side. The man's nature
+is more exacting; and the self-forgetfulness and solicitous affection of
+the woman may blind him to his own want of the truest love. Full of
+business and with a hundred cares and attractions lying outside the
+domestic circle, he too readily forms habits of self-absorption and
+learns to make his wife and home a convenience, from which he takes as
+his right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of devotion
+and confidence in return. This lack of love denies the higher rights of
+marriage; it makes the wife's submission a joyless constraint. Along
+with this selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there
+supervenes sometimes an irritability of temper that chafes over domestic
+troubles and makes a grievance of the most trifling mishap or
+inadvertence, ignoring the wife's patient affection and anxiety to
+please. Too often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family
+tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness of their
+espousals. "There are many," says Bengel (on this point unusually
+caustic), "who out of doors are civil and kind to all; when at home,
+toward their wives and children, whom they have no need to fear, they
+freely practise secret bitterness."
+
+"Love your wives, _even as the Christ loved the Church_." What a glory
+this confers upon the husband's part in marriage! His devotion pictures,
+as no other love can, the devotion of Christ to His redeemed people. His
+love must therefore be a spiritual passion, the love of soul to soul,
+that partakes of God and of eternity. Of the three Greek words for
+love,--_eros_, familiar in Greek poetry and mythology, denoting the
+flame of sexual passion, is not named in the New Testament; _philia_,
+the love of friendship, is tolerably frequent, in its verb at least; but
+_agap�_ absorbs the former and transcends both. This exquisite word
+denotes love in its spiritual purity and depth, the love of God and of
+Christ, and of souls to each other in God. This is the specific
+Christian affection. It is the attribute of God who "loved the world and
+gave His Son the Only-begotten," of "the Christ" who "loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her." Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is
+its note. Its strength and authority it uses as material for sacrifice
+and instruments of service, not as prerogatives of pride or titles to
+enjoyment. Let this mind be in you, O husband, toward your wife, which
+was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and lowly in heart, counting it
+His honour to serve and His reward to save and bless.
+
+From verse 26 we gather that Christ is the husband's model, not only in
+the rule of self-devotion, but in the end toward which that devotion is
+directed: "that He might sanctify the Church,--that He might present her
+to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle,--_that she might
+be holy and without blemish_." The perfection of the wife's character
+will be to the religious husband one of the dearest objects in life. He
+will desire for her that which is highest and best, as for himself. He
+is put in charge of a soul more precious to him than any other, over
+which he has an influence incomparably great. This care he cannot
+delegate to any priest or father-confessor. The peril of such delegation
+and the grievous mischiefs that arise when there is no spiritual
+confidence between husband and wife, when through unbelief or
+superstition the head of the house hands over his priesthood to another
+man, are painfully shown by the experience of Roman Catholic countries.
+The irreligion of laymen, the carelessness and unworthiness of fathers
+and husbands are responsible for the baneful influences of the
+confessional. The apostle bade the Corinthian wives, who were eager for
+religious knowledge, to "ask their husbands at home" (1 Cor. xiv. 35).
+Christian husbands should take more account of their office than they
+do; they should not be strangers to the spiritual trials and experiences
+of the heart so near to them. It might lead them to walk more worthily
+and to seek higher religious attainments, if they considered that the
+shepherding of at least one soul devolves upon themselves, that they are
+unworthy of the name of husband without such care for the welfare of the
+soul linked to their own as Christ bears toward His bride the Church.
+Those who have no father or husband to look to, or who look in vain to
+this quarter for spiritual help, St Paul refers, beside the light and
+comfort of Scripture and the public ministry and fellowship of the
+Church, to the "aged women" who are the natural guides and exemplars of
+the younger in their own sex (Titus ii. 3-5).
+
+The selfishness of the stronger sex, supported by the force of habit and
+social usage, was hard to subdue in the Greek Christian Churches.
+Through some eight verses St Paul labours this one point. In verse 28 he
+adduces another reason, added to the example of Christ, for the love
+enjoined. "So ought men indeed to love their wives as their own bodies.
+He that loveth his wife loveth himself." The "So" gathers its force from
+the previous example. In loving us Christ does not love something
+foreign and, as it were, outside of Himself. "We are members of His
+body" (ver. 30). It is the love of the Head to the members, of the Son
+of man to the sons of men, whose race-life is founded in Him. Jesus
+Christ laid it down as the highest law, under that of love to God: "Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_." His love to us followed this
+rule. His life was wrapped up in ours. By such community of life
+self-love is transfigured, and exalted into the purest self-forgetting.
+
+Thus it is with true marriage. The wedding of a human pair makes each
+the other's property. They are "one flesh" (ver. 31); and so long as
+the flesh endures there remains this consciousness of union, whose
+violation is deadly sin. As the Church is not her own, nor Christ His
+own since He became man with men, so the husband and wife are no longer
+independent and self-complete personalities, but incorporated into a new
+existence common to both. Their love must correspond to this fact. If
+the man loves himself, if he values his own limbs and tends and guards
+from injury his bodily frame (ver. 29), he must do the same equally by
+his wife; for her life and limbs are as a part of his own. This the
+apostle lays down as an obvious duty. Nature teaches the obligation, by
+every manly instinct.
+
+The saying the apostle quotes in verse 31 dates from the origin of the
+human family; it is taken from the lips of the first husband and father
+of the race, while as yet unstained by sin (Gen. ii. 23, 24). Christ
+infers from it the singleness and indelibility of the marriage covenant.
+But this doctrine, natural as it is, was not inferred by natural
+religion. The cultivated Greek took a wife for the production of
+children. Her rights put no restriction upon his appetite. Love was not
+in the marriage contract. If she received the maintenance due to her
+rank and the mistress-ship of the house, and was the mother of his
+lawful children, she had all that a free-born woman could demand. The
+slave-woman had no rights. Her body was at her owner's disposal. Nothing
+in Christianity appeared more novel and more severe, in comparison with
+the dissolute morals of the time, than the Christian view of marriage.
+Even Christ's Jewish disciples seemed to think the state of wedlock
+intolerable under the condition He imposed. This want of reverence and
+constancy between the sexes was a main cause of the degeneracy of the
+age. All virtues disappear with this one. Roman manliness and
+uprightness, Greek courtesy and courage, filial piety, civic worth,
+loyalty in friendship--the qualities that once in a high degree adorned
+the classic nations, were now rare amongst men. In the most exalted
+ranks infamous vices flourished; and purity of life was a cause for
+odium and suspicion.
+
+Amidst this seething mass of corruption the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus created new hearts and new homes. It kindled a pure fire on the
+desecrated hearth. It taught man and woman a chaste love; and their
+alliances were formed "in sanctification and honour, not in the passion
+of lust as it is with the Gentiles who know not God" (1 Thess. iv. 3-6).
+Every Christian house, thus based on an honourable and religious union,
+became the centre of a leaven that wrought upon the corrupt society
+around. It held forth an example of wedded loyalty and domestic joy
+beautiful and strange in that loveless Pagan world. Children grew up
+trained in pure and gentle manners. From that hour the hope of a better
+day began. The influence of the new ideal, filtrating everywhere into
+the surrounding heathenism and assimilating even before it converted the
+hostile world, raised society, though gradually and with many relapses,
+from the extreme debasement of the age of the Caesars. Never subsequently
+have the morals of civilized mankind sunk to a level quite so low. The
+Christian conception of love and marriage opened a new era for mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[139] See Dr. Maclaren's admirable words on this subject in _Colossians
+and Philemon_ (Expositor's Bible), pp. 336-40; and Dr. Dale's _Lectures
+on Ephesians_, Lect. xix., "Wives and Husbands."
+
+[140] In verse 24 St Paul resumes with =alla=, the _but_ of opposition
+and not mere contrast, indicating a case where the claims of husband and
+Saviour may, conceivably, be in competition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    "The Christ is the head of the Church, _being_ Himself the Saviour
+    of the body.... The Church is subject to the Christ in
+    everything....
+
+    "The Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He
+    might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with
+    the word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious
+    _Church_, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she
+    should be holy and without blemish....
+
+    "The Christ [nourisheth and cherisheth] the Church; because we are
+    members of His body. 'For this cause shall a man leave his father
+    and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become
+    one flesh.' This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ
+    and of the Church."--EPH. v. 23-32.
+
+
+We have extracted from the apostle's homily upon marriage the sentences
+referring to Christ and His Church, in order to gather up their
+collective import. The main topic of the epistle here again asserts
+itself; and under the figure of marriage St Paul brings to its
+conclusion his doctrine on the subject of the Church. This passage
+answers, theologically, a purpose similar to that of the allegory of
+Hagar and Sarah in the epistle to the Galatians: it lights up for the
+imagination the teaching and argument of the former part of the epistle;
+it shows how the doctrine of Christ and the Church has its counterpart
+in nature, as the struggle between the legal and evangelical spirit had
+its counterpart in the patriarchal history. The three detached
+paragraphs present us three considerations, of which we shall treat the
+second first in order of exposition: Christ's _love to the Church_; His
+_authority over the Church_; and _the mystery of the Church's origin in
+Him_.
+
+I. "Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church,
+and gave up Himself for her." This is parallel to the declaration of
+Galatians ii. 20: "He loved me; He gave up Himself for me." The
+sacrifice of the cross has at once its personal and its collective
+purpose. Both are to be kept in mind.
+
+On the one hand, we must value infinitely and joyfully assert our
+individual part in the redeeming love of the Son of God; but we must
+equally admit the sovereign rights of the Church in the Redeemer's
+passion. Our souls bow down before the glory of the love with which He
+has from eternity sought her for His own. There is in some Christians an
+absorption in the work of grace within their own hearts, an
+individualistic salvation-seeking that, like all selfishness, defeats
+its end; for it narrows and impoverishes the inner life thus sedulously
+cherished. The Church does not exist simply for the benefit of
+individual souls; it is an eternal institution, with an affiance to
+Christ, a calling and destiny of its own; within that universal sphere
+our personal destiny holds its particular place.
+
+It is "the Christ" who stands, throughout this context (vv. 23-29), over
+against "the Church" as her Lover and Husband; whereas in the context of
+Galatians ii. 20 we read "Christ"--the bare personal name--repeated
+again and again without the distinguishing article. _Christ_ is the
+Person whom the soul knows and loves, with whom it holds communion in
+the Spirit. _The Christ_ is the same regarded in the wide scope of His
+nature and office,--the Christ of humanity and of the ages. "The Christ"
+of this epistle expands the Saviour's title to its boundless
+significance, and gives breadth and length to that which in "Christ" is
+gathered up into a single point.[141]
+
+This Christ "gave Himself up for the Church,"--yielded Himself to the
+death which the sins of His people merited and brought upon Him. Under
+the same verb, the apostle says in Romans iv. 25: He "_was delivered_
+because of our trespasses, and raised up because of our
+justification"--the sacrifice being there regarded on its passive side.
+Here, as in Galatians ii. 20, the act is made His own,--a voluntary
+surrender. "No man taketh my life from me," He said (John x. 18). In His
+case alone amongst the sons of men, death was neither natural nor
+inevitable. His surrender of life was an absolute sacrifice. He "laid
+down His life for His friends," as no other friend of man could do--the
+One who died for all. The love measured by this sacrifice is
+proportionately great.
+
+The sayings of verses 25-27 set the glory of the vicarious death in a
+vivid light. Of such worth was the person of the Christ, of such
+significance and moral value His sacrificial death, that it weighed
+against the trespass, not of a man--Paul or any other--but of a world of
+men. He "purchased through His own blood," said Paul to the Ephesian
+elders, "the Church of God" (Acts xx. 28)--the whole flock that feeds in
+the pastures of the Great Shepherd, that has passed or will pass through
+the gates of His fold. Great was the honour and glory with which he was
+crowned, when led as victim to the altar of the world's atonement (Heb.
+ii. 9). Who will not say, as the meek Son of man treads so willingly
+His mournful path to Calvary, "Worthy is the Lamb!" Is not the heavenly
+Bridegroom worthy of the bride, that He consents to win by the sacrifice
+of Himself!
+
+He is worthy; and _she must be made worthy_. "He gave up Himself, that
+He might sanctify her,--that He might Himself present to Himself a
+glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the
+kind,--that she may be holy and without blemish." The sanctification of
+the Church is the grand purpose of redeeming grace. This was the design
+of God for His sons in Christ before the world's foundation, "that we
+should be holy and unblemished before Him" (i. 4). This, therefore, was
+the end of Christ's mission upon earth; this was the intention of His
+sacrificial death. "For their sakes," said Jesus concerning His
+disciples, "I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in
+truth" (John xvii. 19). His purchase of the Church is no selfish act. To
+God His Father Christ devotes every spirit of man that is yielded to
+Him. As the Priest of mankind it was His office thus to consecrate
+humanity, which is already in purpose and in essence "sanctified through
+the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb. x. 10).
+
+Only in this passage, where the apostle is thinking of the preparation
+of the Church for its perfect union with its Head, does he name Christ
+as our _Sanctifier_; in 1 Corinthians i. 2 he comes near this
+expression, addressing his readers as men "sanctified in Christ Jesus."
+In the epistle to the Hebrews this character is largely ascribed to Him,
+being the function of His priesthood. One in nature with the sanctified,
+Jesus our great Priest "sanctifies us through His own blood," so that
+with cleansed consciences we may draw near to the living God.[142] As
+Christ the Priest stands towards His people, so Christ the Husband
+towards His Church. He devotes her with Himself to God. He cleanses her
+that she may dwell with Him for ever, a spotless bride, dead unto sin
+and living unto God through Him.
+
+"That He might sanctify her, _having cleansed her_ in the laver of water
+by the word." The Church's purification is antecedent in thought to her
+sanctification through the sacrifice of Christ; and it is a means
+thereto. "Ye were washed, ye were sanctified," writes the apostle in 1
+Corinthians vi. 11, putting the two things in the same order. It is the
+order of doctrine which he has laid down in the epistle to the Romans,
+where sanctification is built on the foundation laid in justification
+through the blood of Christ. Through the virtue of the sacrificial death
+the Church in all her members was washed from the defilements of sin,
+that she might enter upon God's service. Of the same initial
+purification of the heart St John writes in his first epistle (i. 7-9):
+"The blood of Jesus, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin.... He is
+faithful and just, that He should forgive us our sins and cleanse us
+from all unrighteousness." This is "the redemption through Christ's
+blood," for which St Paul in his first words of praise called upon us to
+bless God (i. 7). It is the special distinction of the New Covenant,
+which renders possible its other gifts of grace, that "the worshippers
+once cleansed" need have "no further consciousness of sins" (Heb. x. 2,
+14-18). In the theological use here made of the idea of _cleansing_, St
+Paul comes into line with St John and the epistle to the Hebrews. The
+purification is nothing else than that which he has elsewhere styled
+_justification_. He employs the terms synonymously in the later epistle
+to Titus (ii. 14; iii. 7).
+
+"Having cleansed" is a phrase congruous with the figure of _the laver_,
+or _bath_ (comp. again Tit. 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 passage
+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 God. 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 God, 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 passed 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,
+"God's word--the Spirit's sword"; of Romans x. 8, "the word of faith
+which we proclaim"; of Luke i. 37, "the word from God 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 _verbum 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 God
+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 God of a
+good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." The vital
+constituent 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 God,--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 God 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 pass from her face: the worldly passions
+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 God!
+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 pass 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 God'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 assume
+the attitude 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 God; 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 assemblies.
+Royalties and nobilities, and the holders of popular power--all whose
+"names are named in this world," along with the principalities in
+heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of the Church must
+lay aside their robes and forget their titles, 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. God "chose
+us in Christ before the world's foundation" (i. 4). We were created in
+the Son of God'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 analogous to the
+derivation of the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in
+its ideal, and as conceived in the purpose of God, 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 God.... Man is the image and glory of God: 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 God 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 God 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 passage 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 analogy 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 God 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 God at the institution 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. God 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] =En rh�mati=. =Logos= is word as expressive of _thought_. =Rh�ma=,
+the utterance of a living voice,--a _sentence_, _pronouncement_,
+_message_; it is the Greek term employed in all the passages 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 =Heneken toutou= of the original to =Anti
+toutou=, 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 God 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 God; 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 assembly 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 God.
+
+The Latin _pietas_ impressed a religious character upon filial duty.
+This word signified at once dutifulness towards the gods, 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 illustration 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 associated 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 God," 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 God giveth thee." This blessing is the heritage of dutiful children
+in every land. Those who have watched the history of godly 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 promptitude and faithfulness and kindliness of heart, which are the
+best guarantees for happiness and success in life. Through parental
+nurture "godliness" secures its "promise of the life that now is."
+
+Children are exhorted to submission: fathers to _gentleness_. "Do not,"
+the apostle says, "anger your children"; in the corresponding place in
+Colossians, "Do not irritate your children, lest they be disheartened"
+(ch. iii. 21). In these parallel texts two distinct verbs are rendered
+by the one English word "provoke." The Colossian passage warns against
+the chafing effect of parental exactions and fretfulness, that tend to
+break the child's spirit and spoil its temper. Our text warns the father
+against angering his child by unfair or oppressive treatment. From this
+verb comes the noun "wrath" (or "provocation") used in chapter iv. 26,
+denoting that stirring of anger which gives peculiar occasion to the
+devil.
+
+Not that the father is forbidden to cross his child's wishes, or to do
+anything or refuse anything that may excite its anger. Nothing is worse
+for a child than to find that parents fear its displeasure, and that it
+will gain its ends by passion. But the father must not be exasperating,
+must not needlessly thwart the child's inclinations and excite in order
+to subdue its anger, as some will do even of set purpose, thinking that
+in this way obedience is learnt. This policy may secure submission; but
+it is gained at the cost of a rankling sense of injustice.
+
+Household rule should be equally firm and kind, neither provoking nor
+avoiding the displeasure of its subjects, inflicting no severity for
+severity's sake, but shrinking from none that fidelity demands. With
+much parental fondness, there is sometimes in family government a want
+of seriousness and steady principle, an absence in father or mother of
+the sense that they are dealing with moral and responsible beings in
+their little ones, and not with toys, which is reflected in the caprice
+and self-indulgence of the children's maturer life. Such parents will
+give account hereafter of their stewardship with an inconsolable grief.
+
+It is almost superfluous to insist on the apostle's exhortation to treat
+children kindly. For them these are days of Paradise, compared with
+times not far distant. Never were the wants and the fancies of these
+small mortals catered for as they are now. In some households the danger
+lies at the opposite extreme from that of over-strictness. The children
+are idolized. Not their comfort and welfare only, but their humours and
+caprices become the law of the house. They are "nourished" indeed, but
+not "in the discipline and admonition of the Lord." It is a great
+unkindness to treat our children so that they shall be strangers to
+hardship and restriction, so that they shall not know what real
+obedience means, and have no reverence for age, no habits of deference
+and self-denial. It is the way to breed monsters of selfishness,
+pampered creatures who will be useless and miserable in adult life.
+
+"Discipline and admonition" are distinguished as positive and negative
+terms. The first is the "training up of the child in the way that he
+should go"; the second checks and holds him back from the ways in which
+he should not go. The former word (_paideia_)--denoting primarily
+_treating-as-a-boy_--signifies very often "chastisement";[149] but it
+has a wider sense, embracing instruction besides.[150] It includes the
+whole course of training by which the boy is reared into a
+man.--_Admonition_ is a still more familiar word with St Paul.[151] It
+may be reproof bearing upon errors in the past; or it may be warning,
+that points out dangers lying in the future. Both these services parents
+owe to their children. Admonition implies faults in the nature of the
+child, and wisdom in the father to see and correct them.
+
+"Foolishness," says the Hebrew proverb, "is bound up in the heart of a
+child." In the Old Testament discipline there was something over-stern.
+The "hardness of heart" censured by the Lord Jesus, which allowed of two
+mothers in the house, put barriers between the father and his offspring
+that rendered "the rod of correction" more needful than it is under the
+rule of Christ. But correction, in gentler or severer sort, there must
+be, so long as children spring from sinful parents. The child's
+conscience responds to the kindly and searching word of reproof, to the
+admonition of love. This faithful dealing with his children wins for the
+father in the end a deep gratitude, and makes his memory a guard in
+days of temptation and an object of tender reverence.
+
+The child's "obedience _in the Lord_" is its response to "the discipline
+and admonition _of the Lord_" exercised by its parents. The discipline
+which wise Christian fathers give their children, is the Lord's
+discipline applied through them. "Correction and instruction should
+proceed from the Lord and be directed by the Spirit of the Lord, in such
+a way that it is not so much the father who corrects his children and
+teaches them, as the Lord through him" (Monod). Thus the Father of whom
+every family on earth is named, within each Christian house works all in
+all. Thus the chief Shepherd, through His under-shepherds, guides and
+feeds the lambs of His flock. By the gate of His fold fathers and
+mothers themselves have entered; and the little ones follow with them.
+In the pastures of His word they nourish them, and rule them with His
+rod and staff. To their offspring they become an image of the Good
+Shepherd and the Father in heaven. Their office teaches them more of
+God's fatherly ways with themselves. From their children's humbleness
+and confidence, from their simple wisdom, their hopes and fears and
+ignorances, the elders learn deep and affecting lessons concerning their
+own relations to the heavenly Father.
+
+St Paul's instruction to fathers applies to all who have the charge of
+children: to schoolmasters of every degree, whose work, secular as it
+may be called, touches the springs of moral life and character; to
+teachers in the Sunday school, successors to the work that Christ
+assigned to Peter, of shepherding His lambs. These instructors supply
+the Lord's nurture to multitudes of children, in whose homes Christian
+faith and example are wanting. The ideas which children form of Christ
+and His religion, are gathered from what they see and hear in the
+school. Many a child receives its bias for life from the influence of
+the teacher before whom it sits on Sunday. The love and meekness of
+wisdom, or the coldness or carelessness of the one who thus stands
+between Christ and the infant soul, will make or mar its spiritual
+future.
+
+II. From the children of the house the apostle proceeds to address the
+_servants_--slaves as they were, until the gospel unbound their chains.
+The juxtaposition of children and slaves is full of significance; it is
+a tacit prophecy of emancipation. It brings the slave within the
+household, and gives a new dignity to domestic service.[152]
+
+The Greek philosophers regarded slavery as a fundamental institution,
+indispensable to the existence of civilized society. That the few might
+enjoy freedom and culture, the many were doomed to bondage. Aristotle
+defines the slave as an "animated tool," and the tool as an "inanimate
+slave." Two or three facts will suffice to show how utterly slaves were
+deprived of human rights in the brilliant times of the classic humanism.
+In Athens it was the legal rule to admit the evidence of a slave only
+upon torture, as that of a freeman was received upon oath. Amongst the
+Romans, if a master had been murdered in his house, the whole of his
+domestic servants, amounting sometimes to hundreds, were put to death
+without inquiry. It was a common mark of hospitality to assign to a
+guest a female slave for the night, like any other convenience. Let it
+be remembered that the slave population outnumbered the free citizens of
+the Roman and Greek cities by many times; that they were frequently of
+the same race, and might be even superior in education to their masters.
+Indeed, it was a lucrative trade to rear young slaves and train them in
+literary and other accomplishments, and then to let them out in these
+capacities for hire. Let any one consider the condition of society which
+all this involved, and he will have some conception of the degradation
+in which the masses of mankind were plunged, and of the crushing tyranny
+that the world laboured under in the boasted days of republican liberty
+and Hellenic art.
+
+No wonder that the new religion was welcome to the slaves of the Pagan
+cities, and that they flocked into the Church. Welcome to them was the
+voice that said: "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy
+laden"; welcome the proclamation that made them Christ's freedmen,
+"brethren beloved" where they had been "animated tools" (Philem. 16). In
+the light of such teaching, slavery was doomed. Its re-adoption by
+Christian nations, and the imposition of its yoke on the negro race, is
+amongst the great crimes of history,--a crime for which the white man
+has had to pay rivers of his blood.
+
+The social fabric, as it then existed, was so entirely based upon
+slavery, that for Christ and the apostles to have proclaimed its
+abolition would have meant universal anarchy. In writing to Philemon
+about his converted slave Onesimus, the apostle does not say, "Release
+him," though the word seems to be trembling on his lips. In 1
+Corinthians vii. 20-24 he even advises the slave who has the chance of
+manumission to remain where he is, content to be "the Lord's freedman."
+To the Christian slave what mattered it who ruled over his perishing
+body! his spirit was free, death would be his discharge and
+enfranchisement. No decree is issued to abolish bond-service between man
+and man; but it was destroyed in its essence by the spirit of Christian
+brotherhood. It melted away in the spread of the gospel, as snow and
+winter melt before the face of spring.
+
+"Ye slaves, obey your lords according to the flesh." The apostle does
+not disguise the slave's subservience; nor does he speak in the language
+of pity or of condescension. He appeals as a man to men and equals, on
+the ground of a common faith and service to Christ. He awakens in these
+degraded tools of society the sense of spiritual manhood, of conscience
+and loyalty, of love and faith and hope. As in Colossians iii. 22-iv. 1,
+the apostle designates the earthly master not by his common title
+(_despotes_), but by the very word (_kyrios_) that is the title of the
+_Lord_ Christ, giving the slave in this way to understand that he has,
+in common with his master (ver. 9), a higher Lord in the spirit. "Ye are
+slaves to the Lord Christ!" (Col. iii. 24). St Paul is accustomed to
+call himself "a slave of Christ Jesus."[153] Nay, it is even said, in
+Philippians ii. 7, that Christ Jesus "took the form of a slave!"
+
+How much there was, then, to console the Christian bondman for his lot.
+In self-abnegation, in the willing forfeiture of personal rights, in his
+menial and unrequited tasks, in submission to insult and injustice, he
+found a holy joy. His was a path in which he might closely follow the
+steps of the great Servant of mankind. His position enabled him to
+"adorn the Saviour's doctrine" above other men (Tit. ii. 9, 10).
+Affectionate, gentle, bearing injury with joyful courage, the Christian
+slave held up to that hardened and jaded Pagan age the example which it
+most required. God chose the base things of the world to bring to nought
+the mighty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The relations of servant and master will endure, in one shape or other,
+while the world stands. And the apostle's injunctions bear upon servants
+of every order. We are all, in our various capacities, servants of the
+community. The moral worth of our service and its blessing to ourselves
+depend on the conditions that are here laid down.
+
+1. There must be _a genuine care for our work_.
+
+"Obey," he says, "with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart,
+as unto the Christ." The fear enjoined is no dread of human displeasure,
+of the master's whip or tongue. It is the same "fear and trembling" with
+which we are bidden to "work out our own salvation" (Phil. ii. 12). The
+inward work of the soul's salvation and the outward work of the busy
+hands labouring in the mine or at the loom, or in the lowliest domestic
+duties,--all alike are to be performed under a solemn responsibility to
+God and in the presence of Christ, the Lord of nature and of men, who
+understands every sort of work, and will render to each of His servants
+a just and exact reward. No man, whether he be minister of state or
+stable-groom, will dare to do heedless work, who lives and acts in that
+august Presence,--
+
+    "As ever in the great Task-master's eye."
+
+2. The sense of Christ's Lordship ensures _honesty in work_.
+
+So the apostle continues: "Not with _eye-service_, as _men-pleasers_."
+Both these are rare compound words,--the former indeed occurring only
+here and in the companion letter, being coined, probably, by the writer
+for this use. It is the common fault and temptation of servants in all
+degrees to observe the master's eye, and to work busily or slackly as
+they are watched or not. Such workmen act as they do, because they look
+to men and not to God. Their work is without conscience and
+self-respect. The visible master says "Well done!" But there is another
+Master looking on, who says "Ill done!" to all pretentious doings and
+works of eye-service,--who sees not as man sees, but judges with the act
+the motive and intent.
+
+              "Not on the vulgar mass
+              Called 'work' must sentence pass,
+    Things done, which took the eye and had the price."
+
+In His book of accounts there is a stern reckoning in store for
+deceitful dealers and the makers-up of unsound goods, in whatever
+handicraft or headcraft they are engaged.
+
+Let us all adopt St Paul's maxim; it will be an immense economy. What
+armies of overlookers and inspectors we shall be able to dismiss, when
+every servant works as well behind his master's back as to his face,
+when every manufacturer and shopkeeper puts himself in the purchaser's
+place and deals as he would have others deal with him. It was for the
+Christian slaves of the Greek trading cities to rebuke the Greek spirit
+of fraud and trickery, by which the common dealings of life in all
+directions were vitiated.
+
+3. To the carefulness and honesty of the slave's daily labour he must
+even add _heartiness_: "as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from
+the soul, with good will doing service, as to the Lord and not to men."
+
+They must do _the will of God_ in the service of men, as Jesus Christ
+Himself did it,--and with His meekness and fortitude and unwearied love.
+Their work will thus be rendered from inner principle, with thought and
+affection and resolution spent upon it. That alone is the work of a man,
+whether he preaches or ploughs, which comes from the soul behind the
+hands and the tongue, into which the workman puts as much of his soul,
+of himself, as the work is capable of holding.
+
+4. Add to all this, the servant's _anticipation of the final reward_. In
+each case, "whatsoever one may do that is good, this he will receive
+from the Lord, whether he be a bondman or a freeman." The complementary
+truth is given in the Colossian letter: "He who does wrong, will receive
+back the wrong that he did."
+
+The doctrine of equal retribution at the judgement-seat of Christ
+matches that of equal salvation at the cross of Christ. How trifling and
+evanescent the differences of earthly rank appear, in view of these
+sublime realities. There is a "Lord in heaven," alike for servant and
+for master, "with whom is no respect of persons" (ver. 9). This grand
+conviction beats down all caste-pride. It teaches justice to the mighty
+and the proud; it exalts the humble, and assures the down-trodden of
+redress. No bribery or privilege, no sophistry or legal cunning will
+avail, no concealment or distortion of the facts will be possible in
+that Court of final appeal. The servant and the master, the monarch and
+his meanest subject will stand before the bar of Jesus Christ upon the
+same footing. And the poor slave, wonderful to think, who was faithful
+in the "few things" of his drudging earthly lot, will receive the "many
+things" of a son of God and a joint-heir with Christ!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_And_, _ye lords_, do the same things towards them"--be as good to your
+slaves as they are required to be towards you. A bold application this
+of Christ's great rule: "What you would that men should do to you, do
+even so to them." In many instances this rule suggested _liberation_,
+where the slave was prepared for freedom. In any case, the master is to
+put himself in his dependant's place, and to act by him as he would
+desire himself to be treated if their positions were reversed.
+
+Slaves were held to be scarcely human. Deceit and sensuality were
+regarded as their chief characteristics. They must be ruled, the
+moralists said, by the fear of punishment. This was the only way to keep
+them in their place. The Christian master adopts a different policy. He
+"desists from threatening"; he treats his servants with even-handed
+justice, with fit courtesy and consideration. The recollection is ever
+present to his mind, that he must give account of his charge over each
+one of them to his Lord and theirs. So he will make, as far as in him
+lies, his own domain an image of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[148] We cannot absolutely _prove_ infant baptism from the New Testament
+texts adduced on its behalf; but they afford a strong presumption in its
+favour, which is confirmed on the one hand by the analogy of
+circumcision, and on the other by the immemorial usage of the early
+Church. Titus i. 6 shows that stress was laid on the faith of children,
+and that discrimination was used in their recognition as Church members.
+
+[149] 1 Cor. xi. 32; Heb. xii. 5, 11, etc.
+
+[150] Acts vii. 22, xxii. 3; Rom. ii. 20; 2 Tim. ii. 25, iii. 14.
+
+[151] 1 Cor. x. 11; Col. i. 28, iii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 14, etc.
+
+[152] The word _family_ (Latin _familia_) denoted originally the
+servants of the establishment, the domestic slaves. Its modern usage is
+an index to the elevating influence of Christianity upon social
+relations.
+
+[153] Rom. i. 1; 2 Cor. iv. 5; Gal. i. 10, etc.
+
+
+
+
+_ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+CHAPTER vi. 10-20.
+
+    =Idou ho Satanas ex�t�sato hymas, tou siniasai h�s to siton.=
+
+    LUKE xxii. 31.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+_THE FOES OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    "From henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the might of His
+    strength. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not
+    against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
+    powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
+    spiritual _hosts_ of wickedness, in the heavenly _places_."--EPH.
+    vi. 10-12.
+
+
+We follow the Revised reading of the opening word of this paragraph, and
+the preferable rendering given by the Revisers in their margin. The
+adverb is the same that is found in Galatians vi. 17 ("_Henceforth_ let
+no man trouble me"); not that used in Philippians iii. 1 and elsewhere
+("_Finally_, my brethren," etc.). The copyists have conformed our text,
+seemingly, to the latter passage. We are recalled to the circumstances
+and occasion of the epistle. High as St Paul soars in meditation, he
+does not forget the situation of his readers. The words of chapter iv.
+14 showed us how well aware he is of the dangers looming before the
+Asian Churches.
+
+The epistle to the Colossians is altogether a letter of conflict (see
+ch. ii. 1 ff.). In writing that letter St Paul was wrestling with
+spiritual powers, mighty for evil, which had commenced their attack upon
+this outlying post of the Ephesian province. He sees in the sky the
+cloud portending a desolating storm. The clash of hostile arms is heard
+approaching. This is no time for sloth or fear, for a faith half-hearted
+or half-equipped. "You have need of your best manhood and of all the
+weapons of the spiritual armoury, to hold your ground in the conflict
+that is coming upon you. _Henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the
+might of His strength._"
+
+It is the apostle's call to arms!--"Be strengthened in the Lord," he
+says (to render the imperative literally: so in 2 Timothy ii. I). _Make
+His strength your own._ The strength he bids them assume is _power_,
+_ability_, strength adequate to its end.[154] "The might of His
+strength" repeats the combination of terms we found in chapter i. 19.
+That sovereign power of the Almighty which raised Jesus our Lord from
+the dead, belongs to the Lord Christ Himself. From its resources He will
+clothe and arm His people. "In the Lord," says Israel evermore, "is
+righteousness and strength. The rock of my salvation and my refuge is in
+God." The Church's strength lies in the almightiness of her risen Lord,
+the Captain of her warfare.
+
+"The _panoply_ of God" (ver. II) reminds us of the saying of Jesus in
+reference to His casting out of demons, recorded in Luke xi. 21, 22--the
+only other instance in the New Testament of this somewhat rare Greek
+word. The Lord Jesus describes Himself in conflict with Satan, who as
+"the strong one armed keeps his possessions in peace,"--until there
+"come upon him the stronger than he," who "conquers him and takes away
+his panoply wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils." In this text
+the situation is reversed; and the "full armour" belongs to Christ's
+servants, who are equipped to meet the counter-attack of Satan and the
+powers of evil. There is a Divine and a Satanic panoply--arms tempered
+in heaven and in hell, to be wielded by the sons of light and of
+darkness respectively (comp. Rom. xiii. 12). The weapons of warfare on
+the two sides are even as the two leaders that furnish them--"the strong
+one armed" and the "Stronger than he." Mightier are faith and love than
+unbelief and hate; "greater is He that is in you than he that is in the
+world."
+
+Let us review the forces marshalled against us,--their _nature_, their
+_mode of assault_, and _the arena of the contest_.
+
+1. The Asian Christians had to "stand against _the wiles_ [_schemes_, or
+_methods_[155]] _of the devil_."
+
+Unquestionably, the New Testament assumes the personality of Satan. This
+belief runs counter to modern thought, governed as it is by the tendency
+to depersonalize existence. The conception of evil spirits given us in
+the Bible is treated as an obsolete superstition; and the name of the
+Evil One with multitudes serves only to point a profane or careless
+jest. To Jesus Christ, it is very certain, Satan was no figure of
+speech; but a thinking and active being, of whose presence and influence
+He saw tokens everywhere in this evil world (comp. ii. 2). If the Lord
+Jesus "speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen" concerning
+the mysteries of the other world, there can be no question of the
+existence of a personal devil. If in any matter He was bound, as a
+teacher of spiritual truth, to disavow Jewish superstition, surely
+Christ was so bound in this matter. Yet instead of repudiating the
+current belief in Satan and the demons, He earnestly accepts it; and it
+entered into His own deepest experiences. In the visible forms of sin
+Jesus saw the shadow of His great antagonist. "From the Evil One" He
+taught His disciples to pray that they might be delivered. The victims
+of disease and madness whom He healed, were so many captives rescued
+from the malignant power of Satan. And when Jesus went to meet His
+death, He viewed it as the supreme conflict with the usurper and
+oppressor who claimed to be "the prince of this world."[156]
+
+Satan is the consummate form of depraved and untruthful intellect. We
+read of his "thoughts," his "schemes," his subtlety and deceit and
+impostures;[157] of his slanders against God and man,[158] from which,
+indeed, the name devil (_diabolus_) is given him. Falsehood and hatred
+are his chief qualities. Hence Jesus called him "the manslayer" and "the
+father of falsehood" (John viii. 44). He was the first sinner, and the
+fountain of sin (1 John iii. 8). All who do unrighteousness or hate
+their brethren are, so far, his offspring (1 John iii. 10). With a realm
+so wide, Satan might well be called not only "the prince," but the very
+"god of this world" (2 Cor. iv. 4). Plausibly he said to Jesus, in
+showing Him the kingdoms of the world, at the time when Tiberius Caesar
+occupied the imperial throne: "All this authority and glory are
+delivered unto me. To whomsoever I will, I give it." His power is
+exercised with an intelligence perhaps as great as any can be that is
+morally corrupt; but it is limited on all sides. In dealing with Jesus
+Christ he showed conspicuous ignorance.
+
+Chief amongst the wiles of the devil at this time was the "scheme of
+error," the cunningly woven net of the Gnostical delusion, in which the
+apostle feared that the Asian Churches would be entangled. Satan's
+empire is ruled with a settled policy, and his warfare carried on with a
+system of strategy which takes advantage of every opening for
+attack.[159] The manifold combinations of error, the various arts of
+seduction and temptation, the ten thousand forms of the deceit of
+unrighteousness constitute "the wiles of the devil."
+
+Such is the gigantic opponent with whom Christ and the Church have been
+in conflict through all ages. But Satan does not stand alone. In verse
+12 there is called up before us an imposing array of spiritual powers.
+They are "the angels of the devil," whom Jesus set in contrast with the
+angels of God that surround and serve the Son of man (Matt. xxv. 41).
+These unhappy beings are, again, identified with the "demons," or
+"unclean spirits," having Satan for their "prince," whom our Lord
+expelled wherever He found them infesting the bodies of men.[160] They
+are represented in the New Testament as fallen beings, expelled from a
+"principality" and "habitation of their own" (Jude 6) which they once
+enjoyed, and reserved for the dreadful punishment which Christ calls
+"the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." They are here
+entitled _principalities_ and _powers_ (or _dominions_), after the same
+style as the angels of God, to whose ranks, as we are almost compelled
+to suppose, these apostates once belonged.
+
+In contrast with the "angels of light" (2 Cor. xi. 14) and "ministering
+spirits" of the kingdom of God (Heb. i. 14), the angels of Satan have
+constituted themselves _the world-rulers of this darkness_. We find the
+compound expression _cosmo-krator_ (world-ruler) in later rabbinical
+usage, borrowed from the Greek and applied to "the angel of death,"
+before whom all mortal things must bow. Possibly, St Paul brought the
+term with him from the school of Gamaliel. Satan being the god of this
+world and swaying "the dominion of darkness,"[161] according to the same
+vocabulary his angels are "the rulers of the world's darkness"; and the
+provinces of the empire of evil fall under their direction.
+
+The darkness surrounding the apostle in Rome and the Churches in
+Asia--"this darkness," he says--was dense and foul. With Nero and his
+satellites the masters of empire, the world seemed to be ruled by demons
+rather than by men. The frightful wish of one of the Psalmists was
+fulfilled for the heathen world: "Set a wicked man over him, and let
+Satan stand at his right hand."
+
+The last of St Paul's synonyms for the satanic forces, "the spiritual
+[powers] of wickedness," may have served to warn the Church against
+reading a political sense into the passage and regarding the civil
+constitution of society and the visible world-rulers as objects for
+their hatred. Pilate was a specimen, by no means amongst the worst, of
+the men in power. Jesus regarded him with pity. His real antagonist
+lurked behind these human instruments. The above phrase, "spirituals of
+wickedness," is Hebraistic, like "judge" and "steward of
+unrighteousness,"[162] and is equivalent to "wicked spirits." The
+adjective "spiritual," which does duty for a substantive--"the
+spiritual [forces, or elements] of wickedness"[163]--brings out the
+collective character of these hostile powers.
+
+St Paul's demonology[164] is identical with that of Jesus Christ. The
+two doctrines stand or fall together. The advent of Christ appears to
+have stirred to extraordinary activity the satanic powers. They asserted
+themselves in Palestine at this particular time in the most open and
+terrifying manner. In an age of scepticism and science like our own, it
+belongs to "the wiles of the devil" to work obscurely. This is dictated
+by obvious policy. Moreover, his power is greatly reduced. Satan is no
+longer the god of this world, since Christianity rose to its ascendant.
+The manifestations of demonism are, at least in Christian lands, vastly
+less conspicuous than in the first age of the Church. But those are more
+bold than wise who deny their existence, and who profess to explain all
+occult phenomena and phrenetic moral aberrations by physical causes. The
+popular idolatries of his own day, with their horrible rites and inhuman
+orgies, St Paul ascribed to devilry. He declared that those who sat at
+the feast of the idol and gave sanction to its worship, were partaking
+of "the cup and the table of demons" (1 Cor. x. 20, 21). Heathen
+idolatries at the present time are, in many instances, equally
+diabolical; and those who witness them cannot easily doubt the truth of
+the representations of Scripture upon this subject.
+
+II. The conflict against these spiritual enemies is essentially a
+_spiritual_ conflict. "Our struggle is not against blood and flesh."
+
+They are not human antagonists whom the Church has to fear,--mortal men
+whom we can look in the face and meet with equal courage, in the contest
+where hot blood and straining muscle do their part. The fight needs
+mettle of another kind. The foes of our faith are untouched by carnal
+weapons. They come upon us without sound or footfall. They assail the
+will and conscience; they follow us into the regions of spiritual
+thought, of prayer and meditation. Hence the weapons of our warfare,
+like those which the apostle wielded (2 Cor. x. 2-5), "are not carnal,"
+but spiritual and "mighty toward God."
+
+It is true that the Asian Churches had visible enemies arrayed against
+them. There were the "wild beasts" with whom St Paul "fought at
+Ephesus," the heathen mob of the city, sworn foes of every despiser of
+their great goddess Artemis. There was Alexander the coppersmith, ready
+to do the apostle evil, and "the Jews from Asia," a party of whom all
+but murdered him in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 27-36); there was Demetrius the
+silversmith, instigator of the tumult which drove him from Ephesus, and
+"the craftsmen of like occupation," whose trade was damaged by the
+progress of the new religion. These were formidable opponents, strong in
+everything that brings terror to flesh and blood. But after all, these
+were of small account in St Paul's view; and the Church need never
+dread material antagonism. The centre of the struggle lies elsewhere.
+The apostle looks beyond the ranks of his earthly foes to the power of
+Satan by which they are animated and directed,--"impotent pieces of the
+game he plays." From this hidden region he sees impending an attack more
+perilous than all the violence of persecution, a conflict urged with
+weapons of finer proof than the sharp steel of sword and axe, and with
+darts tipped with a fiercer fire than that which burns the flesh or
+devours the goods.
+
+Even in outward struggles against worldly power, our wrestling is not
+simply against blood and flesh. Calvin makes a bold application of the
+passage when he says: "This sentence we should remember so often as we
+are tempted to revengefulness, under the smart of injuries from men. For
+when nature prompts us to fling ourselves upon them with all our might,
+this unreasonable passion will be checked and reined in suddenly, when
+we consider that these men who trouble us are nothing more than darts
+cast by the hand of Satan; and that while we stoop to pick up these, we
+shall expose ourselves to the full force of his blows." _Vasa sunt_,
+says Augustine of human troublers, _alius utitur_; _organa sunt, alius
+tangit_.
+
+The crucial assaults of evil, in many instances, come in no outward and
+palpable guise. There are sinister influences that affect the spirit
+more directly, fires that search its inmost fibres, a darkness that
+sweeps down upon the very light that is in us threatening its
+extinction. "Doubts, the spectres of the mind," haunt it; clouds brood
+over the interior sky and fierce storms sweep down on the soul, that
+rise from beyond the seen horizon. "Jesus was led of the Spirit into the
+wilderness, to be tempted of the devil." Away from the tracks of men
+and the seductions of flesh and blood the choicest spirits have been
+tested and schooled. So they are tempered in the spiritual furnace to a
+fineness which turns the edge of the sharpest weapons the world may use
+against them.
+
+Some men are constitutionally more exposed than others to these interior
+assaults. There are conditions of the brain and nerves, tendencies lying
+deep in the organism, that give points of vantage to the enemy of souls.
+These are the opportunities of the tempter; they do not constitute the
+temptation itself, which comes from a hidden and objective source.
+Similarly in the trials of the Church, in the great assaults made upon
+her vital truths, historical conditions and the external movements of
+the age furnish the material for the conflicts through which it has to
+pass; but the spring and moving agent, the master will that dominates
+these hostile forces is that of Satan.
+
+The Church was engaged in a double conflict--of the flesh and of the
+spirit. On the one hand, it was assailed by the material seductions of
+heathenism and the terrors of ruthless persecution. On the other hand,
+it underwent a severe intellectual conflict with the systems of error
+that were rooted in the mind of the age. These forces opposed the
+Christian truth from without; but they became much more dangerous when
+they found their way within the Church, vitiating her teaching and
+practice, and growing like tares among the wheat. It is of heresy more
+than persecution that the apostle is thinking, when he writes these
+ominous words. Not blood and flesh, but the mind and spirit of the Asian
+believers will bear the brunt of the attack that the craft of the devil
+is preparing for the apostolic Church.
+
+III. The last clause of verse 12, _in the heavenly places_, refuses to
+combine with the above description of the powers hostile to the Church.
+The heavenly places are the abode of God and the blessed angels. This is
+the region where the Father has blessed us in Christ (i. 3); where He
+seated the Christ at His own right hand (i. 20), and has in some sense
+seated us with Christ (ii. 6); and where the angelic princedoms dwell
+who follow with keen and studious sympathy the Church's fortunes (iii.
+10). To locate the devil and his angels _there_ seems to us highly
+incongruous; the juxtaposition is out of the question with St Paul.
+Chapter ii. 2 gives no real support to this view: supposing "the air" to
+be literally intended in that passage, it belongs to _earth_ and not to
+heaven.[165] Nor do the parallels from other Scriptures adduced supply
+any but the most precarious basis for an interpretation against which
+the use of the exalted phrase in our epistle revolts.
+
+No; Satan and his hosts do not dwell with Christ and the holy angels "in
+the heavenly places." But the Church dwells there already, by her faith;
+and it is in the heavenly places of her faith and hope that she is
+assailed by the powers of hell. This final prepositional clause should
+be separated by a comma from the words immediately foregoing; it forms a
+distinct predicate to the sentence contained in verse 12. It specifies
+the _locality_ of the struggle; it marks out the battle-field. "Our
+wrestling is ... in the heavenly places."[166] So we construe the
+sentence, following the ancient Greek commentators.
+
+The life of the Church "is hid with the Christ in God"; her treasure is
+laid up in heaven. She is assailed by a philosophy and vain deceit that
+perverts her highest doctrines, that clouds her vision of Christ and
+limits His glory, and threatens to drag her down from the high places
+where she sits with her ascended Lord.[167] Such was, in effect, the aim
+of the Colossian heresy, and of the great Gnostical movement to which
+this speculation was a prelude, that for a century and more entangled
+Christian faith in its metaphysical subtleties and false mysticism. The
+epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike the leading note of the
+controversies of the Church in this region during its first ages. Their
+character was thoroughly transcendental. "The heavenly things" were the
+subject-matter of the great conflicts of this epoch.
+
+The questions of religious controversy characteristic of our own times,
+though not identical with those of Colossae or Ephesus, concern matters
+equally high and vital. It is not this or that doctrine that is now at
+stake--the nature or extent of the atonement, the procession of the Holy
+Spirit from the Son with the Father, the verbal or plenary inspiration
+of Scripture; but the personal being of God, the historical truth of
+Christianity, the reality of the supernatural,--these and the like
+questions, which formed the accepted basis and the common assumptions of
+former theological discussions, are now brought into dispute. Religion
+has to justify its very existence. Christianity must answer for its
+life, as at the beginning. God is denied. Worship is openly renounced.
+Our treasures in heaven are proclaimed to be worthless and illusive.
+The entire spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to the
+region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties of modern
+religious thought lie at the foundation of things, and touch the core of
+the spiritual life. Unbelief appears, in some quarters, to be more
+serious and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics and
+ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and immortality. The
+Churches are engaged in trivial contentions with each other, while the
+enemy pushes his way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.
+
+"The apostle incites the readers," says Chrysostom, "by the thought of
+the prize at stake. When he has said that our enemies are powerful, he
+adds thereto that these are great possessions which they seek to wrest
+from us. When he says _in the heavenly places_, this implies _for the
+heavenly things_. How it must rouse and sober us to know that the hazard
+is for great things, and great will be the prize of victory. Our foe
+strives to take _heaven_ from us." Let the Church be stripped of all her
+temporalities, and driven naked as at first into the wilderness. She
+carries with her the crown jewels; and her treasure is unimpaired, so
+long as faith in Christ and the hope of heaven remain firm in her heart.
+But let these be lost; let heaven and the Father in heaven fade with our
+childhood's dreams; let Christ go back to His grave--then we are utterly
+undone. We have lost our all in all!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[154] =Endynamousthe= [from =dynamis=] =en Kyri� kai en t� kratei t�s
+ischyos autou.= See the note on these synonyms, on p. 76. Comp., for
+this verb, Col. i. II; 2 Tim. iv. 17; Phil. iv. 13: =Panta ischy� en t�
+endynamounti me=,--"I have strength for everything in Him that _enables_
+me."]
+
+[155] Comp. remark on =methodeia= (iv. 14), p. 247.
+
+[156] John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11: comp. Luke iv. 5-7; Heb. ii. 14.
+
+[157] 2 Cor. ii. 11, xi. 3; 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10; 2 Tim. ii. 26, etc.
+
+[158] Rev. xii, 7-10; Gen. iii. 4, 5; Zech. iii. 1; Job i.
+
+[159] Ch. iv. 27; 2 Cor. ii. 11; Luke xxii. 31.
+
+[160] Luke x. 17-20, xi. 14-26.
+
+[161] Col. i. 13: comp. Acts xxvi. 18, etc.
+
+[162] Luke xvi. 8, xviii. 6.
+
+[163] =Ta pneumatika t�s pon�rias.=
+
+[164] Mr. Moule aptly observes, in his excellent and most useful
+Commentary on Ephesians in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_: St Paul's "testimony to the real and objective existence" of
+evil spirits "gains in strength when it is remembered that the epistle
+was addressed (at least, among other designations) to Ephesus, and that
+Ephesus (see Acts xix.) was a peculiarly active scene of asserted
+magical and other dealings with the unseen darkness. Supposing that the
+right line to take in dealing with such beliefs and practices had been
+to say that the whole basis of them was a fiction of the human mind, not
+only would such a verse as this [vi. 12] not have been written, but, we
+may well assume, something would have been written strongly
+contradictory to the thought of it" (p. 176).
+
+[165] See p. 103.
+
+[166] The objection against the common rendering taken from the absence
+of the Greek article (=ta=) before the phrase =en tois epouraniois=,
+required to link it to =ta pneumatika t�s pon�rias=, is not decisive.
+
+[167] Col. ii. 8-10, iii. 1-4; Phil. iii. 20, 21: comp. Eph. i. 3, ii.
+6, 18, iv. 10, 15; Heb. vi. 19, 20, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+_THE DIVINE PANOPLY._
+
+    "Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    withstand in the evil day, and, having conquered all, to stand.
+    Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put
+    on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with
+    the readiness of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of
+    faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of
+    the evil _one_. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
+    the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and
+    supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching
+    thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the
+    saints."--EPH. vi. 13-18.
+
+
+_Stand_ is the watchword for this battle, the apostle's order of the
+day: "that you may be able to _stand_ against the stratagems of the
+devil, ... that you may be able to _withstand_ in the evil day, and
+mastering all your enemies[168] to _stand_.... _Stand_ therefore,
+girding your loins about with truth." The apostle is fond of this
+martial style, and such appeals are frequent in the letters of this
+period.[169] The Gentile believers are raised to the heavenly places of
+fellowship with Christ, and invested with the lofty character of sons
+and heirs of God: let them hold their ground; let them maintain the
+honour of their calling and the wealth of their high estate, standing
+fast in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. _Pro aris et focis_ the
+patriot draws his sword, and manfully repels the invader. Even so the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus contends for his heavenly city and the
+household of faith. He defends the dearest interests and hopes of human
+life.
+
+This defence is needed, for an "evil day" is at hand! This emphatic
+reference points to something more definite than the general day of
+temptation that is co-extensive with our earthly life. St Paul foresaw a
+crisis of extreme danger impending over the young Church of Christ. The
+prophecies of Jesus taught His disciples, from the first, that His
+kingdom could only prevail by means of a severe conflict, and that some
+desperate struggle would precede the final Messianic triumph. This
+prospect looms before the minds of the New Testament writers, as "the
+day of Jehovah" dominated the imagination of the Hebrew prophets. Paul's
+apocalypse in 1 and 2 Thessalonians is full of reminiscences of Christ's
+visions of judgement. It culminates in the prediction of the evil day of
+Antichrist, which is to usher in the second, glorious coming of the Lord
+Jesus. The consummation, as the apostle was then inclined to think,
+might arrive within that generation (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17), although he
+declares its times and seasons wholly unknown. In his later epistles,
+and in this especially, it is clear that he anticipated a longer
+duration for the existing order of things; and "the evil day" for which
+the Asian Churches are to prepare can scarcely have denoted, to the
+apostle's mind, the final day of Antichrist, though it may well be an
+epoch of similar nature and a token and shadow of the last things.
+
+In point of fact, a great secular crisis was now approaching. The six
+years (64-70 after Christ) extending from the fire of Rome to the fall
+of Jerusalem, were amongst the most fateful and calamitous recorded in
+history. This period was, in a very real sense, the day of judgement for
+Israel and the ancient world. It was a foretaste of the ultimate doom of
+the kingdom of evil amongst men; and through it Christ appears to have
+looked forward to the end of the world. Already "the days are evil" (v.
+16); and "the evil day" is at hand--a time of terror and despair for all
+who have not a firm faith in the kingdom of God.
+
+Two chief characteristics marked this crisis, as it affected the people
+of Christ: _persecution from without_, and _apostasy within the Church_
+(Matt. xxiv. 5, 8-12). To the latter feature St Paul refers
+elsewhere.[170] Of persecution he took less account, for this was indeed
+his ordinary lot, and had already visited his Churches; but it was
+afterwards to assume a more violent and appalling form.
+
+When we turn to the epistle to the Seven Churches (Rev. ii., iii.)
+written in the next ensuing period, we find a fierce battle raging,
+resembling that for which this letter warns the Asian Churches to
+prepare. The storm which our apostle foresees, had then burst. The
+message addressed to each Church concludes with a promise to "him that
+overcometh." To the faithful it is said: "I know thy endurance." The
+angel of the Church of Pergamum dwells where is "the throne of Satan,"
+and where "Antipas the faithful martyr was killed." There also, says the
+Lord Jesus, "are those who hold the teaching of Balaam, and the teaching
+of the Nicolaitans," with whom "I will make war with the sword of my
+mouth" (comp. Eph. vi. 17). Laodicea has shrunk from the trial, and
+grown rich by the world's friendship. Thyatira "suffers the woman
+Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce" the
+servants of Christ. Sardis has but "a few names that have not defiled
+their garments." Even Ephesus, though she had tried the false teachers
+and found them wanting (surely Paul's epistles to Timothy had helped her
+in this examination), has yet "left her first love." The day of trial
+has proved an evil day to these Churches. Satan has been allowed to sift
+them; and while some good wheat remains, much of the faith of the
+numerous and prosperous communities of the province of Asia has turned
+out to be faulty and vain. The presentiments that weighed on St Paul's
+mind when four years ago he took leave of the Ephesian elders at
+Miletus, and which reappear in this passage, were only too well
+justified by the course of events. Indeed, the history of the Church in
+this region has been altogether mournful and admonitory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it is time to look at the _armour_ in which St Paul bids his readers
+equip themselves against the evil day. It consists of seven weapons,
+offensive or defensive--if we count prayer amongst them: the _girdle of
+truth_, the _breastplate of righteousness_, the _shoes of readiness to
+bear the message of peace_, the _shield of faith_, the _helmet of
+salvation_, the _sword of the word_, and the continual _cry of prayer_.
+
+1. In girding himself for the field, the first thing the soldier does is
+to fasten round his waist the military _belt_. With this he binds in his
+under-garments, that there may be nothing loose or trailing about him,
+and braces up his limbs for action. Peace admits of relaxation. The
+girdle is unclasped; the muscles are unstrung. But everything about the
+warrior is tense and firm; his dress, his figure and movements speak of
+decision and concentrated energy. He stands before us an image of
+resolute conviction, of _a mind made up_. Such a picture the words "girt
+about with truth" convey to us.
+
+The epistle is pervaded by the sense of the Church's need of
+intellectual conviction. Many of the Asian believers were children,
+half-enlightened and irresolute, ready to be "tossed to and fro and
+carried about with every wind of doctrine" (iv. 14). They had "heard the
+truth as it is in Jesus," but had an imperfect comprehension of its
+meaning.[171] They required to add to their faith knowledge,--the
+knowledge won by searching thought respecting the great truths of
+religion, by a thorough mental appropriation of the things revealed to
+us in Christ. Only by such a process can truth brace the mind and knit
+its powers together in "the full assurance of the understanding in the
+knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ" (Col. ii, 2, 3).
+
+Such is the faith needed by the Church, now as then, the faith of an
+intelligent, firm and manly assurance. There is in such faith a security
+and a vigour of action that the faith of mere sentiment and emotional
+impression, with its nerveless grasp, its hectic and impulsive fervours,
+cannot impart. The luxury of agnosticism, the languors of doubt, the
+vague sympathies and hesitant eclecticism in which delicate and cultured
+minds are apt to indulge; the lofty critical attitude, as of some
+intellectual god sitting above the strife of creeds, which others find
+congenial--these are conditions of mind unfit for the soldier of Christ
+Jesus. He must have sure knowledge, definite and decided purposes--a
+soul girdled with truth.
+
+2. Having girt his loins, the soldier next fastens on his _breastplate_,
+or cuirass.
+
+This is the chief piece of his defensive armour; it protects the vital
+organs. In the picture drawn in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, the breastplate is
+made "of faith and love." In this more detailed representation, faith
+becomes the outlying defensive "shield," while righteousness serves for
+the innermost defence, the rampart of the heart. But, in truth, the
+Christian righteousness is compounded of faith and love.
+
+This attribute must be understood in its full Pauline meaning. It is the
+state of one who is right with God and with God's law. It is the
+righteousness both of standing and of character, of imputation and of
+impartation, which begins with justification and continues in the new,
+obedient life of the believer. These are never separate, in the true
+doctrine of grace. "The righteousness that is of God by faith," is the
+soul's main defence against the shafts of Satan. It wards off deadly
+blows, both from this side and from that. Does the enemy bring up
+against me my old sins? I can say: "It is God that justifieth; who is he
+that condemneth?"--Am I tempted to presume on my forgiveness, and to
+fall into transgression once more? From this breastplate the arrow of
+temptation falls pointless, as it resounds: "He that doeth righteousness
+is righteous. He that is born of God doth not commit sin." The
+completeness of pardon for past offence and the integrity of character
+that belong to the justified life, are woven together into an
+impenetrable mail.
+
+3. Now the soldier, having girt his loins and guarded his breast, must
+look well to his feet. There are lying ready for him _shoes_ of wondrous
+make.
+
+What is the quality most needed in the soldier's shoes? Some say, it is
+_firmness_; and they so translate the Greek word employed by the
+apostle, occurring only here in the New Testament, which in certain
+passages of the Septuagint seems to acquire this sense, under the
+influence of Hebrew idiom.[172] But firmness was embodied in the girdle.
+_Expedition_ belongs to the shoes. The soldier is so shod that he may
+move with alertness over all sorts of ground.
+
+Thus shod with speed and willingness were "the beautiful feet" of those
+that brought over desert and mountain "the good tidings of peace," the
+news of Israel's return to Zion (Isai. lii. 7-9). With such swift
+strength were the feet of our apostle shod, when "from Jerusalem round
+about unto Illyricum" he had "fulfilled the gospel of Christ," and is
+"ready," as he says, "to preach the glad tidings to you also that are in
+Rome" (Rom. i. 15). This readiness belonged to His own holy feet, who
+"came and preached peace to the far off and the near" (ii. 17),--when,
+for example, sitting a weary traveller by the well-side at Sychar, He
+found refreshment in revealing to the woman of Samaria the fountain of
+living water. Such readiness befits His servants, who have heard from
+Him the message of salvation and are sent to proclaim it everywhere.
+
+The girdle and breastplate look to one's own safety. They must be
+supplemented by the evangelic zeal inseparable from the spirit of
+Christ. This is, moreover, a safeguard of Church life. Von Hofmann says
+admirably upon this point: "The objection [brought against the above
+interpretation] that the apostle is addressing the faithful at large,
+who are not all of them called to preach the gospel, is mistaken. Every
+believer should be prepared to witness for Christ so often as
+opportunity affords, and needs a _readiness_ thereto. The knowledge of
+Christ's peace qualifies him to convey its message. He brings it with
+him into the strife of the world. And it is the consciousness that he
+possesses himself such peace and has it to communicate to others, which
+enables him to walk firmly and with sure step in the way of faith." When
+we are bidden to "_stand_ in the evil day," that does not mean to stand
+idle or content to hold our ground. Attack is often the best mode of
+defence. We keep our faith by spreading it. We defend ourselves from our
+opponents by converting them to the gospel, which breathes everywhere
+reconciliation and fraternity. Our Foreign Missions are our grand modern
+apologetic; and God's peacemakers are His mightiest warriors.
+
+4. With his body girt and fenced and his feet clad with the gospel
+shoes, the soldier reaches out his left hand to "take up withal the
+_shield_," while his right hand grasps first the helmet which he places
+on his head, and then the sword that is offered to him in the word of
+God.
+
+The shield signified is not the small round buckler, or target, of the
+light-armed man; but the door-like shield,[173] measuring four feet by
+two-and-a-half and rounded to the shape of the body, that the Greek
+hoplite and the Roman legionary carried. Joined together, these large
+shields formed a wall, behind which a body of troops could hide
+themselves from the rain of the enemy's missiles. Such is the office of
+faith in the conflicts of life: it is the soldier's main defence, the
+common bulwark of the Church. Like the city's outer wall, faith bears
+the brunt and onset of all hostility. On this shield of faith the darts
+of Satan are caught, their point broken and their fire quenched. These
+military shields were made of wood, covered on the outside with thick
+leather, which not only deadened the shock of the missile, but protected
+the frame of the shield from the "fire-tipped darts" that were used in
+the artillery of the ancients. These flaming arrows, armed with some
+quickly burning and light combustible, if they failed to pierce the
+warrior's shield, fell in a moment extinguished at his feet.
+
+St Paul can scarcely mean by his "fiery darts" incitements to passion in
+ourselves, inflammatory temptations that seek to rouse the inward fires
+of anger or lust. For these missiles are "fire-pointed darts _of the
+Evil One_." The fire belongs to the enemy who shoots the dart. It
+signifies the malignant hate with which Satan hurls slanders and threats
+against the people of God through his human instruments. A bold faith
+wards off and quenches this fire even at a distance, so that the soul
+never feels its heat. The heart's confidence is unmoved and the Church's
+songs of praise are undisturbed, while persecution rages and the enemies
+of Christ gnash their teeth against her. Such a shield to him was the
+faith of Stephen the proto-martyr.
+
+    "I heard the defaming of many; there was terror on every side.
+    But I trusted in Thee, O Jehovah: I said, Thou art my God!"
+
+To "take up the shield of faith," is it not, like the Psalmist, to meet
+injuries and threats, the boasts of unbelief and of worldly power, the
+poisoned arrows of the deceitful and the bitter words of unjust
+reproach, with faith's quiet counter-assertion? "Who shall separate us
+from the love of Christ?" says the apostle in the midst of tribulation.
+"God is my witness, whom I serve in the gospel of His Son," he answers
+when his fidelity is questioned. No shaft of malice, no arrow of fear
+can pierce the soul that holds such a shield.
+
+5. At this point (ver. 17), when the sentence beginning at verse 14 has
+drawn itself out to such length, and the relative clause of verse 16_b_
+makes a break and eddy in the current of thought, the writer pauses for
+a moment. He resumes the exhortation in a form slightly changed and with
+rising emphasis, passing from the participle to the finite verb: "And
+take _the helmet of salvation_."
+
+The word _take_, in the original, differs from the _taking up_ of verses
+13 and 16. It signifies the _accepting_ of something offered by the hand
+of another. So the Thessalonians "_accepted_ the word" brought them by
+St Paul (1 Thess. i. 6) and Titus "_accepted_ the consolation" given him
+by the Corinthians (2 Cor. viii. 17)--in each case a welcome gift. God's
+hand is stretched out to bestow on His chosen warrior the helmet of
+salvation and the sword of His word, to complete his equipment for the
+perilous field. We accept these gifts with devout gratitude, knowing
+from what source they come and where the heavenly arms were fashioned.
+
+The "helmet of salvation" is worn by the Lord Himself, as He is depicted
+by the prophet coming to the succour of His people (Isai. lix. 17). This
+helmet, on the head of Jehovah, is the crest and badge of their Divine
+champion. Given to the human warrior, it becomes the sign of his
+protection by God. The apostle does not call it "the _hope_ of
+salvation," as he does in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, thinking of the
+believer's assurance of victory in the last struggle. Nor is it the
+sense and assurance of past salvation that here guards the Christian
+soldier. The presence of his Saviour and God in itself constitutes his
+highest safeguard.
+
+    "O Jehovah my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
+    Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle."
+
+The warrior's head rising above his shield was frequently open to
+attack. The arrow might shoot over the shield's edge, and inflict a
+mortal blow. Our faith, at the best, has its deficiencies and its
+limits; but God's salvation reaches beyond our highest confidence in
+Him. His overshadowing presence is the crown of our salvation, His love
+its shining crest.
+
+Thus the equipment of Christ's soldier is complete; and he is arrayed in
+the full armour of light. His loins girt with truth, his breast clad
+with righteousness, his feet shod with zeal, his head crowned with
+safety, while faith's all-encompassing shield is cast about him, he
+steps forth to do battle with the powers of darkness, "strong in the
+Lord, and in the might of His strength."
+
+6. It only remains that "the _sword_ of the Spirit" be put into his
+right hand, while his lips are open in continual prayer to the God of
+his strength.
+
+The "cleansing word" of chapter v. 26, by whose virtue we passed through
+the gate of baptism into the flock of Christ, now becomes the guarding
+and smiting word, to be used in conflict with our spiritual foes. Of the
+Messiah it was said, in language quoted by the apostle against
+Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 8): "He shall smite the earth with the rod of
+His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked"
+(Isai. xi. 4). Similarly, in Hosea the Lord tells how He has "hewed" the
+unfaithful "by His prophets, and slain them by the words of His mouth"
+(Hos. vi. 5). From such sayings of the Old Testament the idea of the
+sword of the Divine word is derived. We find it again in Hebrews iv. 12:
+"The word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword";
+and in the "sword, two-edged, sharp," which John in the Revelation saw
+"coming out of the mouth of the Son of man": it belongs to Him whose
+name is "the word of God," and with it "He shall smite the
+nations."[174]
+
+This sword of the inspired word Paul himself wielded with supernatural
+effect, as when he rebuked Elymas the sorcerer, or when he defended his
+gospel against the Judaizers of Galatia and Corinth. In his hand it was
+even as
+
+                      "The sword
+    Of Michael, from the armoury of God,
+        ... tempered so that neither keen
+    Nor solid might resist that edge."
+
+With what piercing reproofs, what keen thrusts of argument, what
+double-edged irony and dexterous sword-play did this mighty combatant
+smite the enemies of the cross of Christ! In times of conflict never may
+such leaders be wanting to the Church, men using weapons of warfare not
+carnal, but mighty to "cast down strongholds," to "bring down every high
+thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and make captive
+every thought to Christ's obedience."
+
+In her struggle with the world's gigantic lusts and tyrannies, the
+Israel of God must be armed with this lofty and lightning-like power,
+with the flaming sword of the Spirit. No less in the secret, internal
+conflicts of the religious life, the sword of the word is the decisive
+weapon. The Son of man put it to proof in His combat in the wilderness.
+Satan himself sought to wrest this instrument to his purpose. With pious
+texts in his mouth he addressed our Lord, like an angel of light, fain
+to deceive Him by the very Scripture He had Himself inspired! until,
+with the last thrust of quotation, Jesus unmasked the tempter and drove
+him from the field, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"
+
+7. We have surveyed the Christian soldier with his harness on. From head
+to foot he is clothed in arms supernatural. No weapon of defence or
+offence is lacking, that the spiritual combat needs. Nothing seems to be
+wanting: yet everything is wanting, if this be all. Our text began: "Be
+strong in the Lord." It is _prayer_ that links the believer with the
+strength of God.
+
+What avails Michael's sword, if the hand that holds it is slack and
+listless? what the panoply of God, if behind it beats a craven heart? He
+is but a soldier in semblance who wears arms without the courage and the
+strength to use them. The life that is to animate that armed figure, to
+beat with high resolve beneath the corslet, to nerve the arm as it lifts
+the strong shield and plies the sharp sword, to set the swift feet
+moving on their gospel errands, to weld the Church together into one
+army of the living God, comes from the inspiration of God's Spirit
+received in answer to believing prayer. So the apostle adds: "With all
+prayer and supplication praying at every time in the Spirit."
+
+There is here no needless repetition. "Prayer" is the universal word for
+reverent address to God; and "supplication" the entreaty for such help
+as "on every occasion"--at each turn of the battle, in each emergency of
+life--we find ourselves to need. And Christian prayer is always "in the
+Spirit,"--being offered in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, who
+is the element of the believer's life in Christ, who helps our
+infirmities and, virtually, intercedes for us (Rom. viii. 26, 27). When
+the apostle continues, "_watching_ [or _keeping awake_] thereunto," he
+reminds us, as perhaps he was thinking himself, of our Lord's warning to
+the disciples sleeping in Gethsemane: "Watch and pray, lest ye enter
+into temptation." The "perseverance" he requires in this wakeful
+attention to prayer, is the resolute persistence of the suppliant, who
+will neither be daunted by opposition nor wearied by delay.[175]
+
+The word "supplication" is resumed at the end of verse 18, in order to
+enlist the prayers of the readers for the service of the Church at
+large: "with wakeful heed thereto, in all persistence and _supplication
+for all the saints_." Prayer for ourselves must broaden out into a
+catholic intercession for all the servants of our Master, for all the
+children of the household of faith. By the bands of prayer we are knit
+together,--a vast multitude of saints throughout the earth, unknown by
+face or name to our fellows, but one in the love of Christ and in our
+heavenly calling, and all engaged in the same perilous conflict.
+
+"All the saints," St Paul said (i. 15), were interested in the faith of
+the Asian believers; they were called "with all the saints" to share in
+the comprehension of the immense designs of God's kingdom (iii. 18).
+The dangers and temptations of the Church are equally far-reaching; they
+have a common origin and character in all Christian communities. Let our
+prayers, at least, be catholic. At the throne of grace, let us forget
+our sectarian divisions. Having access in one Spirit to the Father, let
+us realize in His presence our communion with all His children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[168] Comp. Rom. viii. 37, xvi. 20. _To bring down_, _overpower_,
+_conquer_ is the military sense of =katergazomai=,--not found elsewhere
+in the New Testament, but, as it seems to us, unmistakable here. It
+occurs in Ezek. xxxiv. 4 (LXX), and 1 Esdr. iv. 4.
+
+[169] Col. i. 23, ii. 5; Phil. i. 27-30, iv. 1: comp. 1 Thess. v. 8;
+Rom. xiii. 11-14; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; 2 Cor. x. 3-6.
+
+[170] 2 Thess. ii. 3; Acts xx. 29, 30; 1 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iii. 1.
+
+[171] Ch. 1. 17-23, iii. 16-19, iv. 13-15, 20-24.
+
+[172] =Hetoimasia= is adopted by the Greek translators as the equivalent
+of the Hebrew word for _foundation_, or _base_, in Ps. lxxxix. 14; Ezra
+ii. 68, iii. 3; Dan. xi. 7, 20, 21. See, however, the note of Meyer, who
+thinks that they misunderstood the Hebrew.
+
+[173] =Thyreos=: Latin _scutum_; only here in N.T.
+
+[174] Rev. i. 16, ii. 12, xix. 13-15.
+
+[175] =En pas� proskarter�sei=: _in every kind of persistence_,--a
+perseverance that tries all arts and holds its ground at every point.
+The verb =proskartere�= appears in the parallel passages: Col. iv. 2;
+Rom. xii. 12; also in Acts i. 14.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONCLUSION.
+
+CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    =Pepeismai gar hoti oute thanatos oute z�� oute angeloi oute archai
+    oute enest�ta oute mellonta oute dynameis oute hyps�ma oute bathos
+    oute tis ktisis hetera dyn�setai h�mas ch�risai apo t�s agap�s tou
+    Theou t�s en Christ� I�sou t� Kyri� h�m�n=--ROM. viii. 38, 39.
+
+    "Love for Christ is immortal."--R. W. DALE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+_REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION._
+
+    "And [pray] on my behalf, that the word may be given unto me in
+    opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the
+    gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may
+    speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
+
+    "But that ye also may know my affairs, how I do, Tychicus, the
+    beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known
+    to you all things: whom I have sent unto you for this very purpose,
+    that ye may know our state, and that he may comfort your
+    hearts."--EPH. vi. 19-22.
+
+
+The apostle has bidden his readers apply themselves with wakeful and
+incessant earnestness to prayer (ver. 18). For this is, after all, the
+chief arm of the spiritual combat. By this means the soul draws
+reinforcements of mercy and hope from the eternal sources (ver. 10). By
+this means the Asian Christians will be able not only to carry on their
+own conflict with vigour, but to help all the saints (ver. 18); and
+through their aid the whole Church of God will be sustained in its war
+with the prince of this world.
+
+The apostle Paul himself stood in the forefront of this battle. He was
+suffering for the cause of common Christendom; he was a mark for the
+attack of the enemies of the gospel.[176] On him, more than on any other
+man, the safety and progress of the Church depended (Phil. i. 25). In
+this position he naturally says: "Watching unto prayer in all
+perseverance and supplication for all the saints--_and for me_." If his
+heart should fail him, or his mouth be closed, if the word of
+inspiration ceased to be given him and the great teacher of the Gentiles
+in faith and truth no longer spoke as he ought to speak, it would be a
+heavy blow and sore discouragement to the friends of Christ throughout
+the world. "My afflictions are your glory (iii. 13). My unworthy
+testimony to Christ is showing forth His praise to all men and
+angels.[177] Pray for me then, that I may speak and act in this hour of
+trial in a manner worthy of the dispensation given to me."
+
+Strong and confident as the apostle Paul was, he felt himself to be
+nothing without prayer. It is his habit to expect the support of the
+intercessions of all who love him in Christ.[178] He knew that he was
+helped by this means, on numberless occasions and in wonderful ways. He
+asks his present readers to entreat that "the word[179] may be given me
+when I open my mouth, so that I may freely make known the mystery of the
+gospel, on which behalf I serve as ambassador in bonds, that in it I may
+speak freely, as I ought to speak." This sentence hangs upon the verb
+"may-be-given." Jesus said to His apostles: "It shall be _given_ you in
+that hour what you shall speak, when brought before rulers and kings"
+(Matt x. 18-20). The apostle stands now before the Roman world. He has
+appealed to Caesar, and awaits his trial. If he has not yet appeared at
+the Emperor's tribunal, he will shortly have to do so. Christ's
+ambassador is about to plead in chains before the highest of human
+courts. It is not his own life or freedom that he is concerned about;
+the ambassador has only to consider how he shall represent his
+Sovereign's interests. The importance which Paul attached to this
+occasion, is manifest from the words written to Timothy (2 Ep. iv. 17)
+referring to his later trial. St Paul has this special need in his
+thoughts, in addition to the help from above continually required in the
+discharge of his ministry, under the hampering conditions of his
+imprisonment (comp. Col. iv. 3, 4).
+
+The Church must entreat on Paul's behalf that the word he utters may be
+God's, and not his own. It is in vain to "open the mouth," unless there
+is this higher prompting and through the gates of speech there issues a
+Divine message, unless the speaker is the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit
+rather than of his individual thought and will. "The words that I speak
+unto you," Jesus said, "I speak not of myself." The bold apostle intends
+to open his mouth; but he must have the true "word given" him to say. We
+should pray for Christ's ambassadors, and especially for the more public
+and eloquent pleaders of the Christian cause, that it may be thus with
+them. Rash and vain words, that bear the stamp of the mere man who
+utters them and not of the Spirit of his Master, do a hurt to the cause
+of the gospel proportioned to the blessing that comes from such lips
+when they speak the word given to them.
+
+Such inspiration would enable the apostle to "make known the mystery of
+the gospel _with freedom and confidence of speech_": the expression
+rendered "with boldness"[180] means all this. Before the emperor Nero,
+or the slave Onesimus, he will be able with the same aptness and dignity
+and self-command to declare his message and to vindicate his Master's
+name. "The mystery of the gospel" is no other secret than that which
+this epistle unfolds (iii. 3-9), the great fact that Jesus Christ is the
+Saviour and the Lord of the whole world. Jesus proclaimed Himself to
+Pilate, who represented at Jerusalem the imperial rule, as the King of
+all who are of the truth; and the apostle Paul has the like message to
+convey to the head of the Empire. It needed the greatest boldness and
+the greatest wisdom in the ambassador of the Messianic King to play his
+part at Rome; an unwise word might make his own life forfeit, and bring
+incalculable dangers on the Church.
+
+St Paul's trial, we suppose, passed off successfully, as he at this time
+anticipated.[181] The Roman government was perfectly aware that the
+political charge against their prisoner was frivolous; and Nero, if he
+personally gave Paul a hearing on this earlier trial, in all probability
+viewed his spiritual pretensions on his Master's behalf with
+contemptuous tolerance. If he did so, the toleration was not due to any
+want of courage or clearness on the defendant's part. It is possible
+even that the courage and address of the advocate of the "new
+superstition" pleased the tyrant, who was not without his moments of
+good humour nor without the instincts of a man of taste. The apostle, we
+may well believe, made an impression on the supreme court at Rome
+similar to that made on his judges in Caesarea.
+
+St Paul's bonds in Christ have now become widely "manifest" in Rome
+(Phil. i. 13). He pleads in circumstances of disgrace. But God brings
+good for His servants out of evil. As he said at a later time, so he
+could say now: "They have bound me; but they cannot bind the word of
+God."[182] He was "not ashamed of the gospel" in the prospect of coming
+to Rome years before (Rom. i. 16); and he is not ashamed now, though he
+has come in chains as an evil-doer. Through the intercessions of
+Christ's people all these injuries of Satan are turning to his salvation
+and to the "furtherance of the gospel"; and Paul rejoices and triumphs
+in them, well assured that Christ will be magnified whether by his life
+or death, whether by his freedom or his chains (Phil. i. 12-26). The
+prayers which the imprisoned apostle asks from the Church were
+fulfilled. For we read in the last verses of the Acts of the Apostles,
+which put into a sentence the history of this period: "He received all
+that came to him, preaching the kingdom and teaching the things
+concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, _with all boldness_, none forbidding
+him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The paragraph relating to Tychicus is almost identical with that of
+Colossians iv. 7, 8. It begins with a "But" connecting what follows with
+the statement the apostle has just made respecting his position at Rome.
+As much as to say: "I want your prayers, set as I am for the defence of
+the gospel and in circumstances of difficulty and peril. But Tychicus
+will tell you more about me than I can convey by letter. I am sending
+him, in fact, for this very purpose."
+
+St Paul knew the great anxiety of the Christians of Asia on his account.
+Epaphras of Colossae had "shown him the love in the Spirit" that was
+felt towards him even by those in this region who had never seen him in
+the flesh (Col. i. 8). The tender heart of the apostle is touched by
+this assurance. So he sends Tychicus to visit as many of the Asian
+Churches as he may be able to reach, bringing news that will cheer their
+hearts and relieve their discouragement (iii. 13).[183] The note sent at
+this time to Philemon indicates the hopeful tidings that Tychicus was
+able to convey to Paul's friends in the East: "I trust that through your
+prayers I shall be given to you" (Philem. 22). To the Philippians he
+writes, perhaps a little later, in the same strain: "I trust in the Lord
+that I myself shall come shortly" (Phil. ii. 24). He anticipates, with
+some confidence, his speedy acquital and release: it is not likely that
+this expectation, on the part of such a man as St Paul, was
+disappointed. The good news went round the Asian and Macedonian
+Churches: "Paul is likely soon to be free, and we shall see and hear him
+again!"
+
+In the parallel epistle he writes, "that you may know" (Col. iv. 8);
+here it is, "that you _also_ may know my affairs." The added word is
+significant. The writer is imagining his letter read in the various
+assemblies which it will reach. He has the other epistle in his mind,
+and remembering that he there introduced Tychicus in similar terms, he
+says to this wider circle of Asian disciples: "That you also, as well as
+the Churches of the Lycus valley, may know how things are with me, I
+send Tychicus to give you a full report." It is not necessary, however,
+to look beyond the last two verses for the reference of the _also_ of
+verse 21: "I have asked your prayers on my behalf; and I wish you in
+turn to know how things go with me." Possibly, there were some matters
+connected with St Paul's trial at Rome that could not be fitly or safely
+communicated by letter. Hence he adds: "He shall make known unto you all
+things." When he writes "that ye may know my affairs, how I do," we
+gather that Tychicus was to communicate to those he visited everything
+about the beloved apostle that would be of interest to his Asian
+brethren.
+
+The apostle commends Tychicus in language identical in the two letters,
+except that in Colossians "fellow-servant" is added to the honourable
+designations of "beloved brother and faithful minister," under which he
+is here introduced. We find him first associated with St Paul in Acts
+xx. 4, where "Tychicus and Trophimus" represent Asia in the number of
+those who accompanied the apostle on his voyage to Jerusalem, when he
+carried the contributions of his Gentile Churches to the relief of the
+Christian poor in Jerusalem. Trophimus, his companion, is called a
+"Greek" and an "Ephesian" (Acts xxi. 28, 29). Whether Tychicus belonged
+to the same city or not, we cannot tell. He was almost certainly a
+Greek. The Pastoral epistles show Tychicus still in the apostle's
+service in his last years. He appears to have joined St Paul's staff and
+remained with him from the time that he accompanied him to Jerusalem in
+the year 59. From 2 Timothy iv 9-12 we gather that Tychicus was sent to
+Ephesus to relieve Timothy, when St Paul desired the presence of the
+latter at Rome. It is evident that he was a man greatly valued by the
+apostle and endeared to him.
+
+Tychicus was well known in the Asian Churches, and suitable therefore to
+be sent upon this errand. And the commendation given to him would be
+very welcome to the circle to which he belonged. The apostle has great
+tact in these personal matters, the tact which belongs to delicate
+feeling and a generous mind. He calls his messenger "the beloved
+brother" in his relation to the Church in general, and "faithful
+minister in the Lord" in his special relation to himself. So he
+describes Epaphroditus to the Philippians as "your apostle and minister
+of my need." In conveying these letters and messages, this worthy man
+was Paul's apostle and minister of his need in regard to the Asian
+Churches. He is a "_minister in the Lord_," inasmuch as this office lies
+within the range of his service to the Lord Christ.
+
+We observe that in writing to the Colossians the apostle applies to
+Onesimus, the converted slave, the honourable epithets applied here to
+this long-tried friend: "the faithful and beloved brother" (Col. iv. 9).
+Every Christian believer should be in the eyes of his fellows a "beloved
+brother." And every true servant of Christ and His people is a "faithful
+minister in the Lord," be his rank high or low, and whether official
+hands have been laid upon his head or not. We are apt, by a trick of
+words, to limit to the order which we suitably call "the ministry"
+expressions that the New Testament applies to the common ministry of
+Christ's saints (comp. iv. 12). This devoted servant of Christ is
+employed just now as a newsman and letter-carrier. But what a high
+responsibility it was, to be the bearer to the Asian cities, and to the
+Church for all time, of the epistles of Paul the apostle to the
+Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon. Had Tychicus been careless or
+dishonest, had he lost these precious documents or tampered with them,
+how great the loss to mankind! We cannot read them without feeling our
+debt to this beloved brother and faithful servant of the Church. Those
+who travel upon Christ's business, who link distant communities to each
+other and convey from one to another the Holy Spirit's fellowship and
+grace, are "the messengers of the Churches and the glory of Christ" (2
+Cor. viii. 23).
+
+
+THE BENEDICTION.
+
+    "Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith,
+      From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
+    Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ
+                                In incorruption" (vv. 23, 24).
+
+Grace and Peace were the first words of the epistle,--the apostle's
+salutation to all his Churches. In _Peace and Grace_ he breathes out his
+final blessing. The benediction is fuller than in most of the epistles,
+and exhibits several peculiar features.
+
+To the Thessalonians (2 Ep. iii. 16) St Paul wished: "Peace continually,
+in all ways, from the Lord of peace Himself"; and he commends the Romans
+twice to "the God of peace" (ch. xv. 33, xvi. 20): the Corinthians he
+bids to "live in peace," so that "the God of love and peace" may be with
+them (2 Cor. xiii. 11). There is nothing in the least degree strange or
+un-Pauline in the wishes here expressed, except the fact that they are
+put in the third person--"_Peace to the brethren_," etc.--instead of
+being addressed directly to the readers in the second person, as in all
+other of the apostle's extant closing benedictions. This peculiarity, as
+we observed in the first Chapter, is in accordance with the encyclical
+and impersonal stamp of the epistle.[184] It is Paul's most catholic
+benediction, his blessing upon "all the Israel of God" (comp. Gal. vi.
+16).
+
+"With faith," that "love" is desired whereby, according to the Pauline
+ethics of salvation, faith works (Gal. v. 6), the love which as a
+vitalizing organic force creates the new man, formed in all his doings
+and dispositions after the image of Jesus Christ. From chapter iv. 1-3
+we have learnt how "peace" and "love" attend each other. Love is the
+source of the forbearance, the mutual consideration and self-sacrifice,
+without which there is no peace within the Church. Peace springs from
+love: love waits on faith. Amongst brethren in Christ, members of the
+same household of faith, peace and love have their home. These are the
+sons of peace: with good will and good hope, entering or quitting their
+abode, we say, "Peace be to this house!"
+
+The peace that the apostle looks for amongst Christian brethren is the
+fruit of peace with God through Christ. Such "peace guarding the
+thoughts and heart" of each Christian man, nothing contrary thereto will
+arise amongst them. Calm and quiet hearts make a peaceful Church. There
+are no clashing interests, no selfish competitions, no strife as to who
+shall be greatest. Differences of opinion and taste are kept within the
+bounds of mutual submission. The awe of God's presence with His people,
+the remembrance of the dear price at which His Church was purchased, the
+sense of Christ's Lordship in the Spirit and of the sacredness of our
+brotherhood in Him, check all turbulence and rivalry and teach us to
+seek the things that make for peace.
+
+"Peace _and love_," the apostle desires. Love includes peace, and more;
+for it labours not to prevent contention only, but to help and enrich in
+all ways the body of Christ. By such "toil of love" faith is made
+complete. We are bidden indeed, in certain matters, to "have faith to
+ourselves before God" (Rom. xiv. 22). This maxim holds where one has a
+special faith in regard to such things as eating flesh or drinking wine,
+in which any one of us may without offence differ from his brethren. But
+it is a poor faith that dwells upon questions of this nature, and makes
+its religion of them. The essentials of faith, as we saw them delineated
+in chapter iv. 1-6, are things that unite and not distinguish us.
+
+As faith grows and deepens, it makes new channels in which love may
+flow. "We are bound to thank God always for you," writes St Paul to the
+Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 3), "for that your faith groweth exceedingly,
+and the love of each one of you all toward one another multiplieth."
+This is the sound and true growth of faith. Where an intenser faith
+makes men disputatious and exclusive; where it fails to breed meekness
+and courtesy, we cannot but suspect its quality. Such faith may be
+sincere; but it is mixed with a lamentable ignorance, and a resistance
+to the Holy Spirit that is likely to end in grave offence. "Contending
+earnestly for the faith" does not mean contending angrily, with the
+weapons of satire and censoriousness. It is well to remember that we are
+not the judges of our brethren. There are many questions raised and
+discussed amongst us, which we may safely leave to the judgement of the
+last day. It is too easy to fill the air with matters of contention, and
+to excite a sore and suspicious temper destructive of peace, and in
+which nothing but fault-finding will flourish. If we must contend, we
+may surely debate quietly on secondary matters, while we are one in
+Christ. If we have not _love with faith_, our faith is worthless (1 Cor.
+xiii. 2).
+
+Deep beneath the peace that dwells in the Church and the love that
+fills each believer's heart, is the eternal fountain of _grace_. "Grace
+be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ," says the apostle.
+Grace is theirs already; and they desire nothing so much as its
+increase. Their love to Christ is the fruit of the grace of God that is
+with them. This wish includes all good wishes; it surpasses both our
+deservings and desires. All that God prepared for us in His eternal
+counsels, and that Christ purchased by His redeeming love, all of good
+that our nature can receive now and for ever, is embraced in this one
+word: _Grace be with you._
+
+"With all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ," Paul says; for it is to
+lovers of Christ that God gives the continuance of His grace. If our
+love to Christ fails, grace leaves us. God cannot look with favour upon
+the man who has no love to His Son Jesus Christ. In giving his blessing
+to the Corinthians, St Paul was compelled to write with his own hand:
+"If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema." The blessing
+involves the anathema. God's love is not a love of indifference, an
+indiscriminate, immoral affection. It is a love of choice and
+predilection--"If any man love me," said Jesus, "my Father will love
+him." Is not the condition reasonable,--and the inference inevitable?
+The Father cannot grant His grace to those who have seen and hated Him
+in His Son and image. By that hatred they refuse His grace, and cast it
+from them.
+
+On the other hand, a sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ opens the
+heart to all the rich and purifying influences of Divine grace. The
+sinful woman, stained with false and foul love, who washed the Saviour's
+feet with her tears, attained in that act to a height of purity
+undreamed of by the virtuous Pharisee. This new and holy flame burns
+out impure passion from the soul: it kindles lofty thoughts; it makes
+crooked natures straight, and timid and weak natures brave and strong.
+"To them that love God, we know, all things work together for good." To
+them that love Christ, all things contribute blessing; all conditions
+and events of life become means of grace. If we love Christ, we shall
+love His people,--the Church, the bride of Christ from whom He will
+never be parted in our thoughts. If we love Christ, we shall love the
+work He has laid upon us, and the word He has taught us, and the
+sacramental pledges He has given us in remembrance of Him and assurance
+of His coming. If we love Him, we shall "keep His commandments," and He
+will keep His promise to send us the "other Helper, to be with us for
+ever, even the Spirit of truth." The gift of the Holy Spirit is the
+all-sufficiency of grace.[185] Here is the innermost sanctuary of our
+religion, the fountain and beginning of the soul's eternal life,--in the
+love which joins it to the Lord in one spirit.
+
+_In incorruption_ is the last and sealing word of this letter, which we
+have been so long studying together. It "stands as the crown and climax
+of this glorious epistle" (Alford). Like so many other words of the
+epistle, at first sight its interpretation is not clear. The apostle has
+used the term in several other passages, as synonymous with
+_immortality_[186] and denoting the state of the blessed after the
+resurrection, when they will stand before God complete in body and in
+spirit, with all that is mortal in them swallowed up of life--"raised in
+incorruption." But there is nothing in this context to lead up to the
+idea of personal, bodily immortality. Those who construe the apostle's
+words in this sense, place a comma before the final clause and treat it
+as a qualification of the main predicate of the sentence: "Grace be with
+all them that love our Lord,--grace [culminating] in incorruption"--or
+in other words, "grace crowned with glory!" But it must be admitted that
+this is somewhat strained.
+
+The rendering of our ordinary version, "in sincerity" (in the Revised
+rendering, "uncorruptness"), gives an ethical sense to the word that is
+scarcely borne out by usage. It is a different, though kindred
+expression that St Paul employs to express "uncorruptness" in Titus ii.
+7.[187]
+
+It appears to us that the term "incorruption," in its ordinary
+significance, applies fitly to the believer's love for the Lord, when
+the word is read in accordance with the symbolism of the epistle. This
+love is the life of the body of Christ. In it lies the Church's
+immortality. The gates of death prevail not against her, rooted and
+grounded as she is in love to the risen and immortal Christ. "May that
+love be maintained," the apostle says, "in its deathless power. Let it
+be an unspoilt and unwasting love."
+
+Of earthly love we often say with sadness:--
+
+    "Space is against thee: it can part!
+    Time is against thee: it can chill!"
+
+Not so with the love of Christ. Neither death nor life parts the soul
+from Him. Our love to the Lord Jesus Christ seats us with Him in the
+heavenly places,--above the realm of decay, above this wasting flesh and
+perishing world.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[176] Col. i. 24--ii. 1; Phil. i. 16.
+
+[177] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 10; Phil. i. 20; 2 Tim. iv. 17.
+
+[178] I Thess. v. 25; 2 Thess. iii. 1; Rom. xv. 30-32; Col. iv. 3, etc.
+
+[179] Out of the instances in which the English Version renders =logos=
+in St Paul by _utterance_, the Revisers have substituted _word_ for
+_utterance_ only in Col. iv. 3. One wishes they had done so throughout.
+For =logos= surely implies the _content_, the _import_ of what is said.
+This passage reminds us of John xvii. 14: "I have given them Thy word";
+and xiv. 24: "The word which ye hear is not mine, but His."
+
+[180] =En parr�sia=: comp. iii. 12; Phil. i. 20; Philem. 8; 2 Cor. vii.
+4; 1 Thess. ii. 2, etc.
+
+[181] Phil. i. 25, 26, ii. 23, 24; Philem. 22.
+
+[182] 2 Tim. i. 7-12, ii. 3-10.
+
+[183] Comp. Phil. i. 24-26.
+
+[184] See pp. 13-17.
+
+[185] Ch. i. 14, iv. 30. See Chapter IV., above.
+
+[186] Rom. ii. 7; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 50, 53, 54; 2 Tim. i. 10. See Alford's
+excellent note on this passage.
+
+[187] =Aphthoria=: =aphtharsia= is deleted in the critical texts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS (_Expositor's Bible_). Crown 8vo, cloth.
+
+COMMENTARY ON COLOSSIANS (_Pulpit Commentary_).
+
+COMMENTARY ON I. & II. THESSALONIANS (_Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_).
+
+AN ESSAY ON THE PASTORAL EPISTLES (SABATIER'S _The Apostle Paul_).
+
+THE EPISTLES OF PAUL THE APOSTLE: _a Sketch of their Origin and
+Contents._
+
+
+
+
+THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
+
+_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
+
+
+FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
+
+  Colossians.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
+
+  St. Mark.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  Genesis.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  1 Samuel.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  2 Samuel.
+  By the same Author.
+
+  Hebrews.
+  By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
+
+
+SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.
+
+  Galatians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Pastoral Epistles.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Book of Revelation.
+  By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
+
+  1 Corinthians.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  The Epistles of St. John.
+  By Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.
+
+
+THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
+
+  Judges and Ruth.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Jeremiah.
+  By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
+
+  Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  St. Matthew.
+  By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
+
+  Exodus.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  St. Luke.
+  By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
+
+
+FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.
+
+  Ecclesiastes.
+  By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
+
+  St. James and St. Jude.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Proverbs.
+  By Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
+
+  Leviticus.
+  By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+
+FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  1 and 2 Thessalonians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  The Book of Job.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Ephesians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+
+SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
+
+  1 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Philippians.
+  By Principal RAINY, D.D.
+
+  Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Joshua.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Epistles of St. Peter.
+  By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
+
+
+SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
+
+  2 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Romans.
+  By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Books of Chronicles.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  2 Corinthians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  Numbers.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
+
+
+EIGHTH SERIES, 1895-6.
+
+  Daniel.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  The Book of Jeremiah.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  Deuteronomy.
+  By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.
+
+  The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Ezekiel.
+  By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.
+
+  The Book of the  Twelve Prophets.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two Vols.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians
+
+Author: G. G. Findlay
+
+Editor: W. Robertson Nicoll
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2012 [EBook #39196]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="notes">
+<p>This e-text includes characters that will only display in UTF-8 (Unicode)
+file encoding, including Greek words, e.g. <span class="greek" title="ho logos">ὁ λόγος</span>.
+If any of these characters do not display properly, or if the apostrophes and quotation marks
+in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts.
+First, make sure that the browser’s “character set” or “file encoding”
+is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browser’s
+default font. All Greek words have mouse-hover transliterations.</p>
+
+<p>A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+All advertising material has been moved to the end of the text.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE.</h1>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="titlesmaller">EDITED BY THE REV.</span><br />
+<span class="titlebigger">W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.</span><br />
+<i>Editor of “The Expositor,” etc.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center gaptop"><span class="titlebigger">THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="titlesmaller">BY THE REV. PROFESSOR</span><br />
+<span class="titlebigger">G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Headingley College, Leeds</span></p>
+
+<p class="center gaptop">London<br />
+<span class="titlebigger">HODDER AND STOUGHTON,</span><br />
+27, PATERNOSTER ROW<br /></p>
+
+<hr class="titlerule" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="titlesmaller">MDCCCXCVIII</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii"></a></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><span class="titlesmaller">THE</span><br />
+EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS</h1>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="titlesmaller">BY THE REV. PROFESSOR</span><br />
+<span class="titlebigger">G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Headingley College, Leeds</span></p>
+
+<p class="center gaptop"><span class="titlesmaller">THIRD EDITION</span></p>
+
+<p class="center gaptop">London<br />
+<span class="titlebigger">HODDER AND STOUGHTON,</span><br />
+27, PATERNOSTER ROW<br /></p>
+
+<hr class="titlerule" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="titlesmaller">MDCCCXCVIII</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span>
+<i>Printed by Hazell, Watson, &amp; Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr>
+<td class="consec" colspan="2">INTRODUCTION.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> i. 1, 2.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE WRITER AND READERS.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<th class="conpgh">&nbsp;</th>
+<th class="conpgh">PAGE</th>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Contrast of Galatians and Ephesians—Pauline qualities of
+Ephesians: intellectual, historical, theological, spiritual,
+ethical—The Idea of the Church—The Person of Christ—Ephesians
+and Colossians—Style of Ephesians—Circular
+Hypothesis—Epistle from Laodicea—Designation
+of the Readers—Faithful Brethren</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consec" colspan="2">PRAISE AND PRAYER.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> i. 3–19.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE ETERNAL PURPOSE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The Apostle’s Hymn of Praise—Blessed be God!—Blessing
+spiritual, heavenly, Christian—In the Beginning the
+Election of Grace—The World and its Founder—Redemption
+embedded in Creation—God’s prescient
+Choice—Our Holiness His Purpose—Divine Adoption—Who
+are the Elect?</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+Structure of the Paragraph—Grace an Experience—Christ
+the Beloved—Forgiveness and its Price—The Value
+of Forgiveness—Wisdom a Gift of Grace—The Gospel
+as an intellectual Force—God’s Will the Goal of human
+Thought—Sonship and Heritage—The Fulness of the
+Times—The Christian Inventory of the Universe—Reconciliation
+and Reconstitution—Gathering in and
+Gathering out</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE FINAL REDEMPTION.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Mutual Inheritance—Jewish and Gentile Heirs—Uses of the
+Seal—The Stamp of Sanctity—Promise fulfilled and to
+be fulfilled—Hearing and Believing—Salvation by the
+Truth—Salvation for the Gentiles—Faith and the Holy
+Spirit—The two Redemptions—The encumbered Property—The
+Earnest of our consummate Life</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Thanksgiving for the Readers—The God of Christ, the
+Father of Glory—Christian Enlightenment—Seeing with
+the Heart—What is our Hope?—God’s Wealth in Men—The
+true Standard of Value—The Power of Christ’s
+Resurrection</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consec" colspan="2">THE DOCTRINE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> i. 20—iii. 13.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Prayer and Teaching—Historical Effect of Christ’s Resurrection—The
+Stages of His Exaltation—Christianity without
+Miracles—The efficient Cause of Christianity—The
+perfect Resurrection—The First-begotten out of the
+Dead—The Risen One, the Holy One—Resurrection
+and Ascension—Ascension to Rule—Christ and the
+Angels—Christ glorified God’s Gift to the Church—Christ
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span>the Fulness of God</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">FROM DEATH TO LIFE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Raised with Christ—Sin is Death—Jesus Christ in a dead
+World—Alive in Body, dead in Spirit—Religious Difficulties—Antipathy
+to God—The Power of the Air—God’s
+Anger against Sinners—The Soul’s Awaking—Consciousness
+of God—Fellowship in Salvation</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">SAVED FOR AN END.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Beginning and End of God’s Plan—Mercy, Love, Kindness,
+Grace and Gift—Not of Works—Boasting excluded—Evangelical
+Assurance—In the heavenly Places—Grace
+a Task-master—Creation and Redemption—The apostolic
+Church and the coming Times</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE FAR AND NEAR.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Wherefore remember!—Sudden and gradual Conversion—The
+Gentile World: Godless, hopeless, Christless—Away
+with the Atheists!—The double Pessimism—The
+Uncircumcision—Nigh in the Blood of Christ—Reunion
+in Guilt and in Pardon</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The Jewish War—The two Parties in the Church—The
+Jewish Enmity typical—The new Christian Humanity—The
+Church in the first Century and the nineteenth—Hindrances
+to Unity: external, internal—The Ground
+of Reconciliation—Enemies of God—The Atonement
+of the Cross—Moral Communism—Personal Faith—The
+Fraternization of Mankind</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span>
+The Divine Occupant—The Service of Man and of God—One
+Temple and many Buildings—The Variety of the
+apostolic Church—The primitive Catholicism—Church
+and Dissent—Union by Approximation—Our Lord’s
+Prayer for Unity—The apostolic Basis—The Builder
+Spirit—The sure Foundation Stone</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE SECRET OF THE AGES.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>St Paul’s Style of Composition—Christ the Mystery of God—Christ
+in the Old Testament—The Exploration of
+Christ—The Portion of the Gentiles in Israel—The
+Organs of the new Revelation—The unique Office and
+Influence of the Apostle Paul</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Christ the Bond of Angels and Men—Our Lord and theirs—Jesus
+of Nazareth the Lord of the Ages—The Reality
+of the Angels—Their Interest in the Church—The
+Peculiarity of the human Problem—The Docility of the
+heavenly Potentates—The angelic Standpoint—The
+Grandeur of Christianity inspires Courage</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consec" colspan="2">PRAYER AND PRAISE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> iii. 14–21.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Contents of St Paul’s Prayer—The Father of Angels and
+of Men—Strength of Spirit and of the Spirit—Christ
+abiding in the Heart—Christ and the Christ—Christ’s
+Claim on the Intellect—Neglect of Theology—Dimensions
+of God’s Building—Strength to grasp the Magnitude
+of Christianity—The true Broad Churchman</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span>
+Knowledge in the Growth—Paul’s Study of the Love of
+Christ—Christ’s manifested Love—God’s Fulness our
+final Aim—The Fulness more than Love—Praise out-soaring
+Prayer—God’s Gifts beyond our Requests—The
+Divine Power immanent in Men—The Inspirer of Prayer
+its Fulfiller—The Union of the Church and Christ in
+God’s Praise—The eternal Glory</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consec" colspan="2">THE EXHORTATION.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consc2" colspan="2">ON CHURCH LIFE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> iv. 1–16.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The Prisoner in the Lord—The Foes of Church Peace:
+Low-mindedness, Ambition, Resentfulness—The Basis
+of Unity: sevenfold, threefold—One Body despite
+Divisions—One Spirit makes one Body—Unity of Life
+and Hope—One Lord in all Churches—Baptism a Sign
+of Christ’s Rule, the Seal of a corporate Life—The one
+God, and the many</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Unity in Diversities—Christ the Administrator—The Ascension
+of David and of David’s Son—Height and Breadth—The
+Giving of Jesus—Christ’s Descent and Ascent—The
+Warfare of Christ—The Spoils of His Victory—The
+Enlistment of His Prisoners—Apostles and Prophets,
+Evangelists and Pastors—Paul, Augustine, Luther,
+Knox, Wesley—The Demands of the Future—Individual
+Responsibility</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVIII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The Aim of the Christian Ministry—A perfect Manhood—Sleight
+or Sport?—Junctures of Supply—Reunion in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span>
+Knowledge of the Son of God—The Stature of Christ
+our Standard—The Dangers of Childishness—Speculative
+Error—Gnosticism and Agnosticism—Conditions of
+Safety—Church Organization—The Framework of the
+Body of Christ—Its Continuity of Tissue</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consc2" colspan="2">ON CHRISTIAN MORALS.
+</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> iv. 17–v. 21.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIX.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE WALK OF THE GENTILES.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The old World and the old Man—Impotence of Gentile Reason—Science
+and Pessimism—Loss of the Life of
+God—Ignorance the Mother of Indevotion—Induration
+of Heart—Impudicity of Paganism</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XX.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Defective Views of Christ amongst Paul’s Readers—The
+historical Jesus the true Christ—Paul and the Tradition
+of Jesus—Jesus the human Model—Nero a Type of the
+Pagan Order—The Fraud of Sin—The Growth and the
+Birth of the new Man—Righteousness and Holiness</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXI.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">DISCARDED VICES.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The seven Gentile Sins—Truthfulness and the Truth—The
+Perils of Anger—The Antidote to Theft—Sinfulness of
+vain Speech—Malice and its Brood—Imitation of the
+Divine Love—Filthiness and Jesting—The golden
+Leprosy</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">DOCTRINE AND ETHICS.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The Intrinsic and Experimental in Morals—Originality of
+Christian Ethics—Ethical Art and Science—Four Principles
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span>
+of Pauline Ethics—Personality and Morals—Ethical
+Character of Christ’s Forgiveness—Auguste
+Comte and the Gospel—The moral Import of the Resurrection—And
+of the Atonement</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Right the Fruit of Light—All Virtue from one Source—Unbelief
+and Immorality—Christian Goodness—The Way
+of Righteousness—Truth the Hall-mark of Sanctity—Verity
+and Veracity—Specialists in Virtue—Reproof of
+open and of hidden Sins—Manifestation and Transformation</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIV.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Soberness and Excitement—The heedful Look—Evil Days
+for the Asian Christians—Wisdom to know God’s Will—Wine
+and social Pleasure—The Craving for Excitement—Fulness
+of the Spirit—The Rise of Christian
+Psalmody—The Music of the Heart—Enthusiasm and
+Order</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_336">336</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consc2" colspan="2">ON FAMILY LIFE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> v. 22–vi. 9.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXV.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The Divine Character of Marriage—Religious Equality of
+the Sexes—The Glory of the Man—Women’s Rights—Christ’s
+undivided Headship—Masculine Selfishness—Greek
+Terms for Love—The Husband and the Priest—The
+double Self—Indelibility of Wedlock</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_353">353</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVI.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span>
+Marriage and the Doctrine of the Church—The Individual
+and the Church—The Glory of the vicarious Death—Christ
+the Sanctifier of His Church—The Signification
+of Baptism—The Water and the Word—The Bride
+made ready—The Church a Christocracy—Adam’s
+Wedding-song—The Church inherent in Christ</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_366">366</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Children in the Church—The initial Form of Duty—Commandment
+and Promise—Gentleness of fatherly Rule—Spoilt
+Children—The Lord’s Nurture—Greek and
+Roman Slaves—The Church and the Slaves—Christ a
+Pattern for Slaves—Servants of Society—Care, Honesty,
+Heartiness in Work—The heavenly Master’s Reward—Responsibility
+of the earthly Master</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_380">380</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consc2" colspan="2">ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> vi. 10–18.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVIII.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE FOES OF THE CHURCH.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Henceforth be strong!—The two Panoplies—The Personality
+of Satan—The Devil and his Angels—Paul’s Demonology—The
+spiritual Combat—Interior Temptations—Persecution
+and Heresy—The Region of the Struggle—The
+Siege of the heavenly City</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_397">397</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIX.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">THE DIVINE PANOPLY.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>The coming evil Day—Comparison with Revelation ii., iii.—The
+Girdle of Truth—The Breastplate of Righteousness—Shoes
+of Gospel Readiness—The great Shield of
+Faith—Fire-tipped Darts—The Helmet of Salvation—The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span>
+Spirit’s Sword—The Weapon of All-prayer</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_410">410</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="consec" colspan="2">THE CONCLUSION.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conseq" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> vi. 19–24.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="conchp" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXX.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="concht" colspan="2">REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION.</td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td>Paul’s Need of the Church’s Prayers—Christ’s Ambassador
+before the Emperor—Speaking the Word given—Good
+News for the Asian Churches—Character and Services
+of Tychicus—Peace to the Brethren—Love with Faith—Love
+toward Christ and Grace from God—The Love
+incorruptible</td>
+<td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_427">427</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv"></a></span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="section">THE INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> i. 1, 2.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+<span class="greek" title="Ou monon Ephesou alla schedon pasês tês Asias
+ho Paulos houtos peisas metestêsen hikanon ochlon">
+Οὐ μόνον Ἐφέσου ἀλλὰ σχεδὸν
+πάσης τῆς Ἀσίας ὁ Παῦλος οὗτος
+πείσας μετέστησεν ἱκανὸν
+ὄχλον</span> (Demetrius the Silversmith).</p>
+
+<p class="ref">
+<span class="smcap">Acts</span> xix. 26.
+</p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h4>THE WRITER AND READERS.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the
+saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace
+from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
+Christ.”<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"
+class="fnanchor">[1]</a>—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 1, 2.</p></div>
+
+<p>In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle
+we are conscious of entering a different atmosphere.
+We leave the region of controversy for that of meditation.
+From the battle-field we step into the hush and
+stillness of the temple. Verses 3–14 of this chapter constitute
+the most sustained and perfect act of praise that
+is found in the apostle’s letters. It is as though a door
+were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts behind us, and
+earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these
+two writings, following each other in the established
+order of the epistles, is singular and in some ways
+extreme. They are, respectively, the most combative
+and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned,
+the most concrete and abstract, the most human and
+divine amongst the great apostle’s writings.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity
+of character. The two letters are not the expression
+of different minds, but of different phases of the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians
+is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic
+behind the ardent missionary and the masterly debater.
+Those critics who recognize the genuine apostle only in
+the four previous epistles and reject whatever does not
+conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how much
+is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul.
+Without the inwardness, the brooding faculty, the
+power of abstract and metaphysical thinking displayed
+in the epistles of this group, he could never have
+wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those
+earlier writings, nor grasped the principles which he
+there applies with such vigour and effect. That so
+many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny,
+St Paul’s authorship of this epistle on internal grounds
+and because of the contrast to which we have referred,
+is one of those phenomena which in future histories of
+religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities of
+a hypercritical age.<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let us observe some of the Pauline qualities that are
+stamped upon the face of this document. There is, in
+the first place, the apostle’s intellectual note, what has
+been well called his <i>passion for the absolute</i>. St Paul’s
+was one of those minds, so discomposing to superficial
+and merely practical thinkers, which cannot be content
+with half-way conclusions. For every principle he
+seeks its ultimate basis; every line of thought he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+pushes to its furthest limits. His gospel, if he is to
+rest in it, must supply a principle of unity that will
+bind together all the elements of his mental world.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, in contesting the Jewish claim to religious
+superiority on the ground of circumcision and the
+Abrahamic covenant, St Paul developed in the epistle
+to the Galatians a religious philosophy of history; he
+arrived at a view of the function of the law in the
+education of mankind which disposed not only of the
+question at issue, but of all such questions. He established
+for ever the principle of salvation by faith and of
+spiritual sonship to God. What that former argument
+effects for the history of revelation, is done here for the
+gospel in its relations to society and universal life. The
+principle of Christ’s headship is carried to its largest
+results. The centre of the Church becomes the centre
+of the universe. God’s plan of the ages is disclosed,
+ranging through eternity and embracing every form of
+being, and “gathering into one all things in the Christ.”
+In Galatians and Romans the thought of salvation by
+Christ breaks through Jewish limits and spreads itself
+over the field of history; in Colossians and Ephesians
+the idea of life in Christ overleaps the barriers of
+time and human existence, and brings “things in
+heaven and things in earth and things beneath the
+earth” under its sway.</p>
+
+<p>The second, historical note of original Paulinism we
+recognize in the writer’s <i>attitude towards Judaism</i>. We
+should be prepared to stake the genuineness of the
+epistle on this consideration alone. The position and
+point of view of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles are
+unique in history. It is difficult to conceive how any
+one but Paul himself, at any other juncture, could have
+represented the relation of Jew and Gentile to each
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+other as it is put before us here. The writer is a Jew,
+a man nourished on the hope of Israel (i. 12), who had
+looked at his fellow-men across “the middle wall of
+partition” (ii. 14). In his view, the covenant and the
+Christ belong, in the first instance and as by birthright,
+to the men of Israel. They are “the near,” who live
+hard by the city and house of God. The blessedness
+of the Gentile readers consists in the revelation that
+they are “fellow-heirs and of the same body and joint-partakers
+with us of the promise in Christ Jesus” (iii. 6).
+What is this but to say, as the apostle had done before,
+that the branches “of the naturally wild olive tree”
+were “against nature grafted into the good olive tree”
+and allowed to “partake of its root and fatness,” along
+with “the natural branches,” the children of the stock
+of Abraham who claimed it for “their own”; that “the
+men of faith are sons of Abraham” and “Abraham’s
+blessing has come on the Gentiles through
+faith”?<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>For our author this revelation has lost none of
+its novelty and surprise. He is in the midst of the
+excitement it has produced, and is himself its chief
+agent and mouthpiece (iii. 1–9). This disclosure of
+God’s secret plans for the world overwhelms him by
+its magnitude, by the splendour with which it invests
+the Divine character, and the sense of his personal
+unworthiness to be entrusted with it. We utterly
+disbelieve that any later Christian writer could or would
+have personated the apostle and mimicked his tone and
+sentiments in regard to his vocation, in the way that the
+“critical” hypothesis assumes. The criterion of Erasmus
+is decisive: <i>Nemo potest Paulinum pectus effingere.</i></p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s doctrine of <i>the cross</i> is admittedly his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+specific theological note. In the shameful sacrificial
+death of Jesus Christ he saw the instrument of man’s
+release from the curse of the broken
+law;<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>
+and through this knowledge the cross which was the “scandal”
+of Saul the Pharisee, had become Paul’s glory and its
+proclamation the business of his life. It is this doctrine,
+in its original strength and fulness, which lies behind
+such sentences as those of chapter i. 7, ii. 13, and v. 2:
+“We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness
+of our trespasses—brought nigh in the blood of
+Christ—an offering and sacrifice to God for an odour
+of sweet smell.”</p>
+
+<p>Another mark of the apostle’s hand, his specific
+spiritual note, we find in the <i>mysticism</i> that pervades
+the epistle and forms, in fact, its substance. “I live
+no longer: Christ lives in me.” “He that is joined to the Lord is one
+spirit.”<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>
+In these sentences of the earlier letters we discover the spring of St Paul’s
+theology, lying in his own experience—<i>the sense of
+personal union through the Spirit with Christ Jesus</i>.
+This was the deepest fact of Paul’s consciousness. Here
+it meets us at every turn. More than twenty times
+the phrase “in Christ” or its equivalents recur, applied
+to Christian acts or states. It is enough to refer to
+chapter iii. 17, “that the Christ may make His dwelling
+in your hearts through faith,” to show how profoundly
+this mysterious relationship is realized in this letter.
+No other New Testament writer conceived the idea in
+Paul’s way, nor has any subsequent writer of whom we
+know made the like constant and original use of it.
+It was the habit of the apostle’s mind, the index of his
+innermost life. Kindred to this, and hardly less conspicuous,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+is his conception of “God in Christ” (2 Cor.
+v. 19) saving and operating upon men, who, as we
+read here, “chose us in Christ before the world’s
+foundation—forgave us in Him—made us in Him to
+sit together in the heavenly places—formed us in Christ
+Jesus for good works.”</p>
+
+<p>The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception
+of the <i>new man</i> in Christ Jesus, whose sins were
+slain by His death, and who shares His risen life unto
+God (Rom. vi.). From this idea, as from a fountainhead,
+the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle (ch. iii.)
+deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and
+disposition of the believer, his conduct in all social
+duties and practical affairs are the expression of a “life
+hid with Christ in God.” It is the identical “new
+man” of Romans and Colossians who presents himself
+as our ideal here, raised with Christ from the dead and
+“sitting with Him in the heavenly places.” The newness
+of life in which he walks, receives its impulse and
+direction from this exalted fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>The characteristics of St Paul’s teaching which we
+have described—his logical thoroughness and finality,
+his peculiar historical, theological, spiritual, and ethical
+standpoint and manner of thought—are combined in the
+conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz.,
+its idea of <i>the Church</i> as the body of Christ,—or in
+other words, of <i>the new humanity</i> created in Him. This
+forms the centre of the circle of thought in which the
+writer’s mind moves;<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>
+it is the meeting-point of the various lines of thought that we have already traced.
+The doctrine of personal salvation wrought out in the
+great evangelical epistles terminates in that of social
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+and collective salvation. A new and precious title is
+conferred on Christ: He is “Saviour of <i>the body</i>”
+(v. 23), <i>i.e.</i>, of the corporate Christian community.
+“The Son of God who loved <i>me</i> and gave up Himself
+for <i>me</i>” becomes “the Christ” who “loved <i>the Church</i> and gave up Himself for
+<i>her</i>.”<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+“The new man” is no longer the individual, a mere transformed <i>ego</i>;
+he is the type and beginning of a new mankind. A
+perfect society of men, all sons of God in Christ, is
+being constituted around the cross, in which the old
+antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is
+restored, and a body is provided to contain the fulness
+of Christ, a holy temple which God inhabits in the
+Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its centre and
+Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form
+the material—“the Jew first,” lying nearest to the
+site.<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>The apostle Paul necessarily conceived the reconstruction
+of humanity under the form of a reconciliation of
+Israel and the Gentiles. The Catholicism we have here is
+Paul’s Catholicism of <i>Gentile engrafting</i>—not Clement’s,
+of <i>churchly order and uniformity</i>; nor Ignatius’, of <i>monepiscopal
+rule</i>. It is profoundly characteristic of this
+apostle, that in “the law” which had been to his own
+experience the barrier and ground of quarrel between
+the soul and God, “the strength of sin,” he should
+come to see likewise the barrier between men and men,
+and the strength of the sinful enmity which distracted
+the Churches of his foundation (ii. 14–16).</p>
+
+<p>The representation of the Church contained in this
+epistle is, therefore, by no means new in its elements.
+Such texts as 1 Corinthians iii. 16, 17 (“Ye are God’s
+temple,” etc.) and xii. 12–27 (concerning the <i>one body
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+and many members</i>) bring us near to its actual expression.
+But the figures of the <i>body</i> and <i>temple</i> in these
+passages, had they stood alone, might be read as mere
+passing illustrations of the nature of Christian fellowship.
+Now they become proper designations of the
+Church, and receive their full significance. While in
+1 Corinthians, moreover, these phrases do not look
+beyond the particular community addressed, in Ephesians
+they embrace the entire Christian society. This epistle
+signalizes a great step forwards in the development of
+the apostle’s theology—perhaps we might say, the last
+step. The Pastoral epistles serve to put the final
+apostolic seal upon the theological edifice that is now
+complete. Their care is with the guarding and furnishing
+of the “great house”<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+which our epistle is engaged in building.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the Church is not, however, independently
+developed. Ephesians and Colossians are companion
+letters,—the complement and explanation of
+each other. Both “speak with regard to Christ and the
+Church”; both reveal the Divine “glory in the Church and in Christ
+Jesus.”<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians on the latter of these
+objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and
+that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal
+step. The two epistles form one process of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Criticism has attempted to derive first one and
+then the other of the two from its fellow,—thus, in
+effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr. Holtzmann, in his <i>Kritik der Epheser-und
+Kolosserbriefe</i>,<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+undertook to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the
+other. There is, Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus
+hidden in Colossians, which he has himself extracted.
+By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second
+century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned
+to the brief Colossian writing of St Paul, and
+worked it up, with his own Ephesian composition lying
+before him, into our existing epistle to the Colossians.
+This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not
+satisfied any one except its author, and need not detain
+us here. But Holtzmann has at any rate made good,
+against his predecessors on the negative side, the unity
+of origin of the two canonical epistles, the fact that they
+proceed from one mint and coinage. They are <i>twin</i>
+epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostle’s
+mind. Much of their subject-matter, especially in the
+ethical section, is common to both. The glory of the
+Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths
+inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each
+other. To the confession, “Thou art the Christ, the
+Son of the living God,” His response ever is, “<i>I will
+build my Church</i>.”<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+The same correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic movement
+of the apostle’s thought.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, there is a considerable difference
+between the two writings in point of style. M. Renan,
+who accepts Colossians from Paul’s hand, and who
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+admits that “among all the epistles bearing the name
+of Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that
+which has been most anciently cited as a composition
+of the apostle of the Gentiles,” yet speaks of this
+epistle as a “verbose amplification” of the other, “a
+commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with
+useless words and repetitions, entangled and overgrown
+with irrelevancies, full of pleonasms and
+obscurities.”<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>In this instance, Renan’s literary sense has deserted
+him. While Colossians is quick in movement, terse
+and pointed, in some places so sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly
+obscure,<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
+Ephesians from beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant
+in language, and obscure, where it is so, not from the
+brevity, but from the length and involution of its
+periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which
+the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude
+and significance. Colossians is a letter of discussion;
+Ephesians of reflection. The whole difference of style
+lies in this. In the reflective passages of Colossians, as indeed in the earlier
+epistles,<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>
+we find the stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which
+in this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles
+are marked by those unfinished sentences and <i>anacolutha</i>,
+the grammatical inconsequence associated with close
+continuity of thought, which is a main characteristic of St Paul’s
+style.<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>
+The epistle to the Colossians is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+like a mountain stream forcing its way through some
+rugged defile; that to the Ephesians is the smooth
+lake below, in which its chafed waters restfully expand.
+These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict
+and repose which alternated in St Paul’s mobile
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>In general, the writings of this group, belonging to
+the time of the apostle’s imprisonment and advancing
+age,<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>
+display less passion and energy, but a more
+tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy.
+They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the
+author’s mind had been much thrown in upon itself.
+They have been well styled “the afternoon epistles,”
+being marked by the subdued and reflective temper
+natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth,
+the typical representative of the third group of Paul’s
+epistles, as Galatians is of the second. There is
+abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter came,
+as it purports to do, from <i>Paul, an apostle of Christ
+Jesus through God’s will</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>But that it was addressed to “the saints which are
+<i>in Ephesus</i>” is more difficult to believe. The apostle
+has “heard of the faith which prevails amongst” his
+readers; he presumes that they “have heard of the
+Christ, and were taught in Him according as truth is
+in Jesus.”<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>
+He hopes that by “reading” this epistle
+they will “perceive his understanding in the mystery
+of Christ” (iii. 2–4). He writes somewhat thus to the
+Colossians and Romans, whom he had never
+seen;<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+but can we imagine Paul addressing in this distant and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+uncertain fashion his children in the faith? In Ephesus
+he had laboured “for the space of three whole years”
+(Acts xx. 31), longer than in any other city of the
+Gentile mission, except Antioch. His speech to the
+Ephesian elders at Miletus, delivered four years ago,
+was surcharged with personal feeling, full of pathetic
+reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance
+with the individual membership of the Ephesian Church.
+In the epistle such signs are altogether wanting. The
+absence of greetings and messages we could understand;
+these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But
+how the man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians
+and Corinthians could have composed this long and
+careful letter to his own Ephesian people without a
+single word of endearment or
+familiarity,<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>
+and without the least allusion to his past intercourse with them, we
+cannot understand. It is in the destination that the
+only serious difficulty lies touching the authorship.
+Nowhere do we see more of <i>the apostle</i> and less of <i>the
+man</i> in St Paul; nowhere more of <i>the</i> Church, and
+less of <i>this or that</i> particular church.</p>
+
+<p>It agrees with these internal indications that the
+local designation is wanting in the oldest Greek copies
+of the letter that are extant. The two great manuscripts
+of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic
+codices, omit the words “in Ephesus.” Basil in the
+fourth century did not accept them, and says that “the
+old copies” were without them. Origen, in the beginning
+of the third century, seems to have known
+nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the
+second century, while he condemns the heretic Marcion
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+(who lived about fifty years earlier) for entitling the
+epistle “To the Laodiceans,” quotes only the <i>title</i>
+against him, and not the text of the address, which he
+would presumably have done, had he read it in the
+form familiar to us. We are compelled to suppose,
+with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally,
+that these words form no part of the original address.</p>
+
+<p>Here the <i>circular hypothesis</i> of Beza and Ussher
+comes to our aid. It is supposed that the letter was
+destined for a number of Churches in Asia Minor,
+which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of
+the journey which took him to
+Colossæ.<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Along with
+the letters for the Colossians and Philemon, he was
+entrusted with this more general epistle, intended for
+the Gentile Christian communities of the neighbouring
+region at large. During St Paul’s ministry at
+Ephesus, we are told that “all those that dwell in
+Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and
+Greeks” (Acts xix. 10). In so large and populous an
+area, amongst the Churches founded at this time there
+were doubtless others beside those of the Lycus valley
+“which had not seen Paul’s face in the flesh,” some
+about which the apostle had less precise knowledge
+than he had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus,
+but for whom he was no less desirous that their
+“hearts should be comforted, and brought into all the
+wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in
+the knowledge of the mystery of God” (Col. ii. 1, 2).</p>
+
+<p>To which or how many of the Asian Churches
+Tychicus would be able to communicate the letter
+was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at
+Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+by Tychicus (vi. 21, 22) supplied the only
+limit to its distribution. Proconsular Asia was the
+richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so
+populous that it was called “the province of five hundred
+cities.” Ephesus was only the largest of many
+flourishing commercial and manufacturing towns.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St Paul
+directs this Church to procure “from Laodicea,” in
+exchange for their own, a letter which he is sending
+there (iv. 16). Is it possible that we have the lost
+Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So
+Ussher suggested; and though the assumption is not
+essential to his theory, it falls in with it very aptly.
+Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence
+of the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in
+this letter. The conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot,
+who says, writing on Colossians iv. 16: “There are
+good reasons for the belief that St Paul here alludes to
+the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact
+a circular letter, addressed to the principal Churches
+of proconsular Asia. Tychicus was obliged to pass
+through Laodicea on his way to Colossæ, and would
+leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was
+delivered.”<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>
+The two epistles admirably supplement
+each other. The Apocalyptic letter “to the seven
+churches which are in Asia,” ranging from Ephesus to
+Laodicea (Rev. ii., iii.), shows how much the Christian
+communities of this region had in common and how
+natural it would be to address them collectively. For
+the same region, with a yet wider scope, the “first
+catholic epistle of Peter” was destined, a writing that
+has many points of contact with this. Ephesus being
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+the metropolis of the Asian Churches, and claiming a
+special interest in St Paul, came to regard the epistle
+as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it
+was communicated to the Church in other provinces.
+Hence it came to pass that when Paul’s epistles were
+gathered into a single volume and a title was needed
+for this along with the rest, “To the Ephesians” was
+written over it; and this reference standing in the
+title, in course of time found its way into the text of
+the address. We propose to read this letter as <i>the
+general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia</i>, or <i>to
+Ephesus and its daughter Churches</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>But how are we to read the address, with the local
+definition wanting? There are two constructions open
+to us:—(1) We might suppose that a space was left
+blank in the original to be filled in afterwards by
+Tychicus with the names of the particular Churches to
+which he distributed copies, or to be supplied by the
+voice of the reader. But if that were so, we should
+have expected to find some trace of this variety of
+designation in the ancient witnesses. As it is, the
+documents either give Ephesus in the address, or
+supply no local name at all. Nor is there, so far as
+we are aware, any analogy in ancient usage for the
+proceeding suggested. Moreover, the order of the
+Greek words<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>
+is against this supposition.—(2) We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+prefer, therefore, to follow
+Origen<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a>
+and Basil, with some modern exegetes, in reading the sentence straight
+on, as it stands in the Sinaitic and Vatican copies. It
+then becomes: <i>To the saints, who are indeed faithful in
+Christ Jesus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“The saints” is the apostle’s designation for Christian
+believers generally,<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a>
+as men consecrated to God
+in Christ (1 Cor. i. 2). The qualifying phrase “those
+who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus,” is admonitory.
+As Lightfoot says with reference to the parallel qualification
+in Colossians i. 2, “This unusual addition is full
+of meaning. Some members of the [Asian] Churches
+were shaken in their allegiance, even if they had not
+fallen from it. The apostle therefore wishes it to
+be understood that, when he speaks of the saints,
+he means those who are true and steadfast members
+of the brotherhood. In this way he obliquely hints
+at the defection.” By this further definition “he
+does not directly exclude any, but he indirectly warns
+all.” We are reminded that we are in the neighbourhood
+of the Colossian heresy. Beneath the calm
+tenor of this epistle, the ear catches an undertone
+of controversy. In chapter iv. 14 and vi. 10–20 this
+undertone becomes clearly audible. We shall find the
+epistle end with the note of warning with which it
+begins.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>The Salutation is according to St Paul’s established
+form of greeting.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised
+Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations
+will be explained in the exposition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson’s
+<i>Introduction to the N. T.</i>; see also Baur’s <i>Paul</i>, Pfleiderer’s <i>Paulinism</i>,
+Hilgenfeld’s <i>Einleitung</i>, Hatch’s article on “Paul” in the <i>Encyclopædia
+Britannica</i>. The case for the defence may be found in Weiss’, Salmon’s,
+Bleek’s, or Dods’ <i>N. T. Introduction</i>—the last brief, but to the point;
+in Reuss’ <i>History of the N. T.</i>; Milligan’s article on “Ephesians” in
+<i>Encycl. Brit.</i>; Gloag’s <i>Introduction to the Pauline Epp.</i>; Meyer’s, or
+Beet’s, or Eadie’s <i>Commentary</i>; Sabatier’s <i>The Apostle Paul</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+Rom. xi. 16–24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+Gal. iii. 10–13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+See ch. i. 9–13, ii. 11–22, iii. 5–11, iv. 1–16, v. 23–32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
+Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17–20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+<i>Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres
+Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses</i> (Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and
+scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than
+this of Holtzmann, we do not know.
+</p><p>
+Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann’s
+collaborateur in the new <i>Hand-Commentar</i>, accepts Colossians in its
+integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the subject.
+Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple of
+Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+Matt. xvi. 15–18; John xvii. 10: <i>I am glorified in them.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>
+See his <i>Saint Paul</i>, Introduction, pp. xii.–xxiii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>
+See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20–23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
+<i>E.g.</i>, in Rom. i. 1–7, viii. 28–30, xi. 33–36, xvi. 25–27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+See the Winer-Moulton <i>N. T. Grammar</i>, p. 709: “It is in writers
+of great mental vivacity—more taken up with the thought than with the
+mode of its expression—that we may expect to find anacolutha most
+frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style
+of the apostle Paul.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a>
+Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
+Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>
+“My brethren” in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even
+the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in the <i>third person</i>—a thing
+unexampled in St Paul’s epistles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
+Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7–9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
+Compare Maclaren on <i>Colossians and Philemon</i>, p. 406, in this
+series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Tois hagiois tois ousin ... kai pistois en Christô Iêsou">
+Τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ... καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῳ Ἰησοῦ</span>. The interposition
+of the heterogeneous attributive between <span class="greek" title="hagiois">
+ἁγίοις</span> and <span class="greek" title="pistois">
+πιστοῖς</span> is
+harsh and improbable—not to say, with Hofmann, “quite incredible.”
+The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck and of
+von Soden (in the <i>Hand-Commentar</i>), interpreters of opposite schools,
+agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regarding
+<span class="greek" title="pistois">
+πιστοῖς</span> as the complement of <span class="greek" title="tois ousin">
+τοῖς οὖσιν</span>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+Origen, in his fanciful way, makes of <span class="greek" title="tois ousin">
+τοῖς οὖσιν</span> a predicate by
+itself: “the saints <i>who are</i>,” who possess real being like God Himself
+(Exod. iii. 14)—“called from non-existence into existence.” He compares
+1 Cor. i. 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+See, <i>e.g.</i>, ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="section">PRAISE AND PRAYER.</h2>
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> i. 3–19.</h4>
+
+<div class="pcenter">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="greek stanza" title="Hous proegnô, kai proôrisen
+symmorphous tês eikonos tou huiou autou,
+eis to einai auton prôtotokon en pollois adelphois;
+hous de proôrisen, toutous kai ekalesen;
+kai hous ekalesen, toutous kai edikaiôsen;
+hous de edikaiôsen, toutous kai edoxasen.">
+<span class="i4">Οὓς προέγνω, καὶ προώρισεν<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν πρωτότοκον ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδέλφοις;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">οὕς δὲ προώρισεν, τούτους καὶ ἐκάλεσεν;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">καὶ οὓς ἐκάλεσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδικαίωσεν;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">οὓς δὲ ἐδικαίωσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδόξασεν.<br /></span>
+</div>
+<span class="ref"><span class="smcap">Rom.</span> viii. 29, 30.<br /></span>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h4>THE ETERNAL PURPOSE.</h4>
+
+<p>We enter this epistle through a magnificent
+gateway. The introductory Act of Praise,
+extending from verse 3 to 14, is one of the most
+sublime of inspired utterances, an overture worthy of
+the composition that it introduces. Its first sentence
+compels us to feel the insufficiency of our powers for
+its due rendering.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle surveys in this thanksgiving the entire
+course of the revelation of grace. Standing with the
+men of his day, the new-born community of the sons
+of God in Christ, midway between the ages past and
+to come,<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>
+he looks backward to the source of man’s
+salvation when it lay a silent thought in the mind
+of God, and forward to the hour when it shall have
+accomplished its promise and achieved our redemption.
+In this grand evolution of the Divine plan three stages
+are marked by the refrain, thrice repeated, <i>To the praise
+of His glory, of the glory of His grace</i> (vv. 6, 12, 14).
+St Paul’s psalm is thus divided into three strophes,
+or stanzas: he sings the glory of redeeming love in
+its past designs, its present bestowments, and its future
+fruition. The paragraph, forming but one
+sentence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+and spun upon a single golden thread, is a piece of
+thought-music,—a sort of <i>fugue</i>, in which from eternity
+to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by Paul’s
+bold and exulting thought.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the grammatical involution of the style here
+carried to an extreme, and underneath the apparatus of
+Greek pronouns and participles, there is a fine Hebraistic
+lilt pervading the doxology. The refrain is in the
+manner of Psalms xlii.–xliii., and xcix., where in the
+former instance “health of countenance,” and in
+the latter “holy is He” gives the key-note of the
+poet’s melody and parts his song into three balanced
+stanzas. In such poetry the strophes may be unequal
+in length, each developing its own thought freely, and
+yet there is harmony in their combination. Here the
+central idea, that of God’s actual bounty to believers,
+fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there
+is a pause within it, at verse 10, which in effect resumes
+the idea of the first strophe and works it in as a <i>motif</i>
+to the second, carrying on both in a full stream till
+they lose themselves in the third and culminating
+movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying
+expression the phrase “in Christ—in the Beloved—in
+Him—in whom,” weaving the verses into subtle
+continuity. The theme of the entire composition is
+given in verse 3, which does not enter into the threefold
+division we have described, but forms a prelude to it.</p>
+
+<p>
+“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath blessed us,<br />
+In every blessing of the spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ.”<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Blessed be God!</i>—It is the song of the universe, in
+which heaven and earth take responsive parts.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> “When
+the morning stars sang together and all the sons of
+God shouted for joy,” this concert began, and continues
+still through the travail of creation and the sorrow and
+sighing of men. The work praises the Master. All
+sinless creatures, by their order and harmony, by the
+variety of their powers and beauty of their forms and
+delight of their existence, declare their Creator’s glory.
+That praise to the Most High God which the lower
+creatures act instrumentally, it is man’s privilege to
+utter in discourse of reason and music of the heart.
+Man is Nature’s high priest; and above other men, the
+poet. Time will be, as it has been, when it shall be
+accounted the poet’s honour and the crown of his art,
+that he should take the high praises of God into his
+mouth, making hymns to the glory of the Supreme
+Maker and giving voice to the dumb praise of inanimate
+nature and to the noblest thoughts of his fellows
+concerning the Blessed God.</p>
+
+<p><i>Blessed be God!</i>—It is the perpetual strain of the
+Old Testament, from Melchizedek down to Daniel,—of
+David in his triumph, and Job in his misery. But not
+hitherto could men say, Blessed be <i>the God and Father
+of our Lord Jesus Christ</i>! He was “the Most High God,
+the God of heaven,”—“Jehovah, God of Israel, who
+only doeth wondrous things,”—“the Shepherd” and
+“the Rock” of His people,—“the true God, the living
+God, and an everlasting King”; and these are glorious
+titles, which have raised men’s thoughts to moods of
+highest reverence and trust. But the name of <i>Father</i>,
+and <i>Father of our Lord Jesus Christ</i>, surpasses and
+outshines them all. With wondering love and joy unspeakable
+St Paul pronounced this <i>Benedictus</i>. God
+was not less to him the Almighty, the High and
+Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in the days of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+his youthful Jewish faith; but the Eternal and All-holy
+One was now his Father in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His
+name: and let the whole earth be filled with His glory!</p>
+
+<p>The apostle’s psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving to
+God <i>blessing and blessed</i>. The second clause rhythmically
+answers to the first. True, our blessing of
+Him is far different from His blessing of us: ours in
+thought and words; His in mighty deeds of salvation.
+Yet in the fruit of lips giving thanks to His name
+there is a revenue of blessing paid to God which He
+delights in, and requires. “O Thou that inhabitest
+the praises of Israel,” grant us to bless Thee while we
+live and to lift up our hands in Thy name!</p>
+
+<p>By three qualifying adjuncts the blessing which the
+Father of Christ bestowed upon us is defined: in
+respect of its <i>nature</i>, its <i>sphere</i>, and its <i>personal ground</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The blessings that prompt the apostle’s praise are
+not such as those conspicuous in the Old Covenant:
+“Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and in the field;
+in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground,
+and the increase of thy kine; blessed shall be thy
+basket, and thy kneading-trough” (Deut. xxviii. 3–5).
+The gospel pronounces beatitudes of another style:
+“Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed the meek, the
+merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted.” St Paul
+had small share indeed in the former class of blessings,—a
+childless, landless, homeless man. Yet what
+happiness and wealth are his! Out of his poverty he
+is making all the ages rich! From the gloom of his
+prison he sheds a light that will guide and cheer the
+steps of multitudes of earth’s sad wayfarers. Not
+certainly in the earthly places where he finds himself
+is Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus blessed; but “in
+spiritual blessing” and “in heavenly places” how
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+abundantly! His own blessedness he claims for all
+who are in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Blessing <i>spiritual</i> in its nature is, in St Paul’s conception
+of things, blessing in and of the Holy
+Spirit.<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>
+In His quickening our spirit lives; through His indwelling
+health, blessedness, eternal life are ours. In
+this verse justly the theologians recognize the Trinity
+of the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.—Blessing
+<i>in the heavenly places</i> is not so much blessing coming
+from those places—from God the Father who sits
+there—as it is blessing which lifts us into that supernal
+region, giving to us a place and heritage in the world
+of God and of the angels. Two passages of the companion
+epistles interpret this phrase: “Your life is hid
+with Christ in God” (Col. iii. 3); and again, “Our
+citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. iii. 20).—The decisive
+note of St Paul’s blessedness lies in the words “in
+Christ.” For him all good is summed up there.
+Spiritual, heavenly, and Christian: these three are one.
+In Christ dying, risen, reigning, God the Father has
+raised believing men to a new heavenly life. From
+the first inception of the work of grace to its consummation,
+God thinks of men, speaks to them and deals
+with them <i>in Christ</i>. To Him, therefore, with the
+Father be eternal praise!</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“As He chose us in Him before the world’s foundation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That we should be holy and unblemished before Him:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in love He foreordained us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To filial adoption through Jesus Christ for Himself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">According to the good pleasure of His will,—<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">To the praise of the glory of His grace” (vv. 4–6a).<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here is St Paul’s first chapter of Genesis. <i>In
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+beginning was the election of grace.</i> There is nothing
+unprepared, nothing unforeseen in God’s dealings with
+mankind. His wisdom and knowledge are as deep as
+His grace is wide (Rom. xi. 33). Speaking of his own
+vocation, the apostle said: “It pleased God, who set
+me apart from my mother’s womb, to reveal His Son
+in me” (Gal. i. 15, 16). He does but generalize this
+conception and carry it two steps further back—from
+the origin of the individual to the origin of the race,
+and from the beginning of the race to the beginning
+of the world—when he asserts that the community of
+redeemed men was chosen in Christ before the world’s
+foundation.</p>
+
+<p>“The world” is a work of time, the slow structure
+of innumerable yet finite ages. Science affirms on its
+own grounds that the visible universe had a beginning,
+as it has its changes and its certain end. Its structural
+plan, its unity of aim and movement, show it to be the
+creation of a vast Intelligence. Harmony and law, all
+that makes science possible is the product of thought.
+Reason extracts from nature what Reason has first
+put there. The longer, the more intricate and grand
+the process, the farther science pushes back the beginning
+in our thoughts, the more sublime and certain
+the primitive truth becomes: “In the beginning God
+created the heavens and the earth.”</p>
+
+<p>The world is a system; it has a method and a plan,
+therefore a foundation. But before the foundation,
+there was <i>the Founder</i>. And man was in His thoughts,
+and the redeemed Church of Christ. While yet the
+world was not and the immensity of space stretched
+lampless and unpeopled, <i>we</i> were in the mind of God;
+His thought rested with complacency upon His human
+sons, whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+“name was written in the book of life
+from the foundation of the world.” This amazing
+statement is only the logical consequence of St Paul’s
+experience of Divine grace, joined to his conviction of
+the infinite wisdom and eternal being of God.</p>
+
+<p>When he says that God “chose us in Christ <i>before
+the foundation of the world</i>”—or <i>before founding the
+world</i>—this is not a mere mark of time. It intimates
+that in laying His plans for the world the Creator had
+the purpose of redeeming grace in view. The kingdom
+which the “blessed children” of the Father of Christ
+“inherit,” is the kingdom “<i>prepared</i> for them <i>from the
+foundation of the world</i>” (Matt. xxv. 34). Salvation
+lies as deep as creation. The provision for it is eternal.
+For the universe of being was conceived, fashioned,
+and built up “in Christ.” The argument of Colossians
+i. 13–22 lies behind these words. The Son of God’s
+love, in whom and for whom the worlds were made,
+always was potentially the Redeemer of men, as He was
+the image of God (Col. i. 14, 15). He looked forward
+to this mission from eternity, and was in spirit “the
+Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev.
+xiii. 8). Creation and redemption, Nature and the
+Church, are parts of one system; and in the reconciliation
+of the cross all orders of being are concerned,
+“whether the things upon the earth or the things in
+the heavens.”</p>
+
+<p>Evil existed before man appeared on the earth to
+be tempted and to fall. Through the geological record
+we hear the voice of creation groaning for long æons
+in its pain.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">“Dragons of the prime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That tare each other in their slime,”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>grim prophets of man’s brutal and murderous passions,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+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
+God” (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing
+its bondage to corruption, God 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 God 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.” <i>Election</i> is selection; it is the antecedent
+in the mind of God 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 <i>fore-ordination
+in love</i>: an expression which indicates on
+the one hand the disposition in God 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 God “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 God”—as well as His
+absolute righteousness, forbids the treasonable thought
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+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 <i>foreknow</i>, He also did predestinate” (Rom. viii.
+29). He foresees everything, and allows for everything.</p>
+
+<p>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 God’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—God’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.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of this loving fore-ordination of believing
+men in Christ is twofold; it concerns at once their
+<i>character</i> and their <i>state</i>: “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. God’s sons
+must be holy; and holy men are His sons. For this
+end “we” were elected of God in the beginning. Nay,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+with this end in view the world was founded and the
+human race came into being, to provide God with such
+sons<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>
+and that Christ might be “the firstborn among
+many brethren” (Rom. viii. 28–30).</p>
+
+<p>“That we should be holy”—should be <i>saints</i>. This
+the readers are already: “To the saints” the apostle
+writes (ver. 1). They are men devoted to God by
+their own choice and will, meeting God’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 God’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 <i>are</i> a saint if you are a true believer in
+Christ; and you are to be an unblemished saint.</p>
+
+<p>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.”<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a>
+God 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).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+Now, this Divine character is native to the sons of
+God. The ideal which God 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
+God, 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 sanctity, is now pronounced by Jesus:
+“You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
+Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel:
+God elected us in Christ to be perfect saints; for He
+predestined us through Jesus Christ to be His sons.</p>
+
+<p>Sonship to Himself is the Christian status, the rank
+and standing which God confers on those who believe
+in His Son; it accrues to them by the fact that they
+are in Christ.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+It is defined by the term <i>adoption</i>, which
+St Paul employs in this sense in Romans viii. 15, 23,
+as well as in Galatians iv. 5. Adoption was a peculiar
+institution of Roman law, familiar to Paul as a citizen
+of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile believers
+their relation to the family of God.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> “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
+assumed 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 God, 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 passed away and all things
+became new.’”<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose
+of God from eternity; but as a matter of fact it
+was instituted “through Jesus Christ,” the historical
+Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in
+God’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 God <i>Father</i>!
+This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for
+them through the ages past in God’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: “<i>in love</i> having foreordained us.”</p>
+
+<p>Four times, in these three verses, with exulting
+emphasis, the apostle claims this distinction for “us.”
+<i>Who</i>, then, are the objects of the primordial election
+of grace? Does St Paul use the pronoun distributively,
+thinking of individuals—you and me and so
+many others, the personal recipients of saving grace?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+or does he mean the Church, as that is collectively
+the family of God and the object of His loving ordination?
+In this epistle, the latter is surely the thought
+in the apostle’s mind.<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, we may not widen the pronoun
+further; we cannot allow that the sonship here signified
+is man’s natural relation to God, 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 <i>grace</i>.”
+Now, grace is God’s redeeming love toward sinners.
+God’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.</p>
+
+<p>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!”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
+Ch. ii. 7, iii. 5, 21; Col. i. 26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2–6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22–25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="eis auton">εἰς αὐτόν</span>, <i>for Him</i>;
+not <span class="greek" title="autô">αὐτῳ</span>, <i>to Him</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
+Ch. v. 25–27; Col. i. 27–29; Jude 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>
+On <i>sonship</i>, see Chapters XV.–XVII. and XIX. in <i>The Epistle to
+the Galatians</i> (Expositor’s Bible).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a>
+From a valuable and suggestive paper by W. E. Ball, LL.D., on
+“St Paul and the Roman Law,” in the <i>Contemporary Review</i>, August
+1891.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a>
+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.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h4>THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">“Which grace He bestowed on us, in the Beloved One:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In whom we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">According to the riches of His grace:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of His will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">According to His good pleasure:<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Which He purposed in Him, for dispensation in the fulness of the times,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Purposing</i> to gather into one body all things in the Christ—<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The things belonging to the heavens, and the things upon the earth—yea, in Him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In whom also we received our heritage, as we had been foreordained,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">According to purpose of Him who worketh all things<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">According to the counsel of His will,—<br /></span>
+<span class="i16">That we might be to the praise of His
+glory.”<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="ref"><span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 6<i>b</i>–12<i>a</i>.<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The blessedness of men in Christ is not matter
+of purpose only, but of reality and experience.
+With the word <i>grace</i> in the middle of the sixth verse
+the apostle’s thought begins a new movement. We
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>The leading word of this clause we can only paraphrase;
+it has no English equivalent. St Paul perforce
+turns <i>grace</i> 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).”<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>
+If we could employ our verb <i>to grace</i> in a sense corresponding to that of the
+noun <i>grace</i> in the apostle’s dialect and nearly the opposite
+of <i>to disgrace</i>, then <i>graced</i> would signify what he
+means here, viz., <i>treated with grace</i>, made its recipients.</p>
+
+<p>God “showed us grace <i>in the Beloved</i>”—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 God’s
+eternal thought regarding Christ. And that regard of
+God toward the Son of His love is the fountain of His
+love and grace to men.</p>
+
+<p>Christ is the Beloved not of the Father alone, but of
+the created universe. All that know the Lord Jesus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+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 God and brings
+us into fellowship with God 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.</p>
+
+<p>1. Of grace bestowed, the first manifestation, in the
+experience of Paul and his readers, was <i>the forgiveness
+of their trespasses</i> (comp. ii. 13–18). This is “the
+redemption” that “we <i>have</i>.” And it comes “through
+His <i>blood</i>.” The epistles to the Galatians and
+Romans<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>
+expound at length the apostle’s doctrine touching the
+remission of sin and the relation of Christ’s death to
+human transgression. To <i>redemption</i> we shall return
+in considering verse 14, where the word is used, as
+again in chapter iv. 30, in its further application.</p>
+
+<p>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 God 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 participate
+“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,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+redemption is <i>release by ransom</i>. The life-blood of
+Jesus Christ was the <i>price</i> that He paid in order to
+secure our lawful release from the penalties entailed by
+our trespasses.<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>
+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 <i>bought us out of</i> 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.”<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>
+These sayings, and others like them,
+point unmistakably to the fact that our trespasses as
+men against God’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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+arises in the breast of every man who thinks earnestly
+about his personal relations to God and to the laws of
+his being. We cannot wonder that St Paul sets the
+remission of sins first amongst the bestowments of God’s
+grace, and makes it the foundation of all the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Does it occupy the like position in modern Christian
+teaching? Do we realize the criminality of sin, the fearfulness
+of God’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,<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>
+“that both religious people and those who do not profess to be religious
+must be conscious that God’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 God 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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+have not a God who is more merciful than the God of
+our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a
+God who is not righteous, a God who does not glow
+with fiery indignation against sin, is no God at all.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>departing from the living God</i>, what will this
+avail us? If “the redemption through Christ’s blood,
+the forgiveness of our trespasses,” is no longer to us the
+momentous and glorious fact that it was to the apostles,
+then it is time to ask whether our God is in truth the
+same as theirs, whether He is still the God 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 God’s benefits to men. Without
+this sentiment, we can only wonder at the passionate
+gratitude with which he receives the atonement and
+measures by its completeness the riches of God’s grace.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>in all wisdom and intelligence</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>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 associate wisdom and good
+sense with the pardon of sin, as kindred bestowments
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+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”?</p>
+
+<p>But there is another side to all this. “Christ
+was made of God unto us <i>wisdom</i>.” 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 God’s special favour and
+blessing. “I give thanks always for you,” he writes
+to the Corinthians, “for the grace of God 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.</p>
+
+<p>Of such wisdom our epistle is full, and God “has
+made it to abound” to the readers in these inspired
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+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 God 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!</p>
+
+<p>This intellectual gift is twofold: <i>phronēsis</i> as well
+as <i>sophia</i>,—the bestowment not only of deep spiritual
+thought, but of moral sagacity, good sense and thoughtfulness.
+This is a choice <i>charism</i>—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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+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 God’s purpose
+to reconstitute 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.</p>
+
+<p>But let us observe here that our wisdom and prudence
+lie in the knowledge of God’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 God.
+It craves to know <i>the mystery of His will</i>.</p>
+
+<p>III. Verse 11 fills up the measure of the bestowment
+of grace on sinful men. The present anticipates the
+future; faith and love are lifted to a glorious hope.
+“In whom also—<i>i.e.</i>, in Christ—<i>we received our heritage</i>,
+predestinated [to it], according to His purpose who
+works all things according to the counsel of His will.”</p>
+
+<p>Following Meyer and other great interpreters, we
+prefer in this passage the rendering of the English
+Authorized Version (<i>we obtained an inheritance</i>) to that
+of the Revised (<i>we were made a
+heritage</i>).<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+“Foreordained” carries us back to verse 5—to the phrase
+“foreordained to sonship.” The believer cannot be
+predestinated to sonship without being predestinated
+to an inheritance.<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a>
+“If children, then heirs” (Rom.
+viii. 17). But while in the parallel passage we are
+designated heirs <i>with</i> Christ, we appear in this place,
+according to the tenor of the context, as heirs <i>in</i> Him.
+Christ is Himself the believer’s wealth, both in possession
+and hope: all his desire is to gain Christ (Phil. iii.
+8). The apostle gives thanks here in the same strain as
+in Colossians i. 12–14, “to the Father who qualified us
+[by making us His sons] to partake of the inheritance
+of the saints in the light.” In that thanksgiving we
+observe the same connexion as in this between our
+<i>forgiveness</i> (ver. 7) and our <i>enfeoffment</i>, or investment
+with the forfeited rights of sons of God
+(vv. 5, 11).<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>The heritage of the saints in Christ is theirs already,
+by actual investiture. The liberty of sons of God,
+access to the Father, the treasures of Christ’s wisdom
+and knowledge, the sanctifying Spirit and the moral
+strength and joy that He imparts, these form a rich
+estate of which ancient saints had but foretastes and
+promises. In the all-controlling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> “counsel of His will,”
+God wrought throughout the course of history to convey
+this heritage to us. We are children of “the fulness
+of the times,” heirs of all the past. For us God has
+been working from eternity. On us the ends of the
+world have come. Thus from the summit of our
+exaltation in Christ the apostle looks backward to the
+beginning of Divine history.</p>
+
+<p>From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the
+end. God’s purpose embraces the ages to come with
+those that are past. His working will not cease till
+the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our
+inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise
+of infinitely more; and the Holy Spirit is the “earnest
+of our inheritance” (ver. 14). God intends “that we
+should be to the praise of His glory.” As things are,
+His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. “It
+doth not yet appear what we shall be,”—and it will
+not appear until the unveiling of the sons of God (Rom.
+viii. 18–25). One day God’s glory in us will burst
+forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and
+earth will then sing <i>to the praise of His glory</i>, when it
+is seen in His redeemed and godlike sons.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>Verses 9 and 10 (<i>which He purposed ... upon the
+earth</i>) are, as we have said, a parenthesis or episode
+in the passage just reviewed. Neither in structure nor
+in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this
+clause been wanting. With the “in Him” repeated
+at the end of verse 10, St Paul resumes the main
+current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment
+while he dwells on “the mystery of God’s will.”</p>
+
+<p>This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he
+has said in verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He
+will pause for an instant to set forth once more the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+eternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the Church
+is now admitted. The communication of this mystery
+is, he says, “according to God’s good pleasure which
+He purposed in Christ [comp. ver. 4], for a dispensation
+of the fulness of the times, intending to gather
+up again all things in the Christ—the things in the
+heavens, and the things upon the earth.”</p>
+
+<p>God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation
+of His grace, in due time to re-unite the universe
+under the headship of Christ. This mysterious design,
+hitherto kept secret, He has “made known unto us.”
+Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all
+the wisdom of former ages.<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>
+Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for
+its interpretation. The <i>fulness of the times</i>, in St Paul’s
+dialect, can only be the time of
+Christ.<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> The dispensation
+which God designed of old is that in which the
+apostle himself is now engaged;<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a>
+it is the dispensation,
+or administration (<i>economy</i>), of the grace and truth
+that came by Jesus Christ, whether God be conceived
+as Himself the Dispenser, or through the stewards of
+His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul’s
+Jewish thought the dénouement of antecedent history.
+How long this age would continue, into what epochs
+it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for him the
+fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was
+come; the kingdom of God was amongst men. It was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+the beginning of the end. It is a mistake to relegate
+this text to the dim and distant future, to some far-off
+consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian
+reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The
+decisive epoch fell when “God sent forth His Son.”
+All that has followed, and will follow, is the result of
+this mission. Christ is all things, and in all; and we
+are already complete in Him.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, signifies this <i>gathering-into-one</i> or <i>summing-up</i>
+of all things in the Christ? Our <i>recapitulate</i>
+is the nearest equivalent of the Greek verb, in its etymological
+sense. In Romans xiii. 8, 9 the same word is
+used, where the several commands of the second table
+of the Decalogue are said to be “comprehended in this
+word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
+This summing up is not a generalization or
+compendious statement of the commands of God; it
+signifies their reduction to a fundamental principle.
+They are unified by the discovery of a law that underlies
+them all. And while thus theoretically explained,
+they are made practically effective: “For love is the
+fulfilling of the law.”</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, St Paul finds in Christ the fundamental
+principle of the creation. For those who think with him,
+God has by the Christian revelation already brought all
+things to their unity. This summing up—the Christian
+inventory and recapitulation of the universe—the
+apostle has formally stated in Colossians i. 15–20:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+“Christ is God’s image and creation’s firstborn. In
+Him, through Him, for Him all things were made. He
+is before them all; and in Him they have their basis
+and uniting bond. He is equally the Head of the
+Church and the new creation, the firstborn out of the
+dead, that He might hold a universal presidence—charged
+with all the fulness, so that in Him is the
+ground of the reconciliation no less than of the creation
+of all things in heaven and earth.” What can we
+desire more comprehensive than this? It is the theory
+and programme of the world revealed to God’s holy
+apostles and prophets.</p>
+
+<p>The “gathering into one” of this text includes the
+“reconciliation” of Colossians i. 20, and more. It
+signifies, beside the removal of the enmities which are
+the effect of sin (ii. 14–16), the subjection of all powers
+in heaven and earth to the rule of Christ
+(vv. 21, 22),<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>
+the enlightenment of the angelic magnates as to God’s
+dealings with men (iii. 9, 10),—in fine, the rectification
+and adjustment of the several parts of the great whole
+of things, bringing them into full accord with each
+other and with their Creator’s will. What St Paul
+looks forward to is, in a word, the organization of the
+universe upon a Christian basis. This reconstitution
+of things is provided for and is being effected “in the
+Christ.” He is the rallying point of the forces of peace
+and blessing. The organic principle, the organizing
+Head, the creative nucleus of the new creation is
+there. The potent germ of life eternal has been introduced
+into the world’s chaos; and its victory over the
+elements of disorder and death is assured.</p>
+
+<p>Observe that the apostle says “in <i>the
+Christ</i>.”<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> He
+is not speaking of Christ in the abstract, considered in
+His own Person or as He dwells in heaven, but in His
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+relations to men and to time. The Christ manifest in
+Jesus (iv. 20, 21), the Christ of prophets and apostles,
+the Messiah of the ages, the Husband of the Church
+(v. 23), is the author and finisher of this grand restoration.</p>
+
+<p>Christ’s work is essentially a work of <i>restoration</i>.
+We must insist, with Meyer, upon the significance of
+the Greek preposition in Paul’s compound verb (<i>ana</i>-,
+equal to <i>re</i>-in <i>restore</i> or <i>resume</i>). The Christ is not
+simply the climax of the past—the Son of man and the
+recapitulation of humanity, as man is of the creatures
+below him, summing up human development and lifting
+it to a higher stage—though He is all that. Christ
+<i>rehabilitates</i> man and the world. He re-asserts the
+original ground of our being, as that exists in God.
+He carries us and the world forward out of sin and
+death, by carrying us back to God’s ideal. The new
+world is the old world repaired, and in its reparation
+infinitely enhanced—rich in the memories of redemption,
+in the fruit of penitence and the discipline of suffering,
+in the lessons of the cross.</p>
+
+<p><i>All things</i> in heaven and earth it was God’s good
+pleasure in the Christ to gather again into one. Is this
+a general assertion concerning the universe as a whole,
+or may we apply it with distributive exactness to each
+particular thing? Is there to be, as we fain would
+hope, no single exception to the “all things”—no
+wanderer lost, no exile finally shut out from the Holy
+City and the tree of life? Are all evil men and demons,
+willing or against their will, to be embraced somehow
+and at last—at last—in the universal peace of God?</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible that the first readers should have
+so construed Paul’s words (comp. v. 5). He has not
+forgotten the “unquenchable fire,” the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> “eternal punishment”;
+nor dare we. “If anything is certain about
+the teaching of Christ and His apostles, it is that they
+warned men not to reject the Divine mercy and so to
+incur irrevocable exile from God’s presence and joy.
+They assumed that some men would be guilty of this
+supreme crime, and would be doomed to this supreme
+woe” (Dale). There is nothing in this text to warrant
+any man in presuming on the mercy or the sovereignty
+of God, nothing to justify us in supposing that, deliberately
+refusing to be reconciled to God in Christ, we
+shall yet be reconciled in the end, despite ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul assures us that God and the world will
+be reunited, and that peace will reign through all
+realms and orders of existence. He does not, and he
+could not say that none will exclude themselves from
+the eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made
+it possible for them to contradict Him, so long as they
+have any being. The apostle’s words have their note
+of warning, along with their boundless promise. There
+is no place in the future order of things for aught that
+is out of Christ. There is no standing-ground anywhere
+for the unclean and the unjust, for the irreconcilable
+rebel against God. “The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of
+His kingdom all things that offend and them that do
+iniquity.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p>
+<a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a>
+The arrangement above made of the lines of this intricate passage
+is designed to guide the eye to its elucidation. Our disposition of the
+verses has not been determined by any preconceived interpretation,
+but by the parallelism of expression and cadences of phrase. The
+rhythmical structure of the piece, it seems to us, supplies the key to
+its explanation, and reduces to order its long-drawn and heaped-up
+relative and prepositional clauses, which are grammatically so
+unmanageable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Chaire, kecharitômenê">Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη</span>. It is impossible to reproduce in English the
+beautiful assonance—the <i>play</i> of sound and sense—in Gabriel’s greeting,
+as St Luke renders it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>
+See Rom. i. 16–18, iii. 19–v. 21, vi. 7, vii. 1–6, viii. 1–4, 31–34,
+x. 6–9; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 17, 56, 57; 2 Cor. v. 18–21; Gal. ii. 14–iii. 14,
+vi. 12–14. The latter passages the writer has endeavoured to expound
+in Chapters X. to XII. and XXVIII. of his Commentary on <i>Galatians</i>
+in this series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a>
+It is an error to suppose, as one sometimes hears it said, that <i>trespasses</i>
+or <i>transgressions</i> are a light and comparatively trivial form of sin.
+Both words denote, in the language of Scripture, definite offences
+against known law, departures from known duty. Adam’s sin was the
+typical “transgression” and “trespass” (Rom. v. 14, 15, etc.; comp.
+ii. 23; Gal. iii. 19).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a>
+Gal. iii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a>
+See <i>The Evangelical Revival, and other Sermons</i>, pp. 149–170, on
+“The Forgiveness of Sins.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>
+Bishop Ellicott, who advocates the latter rendering, objects to
+Meyer’s interpretation that it is “doubtful in point of usage.” <i>Pace
+tanti viri</i>, we must retort this objection upon the new translation. <i>To
+obtain by lot, to have (a thing) allotted to one</i>, is the meaning regularly
+given to <span class="greek" title="klêrousthai">
+κληροῦσθαι</span> in the classical dictionaries; and in O.T. usage the
+<i>lot</i> (<span class="greek" title="klêros">κλῆρος</span>)
+becomes the <i>inheritance</i> (the thing <i>allotted</i>). The verb is
+repeatedly used by Philo with the meaning <i>to obtain</i>, or <i>receive an
+inheritance</i>; whereas there seems to be no real parallel to the other
+rendering. It is true that <span class="greek" title="klêrousthai">
+κληροῦσθαι</span> in the sense of the A.V. requires
+an object; but that is virtually supplied by <span class="greek" title="en hô">
+ἐν ᾧ</span>: “we had our inheritance
+allotted <i>in Christ</i>.” Comp. Col. i. 12, “the lot of the saints <i>in
+the light</i>,” which signifies not the locality, but the nature and content
+of the saints’ heritage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a>
+See Gal. iii. 22—iv. 7; and Chapters XV.—XVII. in the <i>Expositor’s
+Bible</i> (Galatians), on Sonship and Inheritance in St Paul.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>
+Compare Acts xxvi. 18, which also speaks to this association of
+ideas in St Paul’s mind, with vers. 4, 5, 7, and 11 in this chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>
+Vv. 8, 9, ch. iii. 4, 5; comp. Col. ii. 2, 3; 1 Cor. ii. 6–9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>
+“The fulness of the time,” Gal. iv. 4; “in due season,” Rom. v. 6;
+“in its own times,” 1 Tim. ii. 6. These are all synonymous expressions
+for the Messianic era. Comp. Heb. i. 2, ix. 26; 1 Pet. i. 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>
+Ch. iii. 8, 9; Col. i. 25; 1 Cor. iv. 1; 1 Tim. i. 4, i. 7; 2 Tim. i.
+9–11; and especially Rom. xvi. 25, 26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>
+Comp. ch. v. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 24–28; Phil. ii. 9–12; Heb. ii. 8; Rev.
+i. 5, xi. 15, xvii. 14; Dan. vii. 13, 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a>
+One wonders that our Revisers, so attentive to all points of Greek
+idiom, did not think it worth while to discriminate between <i>Christ</i> and
+<i>the Christ</i> in such passages as this. In Ephesians this distinction is
+especially conspicuous and significant. See vv. 12, 20 iii. 17, iv. 20,
+v. 23; similarly in 1 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. xv. 3.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h4>THE FINAL REDEMPTION.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i8">“[That we might be to the praise of His glory:]<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We who had before hoped in the Christ, in whom also ye <i>have hoped</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Since ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,—<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In whom indeed, when ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of <i>God’s</i> possession,—<br /></span>
+<span class="i16">To the praise of His glory.”<br /></span>
+<span class="ref"><span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 12–14.<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the apostle reaches the “heritage” conferred
+upon us in Christ (ver. 11), he is on
+the boundary between the present and the future.
+Into that future he now presses forward, gathering
+from it his crowning tribute “to the praise of God’s
+glory.” We shall find, however, that this heritage
+assumes a twofold character, as did the conception
+of the inheritance of the Lord in the Old Testament.
+If the saints have their heritage in Christ, partly
+possessed and partly to be possessed, God has likewise,
+and antecedently, His inheritance in them, of which He
+too has still to take full
+possession.<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+Opening upon this final prospect, St Paul touches
+on a subject of supreme interest to himself and that
+could not fail to find a place in his great Act of Praise—viz.,
+<i>the admission of the Gentiles</i> to the spiritual
+property of Israel. The thought of the heirship of
+believers and of God’s previous counsel respecting it
+(ver. 11), brought before his mind the distinction between
+Jew and Gentile and the part assigned to each
+in the Divine plan. Hence he varies the general refrain
+in verse 12 by saying significantly, “that <i>we</i> might
+be to the praise of His glory.” This emphatic <i>we</i> is
+explained in the opening phrase of the last strophe:
+“that have beforehand fixed our hope on the Christ,”—the
+heirs of Israel’s hope in “Him of whom Moses
+in the law and the prophets did write.” With this
+“we” of Paul’s Jewish consciousness the “ye also” of
+verse 13 is set in contrast by his vocation as Gentile
+apostle. This second pronoun, by one of Paul’s
+abrupt turns of thought, is deprived of its predicating
+verb; but that is given already by the “hoped” of
+the last clause. “The Messianic hope, Israel’s ancient
+heirloom, in its fulfilment is <i>yours</i> as much as ours.”</p>
+
+<p>This hope of Israel pointed Israelite and Gentile
+believer alike to the completion of the Messianic era,
+when the mystery of God should be finished and His
+universe redeemed from the bondage of corruption
+(vv. 10, 14). By the “one hope” of the Christian
+calling the Church is now made one. From this point
+of view the apostle in chapter ii. 12 describes the
+condition in which the gospel found his Gentile readers
+as that of men cut off from Christ, strangers to the
+covenants of promise,—in a word, “having no hope”;
+while he and his Jewish fellow-believers held the
+priority that belonged to those whose are the promises.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+The apostle stands precisely at the juncture where
+the wild shoot of nature is grafted into the good olive
+tree. A generation later no one would have thought
+of writing of “the Christ in whom <i>you</i> (Gentiles) <i>also</i>
+have found hope”; for then Christ was the established
+possession of the Gentile Church.</p>
+
+<p>To these Christless heathen Christ and His hope
+came, when they “heard the word of truth, the gospel
+of their salvation.” A great light had sprung up for
+them that sat in darkness; the good tidings of salvation
+came to the lost and despairing. “To the Gentiles,”
+St Paul declared, addressing the obstinate Jews of
+Rome, “this salvation of God was sent: they indeed
+will hear it” (Acts xxviii. 28). Such was his experience
+in Ephesus and all the Gentile cities. There were
+hearing ears and open hearts, souls longing for the
+word of truth and the message of hope. The trespass
+of Israel had become the riches of the world. For this
+on his readers’ behalf he gives joyful thanks,—that his
+message proved to be “the gospel of <i>your</i> salvation.”</p>
+
+<p>Salvation, as St Paul understands it, includes our
+uttermost deliverance, the end of death itself (1 Cor.
+xv. 26). He renders praise to God for that He has
+sealed Gentile equally with Jewish believers with the
+stamp of His Spirit, which makes them His property
+and gives assurance of absolute redemption.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>There are three things to be considered in this
+statement: <i>the seal</i> itself, <i>the conditions</i> upon which,
+and <i>the purpose</i> for which it is affixed.</p>
+
+<p>I. A seal is a token of proprietorship put by the owner
+upon his property;<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+or it is the authentication of some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+statement or engagement, the official stamp that gives
+it validity;<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>
+or it is the pledge of inviolability guarding
+a treasure from profane or injurious
+hands.<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> There is
+the protecting seal, the ratifying seal, and the proprietary
+seal. The same seal may serve each or all of
+these purposes. Here the thought of possession predominates
+(comp. ver. 4); but it can scarcely be
+separated from the other two. The witness of the
+Holy Spirit marks men out as God’s <i>purchased right</i> in
+Christ (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20). In that very fact it guards
+them from evil and wrong (iv. 30), while it ratifies
+their Divine sonship (Gal. iv. 6) and guarantees their
+personal share in the promises of God (2 Cor. i. 20–22).
+It is a bond between God and men; a sign at once
+of what we are and shall be to God, and of what He
+is and will be to us. It secures, and it assures. It
+stamps us for God’s possession, and His kingdom and
+glory as our possession.</p>
+
+<p>This seal is constituted by <i>the Holy Spirit of the promise</i>,—in
+contrast with the material seal, “in the flesh,
+wrought by hand,”<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>
+which marked the children of the
+Old Covenant from Abraham downwards, previously
+to the fulfilment of the promise (Gal. iii. 14). We
+bear it in the inmost part of our nature, where we are
+nearest to God: “The Spirit witnesseth to our spirit.”
+“The Israelites also were sealed, but by circumcision,
+like cattle and irrational animals. We were sealed by
+the Spirit, as sons” (Chrysostom). The stamp of God
+is on the consciousness of His children. “We know
+that Christ abides in us,” writes St John, “from the
+Spirit which He gave us” (1 Ep. iii. 24). Under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+this seal is conveyed the sum of blessing comprised
+in our salvation. Jesus promised, “Your heavenly
+Father will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask”
+(Luke xi. 13), as if there were nothing else to ask.
+Giving us this, God gives everything, gives us Himself!
+In substance or anticipation, this one bestowment contains
+all good things of God.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle writes “the Spirit of the promise, <i>the
+Holy</i> [Spirit],” with emphasis on the word of quality;
+for the testifying power of the seal lies in its character.
+“Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try the spirits,
+whether they are of God” (1 John iv. 1). There are
+false prophets, deceiving and deceived; there are
+promptings from “the spirit that works in the sons
+of disobedience,” diabolical inspirations, so plausible
+and astonishing that they may deceive the very elect.
+It is a most perilous error to identify the supernatural
+with the Divine, to suppose mere miracles and communications
+from the invisible sphere a sign of the
+working of God. Antichrist can mimic Christ by
+his “lying wonders and deceit of unrighteousness”
+(2 Thess. ii. 8–12). Jesus never appealed to the power
+of His works in proof of His mission, apart from their
+ethical quality. God’s Spirit works after His kind, and
+makes ours a holy spirit. There is an objective and subjective
+witness—the obverse and reverse of the medal
+(2 Tim. ii. 19). To be sealed by the Holy Spirit is,
+in St Paul’s dialect, the same thing as to be <i>sanctified</i>;
+only, the phrase of this text brings out graphically the
+promissory aspect of sanctification, its bearing on our
+final redemption.<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p>When the sealing Spirit is called the Spirit <i>of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+promise</i>, does the expression look backward or forward?
+Is the apostle thinking of the past promise now fulfilled,
+or of some promise still to be fulfilled? The
+former, undoubtedly, is true. <i>The</i> promise (the article
+is significant<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a>)
+is, in the words of Christ, “the promise
+of the Father.” On the day of Pentecost St Peter
+pointed to the descent of the Holy Spirit as God’s seal
+upon the Messiahship of Jesus, fulfilling what was
+promised to Israel for the last days. When this
+miraculous effusion was repeated in the household of
+Cornelius, the Jewish apostle saw its immense significance.
+He asked, “Can any one forbid water that
+these should be baptized, who have received the Holy
+Spirit as well as we?” (Acts x. 47). This was the predicted
+criterion of the Messianic times. Now it was
+<i>given</i>, and with an abundance beyond hope,—<i>poured
+out</i>, in the full sense of Joel’s words, <i>upon all flesh</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if God has done so much—for this is the
+implied argument of verses 13, 14—He will surely
+accomplish the rest. The attainment of past hope is
+the warrant of present hope. He who gives us His
+own Spirit, will give us the fulness of eternal life. The
+earnest implies the sum. In the witness of the Holy
+Spirit there is for the Christian man the power of an
+endless life, a spring of courage and patience that can
+never fail.</p>
+
+<p>II. But there are very definite conditions, upon which
+this assurance depends. “When you heard the word
+of truth, the gospel of your salvation”—there is the
+outward condition: “when you believed”—there is
+the inward and subjective qualification for the affixing
+of the seal of God to the heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+How characteristic is this antithesis of <i>hearing</i> and
+<i>faith</i>!<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a>
+St Paul delights to ring the changes upon
+these terms. The gospel he carried about with him
+was a message from God to men, the good news about
+Jesus Christ. It needs, on the one hand, to be effectively
+uttered, proclaimed so as to be heard with the
+understanding; and, on the other hand, it must be
+trustfully received and obeyed. Then the due result
+follows. There is salvation,—conscious, full.</p>
+
+<p>If they are to believe unto salvation, men must be
+made to <i>hear</i> the word of truth. Unless the good news
+reaches their ears and their heart, it is no good news
+to them. “How shall they believe in Him of whom
+they have not heard? how shall they hear without
+a preacher?” (Rom. x. 14). The light may be true,
+and the eyes clear and open; but there is no vision
+till both meet, till the illuminating ray falls on the
+sensitive spot and touches the responsive nerve. How
+many sit in darkness, groping and wearying for the
+light, ready for the message if there were any to speak
+it to them! Great would Paul’s guilt have been, if
+when Christ called him to preach to the heathen, he had
+refused to go, if he had withheld the gospel of salvation
+from the multitudes waiting to receive it at his lips.
+Great also is our fault and blame, and heavy the
+reproach against the Church to-day, when with means
+in her hand to make Christ known to almost the whole
+world, she leaves vast numbers of men within her
+reach in ignorance of His message. She is not the
+proprietor of the Christian truth: it is God’s gospel;
+and she holds it as God’s trustee for mankind,—that
+through her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+“the message might be fully preached,
+and that all the nations might hear” (2 Tim. iv. 17).
+She has St Paul’s programme in hand still to complete,
+and loiters over it.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of the message constitutes our duty to
+proclaim it. It is “the word <i>of truth</i>.” If there be
+any doubt upon this, if our certainty of the Christian
+truth is shaken and we can no longer announce it with
+full conviction, our zeal for its propagation naturally
+declines. Scepticism chills and kills missionary fervour,
+as the breath of the frost the young growth of spring.
+At home and amongst our own people evangelistic
+agencies are supported by many who have no very
+decided personal faith, from secondary motives,—with
+a view to their social and reformatory benefits, out of
+philanthropic feeling and love to “the brother whom we
+have seen.” The foreign missions of the Church, like
+the work of the Gentile apostle, gauge her real estimate
+of the gospel she believes and the Master she serves.</p>
+
+<p>But if we have no sure word of prophecy to speak,
+we had better be silent. Men are not saved by illusion
+or speculation. Christianity did not begin by
+offering to mankind a legend for a gospel, or win
+the ear of the world for a beautiful romance. When
+the apostles preached Jesus and the resurrection, they
+declared what they knew. To have spoken otherwise,
+to have uttered cunningly devised fables or pious
+phantasies or conjectures of their own, would have
+been, in their view, to bear false witness against God.
+Before the hostile scrutiny of their fellow-men, and in
+prospect of the awful judgement of God, they testified
+the facts about Jesus Christ, the things that they had
+“heard, and seen with their eyes, and which their
+hands had handled concerning the word of life.” They
+were as sure of these things as of their own being.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+Standing upon this ground and with this weapon of
+truth alone in their hands, they denounced “the wiles
+of error” and the “craftiness of men who lie in wait
+to deceive” (iv. 14).</p>
+
+<p>And they could always speak of this word of truth,
+addressing whatsoever circle of hearers or of readers,
+as “the good news of <i>your salvation</i>.” The pronoun,
+as we have seen, is emphatic. The glory of Paul’s apostolic
+mission was its universalism. His message was
+to every man he met. His latest writings glow with
+delight in the world-wide destination of his
+gospel.<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>
+It was his consolation that the Gentiles in multitudes
+received the Divine message to which his countrymen
+closed their ears. And he rejoiced in this the more,
+because he foresaw that ultimately the gospel would
+return to its native home, and at last amid “the fulness
+of the Gentiles all Israel would be saved” (Rom.
+xi. 13–32). At present Israel was not prepared to
+seek, while the Gentiles were seeking righteousness by
+the way of faith (Rom. ix. 30–33).</p>
+
+<p>For it is upon this question of <i>faith</i> that the whole
+issue turns. Hearing is much, when one hears the
+word of truth and news of salvation. But faith is
+the point at which salvation becomes ours—no longer
+a possibility, an opportunity, but a fact: “in whom
+indeed, <i>when you believed</i>, you were sealed with the
+Holy Spirit.” So characteristic is this act of the new
+life to which it admits, that St Paul is in the habit of
+calling Christians, without further qualification, simply
+<i>believers</i> (“those who believe,” or “who believed”).
+Faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit are associated
+in his thoughts, as closely as Faith and Justification.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
+was the question he put to the Baptist’s disciples whom
+he found at Ephesus on first arriving there (Acts xix.
+2). This was the test of the adequacy of their faith.
+He reminds the Galatians that they “received the
+Spirit from the hearing of faith,” and tells them that
+in this way the blessing and the promise of Abraham
+were theirs already (Gal. iii. 2, 7, 14). Faith in the
+word of Christ admits the Spirit of Christ, who is
+in the word waiting to enter. Faith is the trustful
+surrender and expectancy of the soul towards
+God; it sets the heart’s door open for Christ’s incoming
+through the Spirit This was the order of
+things from the beginning of the new dispensation.
+“God gave to them,” says St Peter of the first
+baptized Gentiles, “the like gift as He did also unto
+us, when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The
+Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning”
+(Acts xi. 15–18). Upon our faith in Jesus Christ, the
+Holy Spirit enters the soul and announces Himself
+by His message of adoption, crying in us to God,
+<i>Abba, Father</i> (Gal. iv. 6, 7).</p>
+
+<p>In the chamber of our spirit, while we abide in faith,
+the Spirit of the Father and the Son dwells with us,
+witnessing to us of the love of God and leading us
+into all truth and duty and divine joy, instilling a
+deep and restful peace, breathing an energy that is
+a fire and fountain of life within the breast, which
+pours out itself in prayer and labour for the kingdom
+of God. The Holy Spirit is no mere gift to receive,
+or comfort to enjoy; He is an almighty Force in the
+believing soul and the faithful Church.</p>
+
+<p>III. The end for which the seal of God was affixed
+to Paul’s Gentile readers, along with their Jewish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+brethren in Christ, appears in the last verse, with
+which the Act of Praise terminates: “sealed,” he says,
+“with the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest of our
+inheritance, <i>until the redemption of the possession</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The last of these words is the equivalent of the Old
+Testament phrase rendered in Exodus xix. 5, and elsewhere,
+“<i>a peculiar treasure</i> unto me”; in Deuteronomy
+vii. 6, etc., “a <i>peculiar</i> people” (<i>i.e.</i>, people of <i>possession</i>).
+The same Greek term is employed by the
+Septuagint translators in Malachi iii. 17, where our
+Revisers have substituted “a peculiar treasure” for
+the familiar, but misleading “jewels” of the older
+Version. St Peter in his first epistle (ii. 9, 10) transfers
+the title from the Jewish people to the new Israel
+of God, who are “an elect race, a royal priesthood,
+a holy nation, a people <i>for God’s own possession</i>.” In
+that passage, as in this, the Revisers have inserted the
+word <i>God’s</i> in order to signify whose possession the
+term signifies in Biblical use. In the other places
+in the New Testament where the same Greek noun
+occurs,<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>
+it retains its primary active force, and denotes
+“<i>obtaining</i> of the glory,” etc., “<i>saving</i> of the soul.”
+The word signifies not the possessing so much as the
+<i>acquiring</i> or <i>securing</i> of its object. The Latin Vulgate
+suitably renders this phrase, <i>in redemptionem
+acquisitions</i>,—“till the redemption of the acquisition.”</p>
+
+<p>God has “redeemed unto Himself a people”; He
+has “bought us with a price.” His rights in us are
+both natural and <i>acquired</i>; they are redemptional
+rights, the recovered rights of the infinite love which in
+Jesus Christ saved mankind by extreme sacrifice from
+the doom of death eternal. This redemption
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> “we
+have, in the remission of our trespasses” (ver. 7).
+But this is only the beginning. Those whose sin is
+cancelled and on whom God now looks with favour
+in Christ, are thereby redeemed and saved (ii. 5,
+8).<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>
+They are within the kingdom of grace; they have
+passed out of death into life. They have but to
+persist in the grace into which they have entered, and
+all will be well. “Now,” says the apostle to the
+Romans, “you are made free from sin and made
+servants to God; you have your fruit unto holiness,
+and the end eternal life.”</p>
+
+<p>Our salvation is come; but, after all, it is still to
+come. We find the apostle using the words “save” and
+“redeem” in this twofold sense, applying them both to
+the commencement and the consummation of the new
+life.<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>
+The last act, in Romans viii. 23, he calls “the
+redemption of the body.” This will reinstate the man
+in the integrity of his twofold being as a son of God.
+Hence our bodily redemption is there called an <i>adoption</i>.
+For as Jesus Christ by His resurrection was “marked
+out [<i>or</i> instated] as Son of God in power” (Rom. i. 4),
+not otherwise will it be with His many brethren. Their
+reappearance in the new “body of glory” will be
+a “revelation” to the universe “of the sons of God.”</p>
+
+<p>But this last redemption—or rather this last act of
+the one redemption—like the first, is through the blood
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+of the cross. Christ has borne for us in His death
+the entire penalty of sin; the remission of that penalty
+comes to us in two distinct stages. The shadow of
+death is lifted off from our spirits now, in the moment
+of forgiveness. But for reasons of discipline it remains
+resting upon our bodily frame. Death is a usurper
+and trespasser in the bounds of God’s heritage.
+Virtually and in principle, he is abolished; but not in
+effect. “I will ransom them from the power of the
+grave,”<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>
+the Lord said of His Israel, with a meaning
+deeper than His prophet knew. When that is done,
+then God will have redeemed, in point of fact, those
+possessions in humanity which He so much prizes,
+that for their recovery He spared not His Son.</p>
+
+<p>So long as mortality afflicts us, God cannot be
+satisfied on our account. His children are suffering
+and tortured; His people mourn under the oppression
+of the enemy. They sigh, and creation with them,
+under the burdensome and infirm tabernacle of the
+flesh, this body of our humiliation for which the
+hungry grave clamours. God’s new estate in us is
+still encumbered with the liabilities in which the sin
+of the race involved us, with the “ills that flesh is
+heir to.” But this mortgage—that we call, with a
+touching euphemism, <i>the debt of nature</i>—will at last
+be discharged. Soon shall we be free for ever from
+the law of sin and death. “And the ransomed of the
+Lord shall return and come with singing to Zion, and
+everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: they shall
+obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall
+flee away.”</p>
+
+<p>To God, as He looks down upon men, the seal
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+of His Spirit upon their hearts anticipates this full
+emancipation. He sees already in the redeemed spirit
+of His children what will be manifest in their glorious
+heavenly form. The same token is to ourselves as
+believing men the “earnest of our inheritance.” Note
+that at this point the apostle drops the “you” by
+which he has for several sentences distinguished between
+Jewish and Gentile brethren. He identifies
+them with himself and speaks of “<i>our</i> inheritance.”
+This sudden resumption of the first person, the self-assertion
+of the filial consciousness in the writer
+breaking through the grammatical order, is a fine trait
+of the Pauline manner.<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Arrhabon</i>, the <i>earnest</i> (<i>fastening penny</i>), is a Phœnician
+word of the market, which passed into Greek and
+Latin,—a monument of the daring pioneers of Mediterranean
+commerce. It denotes the part of the price
+given by a purchaser in making a bargain, or of the
+wages given by the hirer concluding a contract of
+service, by way of assurance that the stipulated sum
+will be forthcoming. Such pledge of future payment
+is at the same time a bond between those concerned,
+engaging each to his part in the transaction.</p>
+
+<p>The earnest is the seal, and something more. It
+is an instalment, a <i>token in kind</i>, a foretaste of the
+feast to come. In the parallel passage, Romans viii. 23,
+the same earnest is called “the firstfruit of the Spirit.”
+What the earliest sheaf is to the harvest, that the
+entrance of the Spirit of God into a human soul is
+to the glory of its ultimate salvation. The sanctity,
+the joy, the sense of recovered life is the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+in kind then and now, differing only in degree and
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>Of the “earnest of the Spirit” St Paul has spoken
+twice already, in 2 Corinthians i. 22 and v. 5, where
+he cites this inner witness to assure us, in the first
+instance, that God will fulfil to us His promises, “how
+many soever they be”; and in the second, that our
+mortal nature shall be “swallowed up of life”—assimilated
+to the living spirit to which it belongs—and that
+“God has wrought us for this very thing.” These
+earlier sayings explain the apostle’s meaning here.
+God has made us His sons, in accordance with His
+purpose formed in the depths of eternity (ver. 5). As
+sons, we are His heirs in fellowship with Christ, and
+already have received rich blessings out of this heritage
+(ver. 11). But the richest part of it, including that
+which concerns the bodily form of our life, is still
+unredeemed, notwithstanding that the price of its
+redemption is paid.</p>
+
+<p>For this we wait till the time appointed of the Father,—the
+time when He will reclaim His heritage in us,
+and give us full possession of our heritage in Christ.
+We do not wait, as did the saints of former ages,
+ignorant of the Father’s purpose for our future lot.
+“Life and immortality are brought to light through
+the gospel.” We see beyond the chasm of death.
+We enjoy in the testimony of the Holy Spirit the foretaste
+of an eternal and glorious life for all the children
+of God—nay, the pledge that the reign of evil and
+death shall end throughout the universe.</p>
+
+<p>With this hope swelling their hearts, the apostle’s
+readers once more triumphantly join in the refrain: <span class="smcap">To
+the praise of His glory</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>
+Exod. xix. 3–6; Deut. iv. 20, 21; 1 Kings viii. 51, 53; Ps. lxxviii.
+71, etc. With the above comp. Gen. xv. 8; Numb. xviii. 20; Jos. xiii. 33;
+Ps. xvi. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
+Ch. iv. 30. The “seal” of 2 Tim. ii. 19 has both the first and
+third of these meanings.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a>
+Rom. iv. 11; 1 Cor. ix. 2; John iii. 33, vi. 27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a>
+Matt. xxvii. 66; Rev. v. 1, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a>
+Ch. ii. 11; comp. Rom. i. 28, 29; Gal. v, 5, 6; Phil. iii. 2, 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a>
+Comp. Rom. viii. 9–11; 2 Cor. v. 1–5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a>
+Acts i. 4, ii. 33, 39, xiii. 32, xxvi. 6; Rom. iv. 13–20; Gal. iii.
+14–29.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
+See Rom. x. 14–18; Gal. iii. 2, 5; Col. i. 6, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 13;
+2 Tim. i. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>
+1 Tim. ii. 1–7, iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
+1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. ii. 14; Heb. x. 39.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a>
+Comp. Chapter VIII.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a>
+For the former usage see, along with ver. 7 and ch. ii. 5, 8;
+Rom. iii, 24, x. 9; Titus iii. 5; 2 Tim. i. 9; Col. i. 14; Heb. ix. 15;
+for the latter, ch. iv. 30; Luke xxi. 28; Rom. v. 9, 10, viii. 23;
+Phil. ii. 12; 1 Thess. v. 8, 9; 2 Tim. ii. 10, iv. 18. It may be
+doubted whether St Paul ever uses these terms to denote present salvation
+or redemption without the final issue being also in his thoughts.
+Perhaps he would have called the redemption of ver. 7, in contrast
+with that of Rom. viii. 23, “the redemption of the spirit.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a>
+Hosea xiii. 14; Isa. xxv. 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a>
+The same incoherence occurs in Gal. iv. 5–7: “that <i>we</i> might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because <i>ye</i> are sons, God sent
+forth the Spirit of His Son into <i>our</i> hearts.”</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h4>FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
+which is among you, and which <i>ye shew</i> toward all the saints, cease not
+to give thanks for you, making mention <i>of you</i> in my prayers:</p>
+
+<p>“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give
+unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him;
+having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is
+the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance
+in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power toward us
+who believe, according to that working of the might of His strength,
+which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the dead,
+and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly <i>places</i>.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+i. 15–20.</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Because of this</i>: because you have heard the glad
+tidings, and believing it have been sealed with the
+Holy Spirit (vv. 13, 14). <i>I too</i>: I your apostle, with so
+great an interest in your salvation, in return give thanks
+for you. Thus St Paul, having extolled to the uttermost
+God’s counsel of redemption unfolded through the
+ages, claims to offer especial thanksgiving for the faith
+of those who belong to his Gentile province and are,
+directly or indirectly, the fruit of his own ministry
+(iii. 1–13).</p>
+
+<p>The intermediate clause of verse 15, describing the
+readers’ faith, is obscure. This form of expression
+occurs nowhere else in St Paul; but the construction
+is used by St Luke,—<i>e.g.</i>, in Acts xxi. 21:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> “All the
+Jews <i>which are among</i> the Gentiles,” where it implies
+diffusion over a wide area. This being a circular letter,
+addressed to a number of Churches scattered through
+the province of Asia, of whose faith in many cases St
+Paul knew only by report, we can understand how he
+writes: “having heard of the faith that is [spread]
+amongst you.”—<i>The love</i>, completing <i>faith</i> in the
+ordinary text (as in Col. i. 4), is relegated by the
+Revisers to the margin, upon evidence that seems
+conclusive.<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>
+The commentators, however, feel so strongly
+the harshness of this ellipsis that, in spite of the ancient
+witnesses, they read, almost with one
+consent,<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> “<i>your
+love</i> toward all the saints.” The variation of the former
+clause prepares us, however, for something peculiar in
+this. In verse 13 we found St Paul’s thought fixed
+on the decisive fact of his readers’ <i>faith</i>. On this he
+still dwells lingeringly. The grammatical link needed
+between “faith” and “unto all the saints” is supplied
+in the Revised Version by <i>ye show</i>, after the analogy of
+Philemon 5. Perhaps it might be supplied as grammatically,
+and in a sense better suiting the situation,
+by <i>is come</i>. Then the co-ordinate prepositional phrases
+qualifying “faith” have both alike a local reference,
+and we paraphrase the clause thus: “since I heard of
+the faith in the Lord Jesus which is spread amongst
+you, and whose report has reached all the saints.”</p>
+
+<p>We are reminded of the thanksgiving for the Roman
+Church,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+“that your faith is proclaimed throughout the
+whole world.”<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>
+The success of the gospel in Asia
+gave encouragement to believers in Christ everywhere.
+St Paul loves in this way to link Church to Church,
+to knit the bonds of faith between land and land: in
+this letter most of all; for it is his catholic epistle, the
+epistle of the Church œcumenical.</p>
+
+<p>In verse 16 we pass from praise to prayer. God is
+invoked by a double title peculiar to this passage, as
+“the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
+glory.” The former expression is in no way difficult.
+The apostle often speaks, as in verse 3, of “the God
+and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”: intending to
+qualify the Divine Fatherhood by another epithet, he
+writes for once simply of “<i>the God</i> of our Lord Jesus
+Christ.” This reminds us of the dependence of the
+Lord Jesus upon the eternal Father, and accentuates the
+Divine sovereignty so conspicuous in the foregoing Act
+of Praise. Christ’s constant attitude towards the Father
+was that of His cry of anguish on the cross, “My God,
+my God!” Yet He never speaks to men of <i>our</i> God.
+To us God is “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as
+He was to the men of old time “the God of Abraham
+and of Isaac and of Jacob.”</p>
+
+<p>The key to the designation <i>Father of glory</i> is in
+Romans vi. 4: “Christ was raised from the dead
+through <i>the glory of the Father</i>.” In the light of this
+august manifestation of God’s power to save His lost
+sons in Christ, we are called to see light (vv. 19, 20).
+Its glory shines already about God’s blessed name
+of Father, thrice glorified in the apostle’s praise (vv.
+3–14). The title is the counterpart of “the Father of
+compassions” in 2 Corinthians i. 3.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+And now, what has the apostle to ask of the Father of
+men under these glorious appellations? He asks “a
+spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
+full-knowledge<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>
+of Him,—the eyes of your heart enlightened, in order that
+you may know,” etc. This recalls the emphasis with
+which in verses 8 and 9 he set “wisdom and intelligence”
+amongst the first blessings bestowed by Divine
+grace upon the Church. It was the gift which the Asian
+Churches at the present juncture most needed; this is
+just now the burden of the apostle’s prayers for his
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>spirit of wisdom and revelation</i> desired will proceed
+from the Holy Spirit dwelling in these Gentile
+believers (ver. 13). But it must belong to their own
+spirit and direct their personal mental activity, the
+spirit of revelation becoming “the spirit of their mind”
+(iv. 23). When St Paul asks for “a spirit of wisdom
+and <i>revelation</i>,” he desires that his readers may have
+amongst themselves a fountain of inspiration and share
+in the prophetic gifts diffused through the
+Church.<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>
+And “the knowledge—the full, deep knowledge of
+God” is the sphere “in” which this richer inspiration
+and spiritual wisdom are exercised and nourished.
+“Philosophy, taking man for its centre, says, <i>Know
+thyself</i>: only the inspired word, which proceeds from
+God, has been able to say, <i>Know God</i>.”<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>The connexion of the first clause of verse 18 with the
+last of verse 17 is not very clear in St Paul’s Greek;
+there is a characteristic incoherence of structure. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+continuity of thought is unmistakable. He prays that
+through this inspired wisdom his readers may have
+their reason enlightened to see the grandeur and
+wealth of their religion. This is a vision for “the eyes
+of the heart.” It is disclosed to the eye behind the
+eye, to the heart which is the true discerner.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">“The seeing eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See best by the light in the heart that lies.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yonder is an ox grazing in the meadow on a bright
+summer’s day. Round him is spread the fairest landscape,—a
+broad stretch of herbage embroidered with
+flowers, the river gleaming in and out amongst the
+distant trees, the hills on both sides bounding the quiet
+valley, sunshine and shadows chasing each other as
+they leap from height to height. But of all this what
+sees the grazing ox? So much lush pasture and cool
+shade and clear water where his feet may plash when
+he has done feeding. In the same meadow there stands
+a poet musing, or a painter busy at his easel; and on
+the soul of that gifted man there descends, through
+eyes outwardly discerning no more than those of the
+beast at his side, a vision of wonder and beauty which
+will make all time richer. The eyes of the man’s heart
+are opened, and the spirit of wisdom and revelation is
+given him in the knowledge of God’s work in nature.</p>
+
+<p>Like differences exist amongst men in regard to the
+things of religion. “So foolish was I and ignorant,”
+says the Psalmist, speaking of his former dejection
+and unbelief, “I was as a beast before Thee!” There
+shall be two men sitting side by side in the same house
+of prayer, at the same gate of heaven. The one sees
+heaven opened; he hears the eternal song; his spirit
+is a temple filled with the glory of God. The other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+sees the place and the aspect of his fellow-worshippers;
+he hears the music of organ and choir, and the
+sound of some preacher’s voice. But as for anything
+besides, any influence from another world, it is no
+more to him at that moment than is the music in the
+poet’s soul or the colours on the painter’s canvas to
+the ox that eateth grass.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the strangeness and distance of Divine
+things alone that cause insensibility; their familiarity
+has the same effect. We know all this gospel so well.
+We have read it, listened to it, gone over its points
+of doctrine a hundred times. It is trite and easy to
+us as a worn glove. We discuss without a tremor
+of emotion truths the first whisper and dim promise of
+which once lifted men’s souls into ecstasy, or cast them
+down into depths of shame and bewilderment so that
+they forgot to eat their bread. The awe of things
+eternal, the mystery of our faith, the Spirit of glory and
+of God rest on us no longer. So there come to be, as
+one hears it said, <i>gospel-hardened</i> hearers—and gospel-hardened
+preachers! The eyes see—and see not; the
+ears hear—and hear not; the lips speak without feeling;
+<i>the heart is waxen fat</i>. This is the nemesis of grace
+abused. It is the result that follows by an inevitable
+psychological law, where outward contact with spiritual
+truth is not attended with an inward apprehension and
+response. How do we need to pray, in handling these
+dread themes, for a true sense and savour of Divine
+things,—that there may be given, and ever given
+afresh to us “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
+knowledge of God.”</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>Three things the apostle desires that his readers
+may see with the heart’s enlightened eyes: the <i>hope to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+which God calls them</i>, the <i>wealth that He possesses in
+them,</i> and the <i>power which He is prepared to exert upon
+them as believing men</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I. What, then, is our <i>hope</i> in God? What is the
+ideal of our faith? For what purpose has God called
+us into the fellowship of His Son? What is our
+religion going to do for us and to make of us?</p>
+
+<p>It will bring us safe home to heaven. It will deliver
+us from the present evil world, and preserve us unto
+Christ’s heavenly kingdom. God forbid that we should
+make light of “the hope laid up for us in the heavens,”
+or cast it aside. It is an anchor of the soul, both
+sure and steadfast. But is it <i>the</i> hope of our calling?
+Is this what St Paul here chiefly signifies? We are
+very sure that it is not. But it is the one thing which
+stands for the hope of the gospel in many minds. “We
+trust that our sins are forgiven: we hope that we shall
+get to heaven!” The experience of how many Christian
+believers begins and ends there. We make of
+our religion a harbour of refuge, a soothing anodyne,
+an escape from the anguish of guilt and the fear of
+death; not a life-vocation, a grand pursuit. The definition
+we have quoted may suffice for the beginning
+and the end; but we need something to fill out that
+formula, to give body and substance, meaning and
+movement to the life of faith.</p>
+
+<p>Let the apostle tell us what he regarded, for himself,
+as the end of religion, what was the object of his
+ambition and pursuit. “One thing I do,” he writes
+to the Philippians, opening to them all his heart,—“One
+thing I do. I press towards the mark for the
+prize of my high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” And
+what, pray, was that mark?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>—“that I may gain Christ
+and be found in Him!—that I may know Him, and
+the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of
+His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if by
+any means I may attain unto the final resurrection
+from the dead.” Yes, Paul hopes for heaven; but he
+hopes for something else first, and most. It is through
+Christ that he sees heaven. To know Christ, to
+love Christ, to serve Christ, to follow Christ, to be like
+Christ, to be with Christ for ever!—that is what St
+Paul lived for. Whatever aim he pursues or affection
+he cherishes, Christ lies in it and reaches beyond it.
+In doing or in suffering, in his intellect and his heart,
+in his thoughts for himself or for others, Christ is all
+things to him and in all. When life is thus filled with
+Christ, heaven becomes, as one may say, a mere circumstance,
+and death but an incident upon the way,—in
+the soul’s everlasting pursuit of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Behold, then, brethren, the hope of our calling.
+God could not call us to any destiny less or lower than
+this. It would have been unworthy of Him,—and may
+we not say, unworthy of ourselves, if we are in truth
+His sons? From eternity the Father of spirits has
+predestined you and me to be holy and without blemish
+before Him,—in a word, to be conformed to the image
+of His Son. Every other hope is dross compared to
+this.</p>
+
+<p>II. Another vision for the heart’s eyes, still more
+amazing than that we have seen: “what is,” St Paul
+writes, “the riches of the glory of God’s inheritance in
+the saints.”</p>
+
+<p>We saw, in considering the eleventh and fourteenth
+verses, how the apostle, in characteristic fashion, plays
+upon the double aspect of the <i>inheritance</i>, regarding it
+now as the heritage of the saints in God and again as
+His heritage in them. The former side of this relationship
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+was indicated in the “hope of the Divine calling,”—which
+we live and strive for as it is promised us
+by God; and the latter comes out, by way of contrast,
+in this second clause. Verse 18 repeats in another
+way the antithesis of verse 14 between our inheritance
+and God’s acquisition. We must understand that God
+sets great store by us His human children, and counts
+Himself rich in our affection and our service. How
+deeply it must affect us to know this, and to see the
+glory that in God’s eyes belongs to His possession
+in believing men.</p>
+
+<p>What presumption is all this, some one says. How
+preposterous to imagine that the Maker of the worlds
+interests Himself in atoms like ourselves,—in the
+ephemera of this insignificant planet! But moral
+magnitudes are not to be measured by a foot-rule.
+The mind which can traverse the immensities of space
+and hold them in its grasp, transcends the things it
+counts and weighs. As it is amongst earthly powers,
+so the law may hold betwixt sphere and sphere in the
+system of worlds, in the relations of bodies terrestrial
+and celestial to each other, that “God has chosen the
+weak things to put to shame the mighty, and the
+things that are not to bring to nought the things that
+are.” Through the Church He is “making known to
+the potentates in the heavenly places His manifold
+wisdom” (iii, 10). The lowly can sing evermore with
+Mary in the Magnificat: “He that is mighty hath
+magnified me.” If it be true that God spared not His
+Son for our salvation and has sealed us with the seal
+of His Spirit, if He chose us before the world’s foundation
+to be His saints, He must set upon those saints
+an infinite value. We may despise ourselves; but He
+thinks great things of us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+And is this, after all, so hard to understand? If the
+alternative were put to some owner of wide lands and
+houses full of treasure: “Now, you must lose that fine
+estate, or see your own son lost and ruined! You
+must part with a hundred thousand pounds—or with
+your best friend!” there could be no doubt in such a
+case what the choice would be of a man of sense and
+worth, one who sees with the eyes of the heart. Shall
+we think less nobly of God than of a right-minded
+man amongst ourselves?—Suppose, again, that one of
+our great cities were so full of wealth that the poorest
+were housed in palaces and fared sumptuously every
+day, though its citizens were profligates and thieves
+and cowards! What would its opulence and luxury
+be worth? Is it not evident that <i>character</i> is the only
+possession of intrinsic value, and that this alone gives
+worth and weight to other properties? “The saints
+that are in the earth and the excellent” are earth’s
+riches.</p>
+
+<p>So far as we can judge of His ways, the great God
+who made us cares comparatively little about the upholstery
+and machinery of the universe; but He cares
+immensely about men, about the character and destiny
+of men. There is nothing in all that physical science
+discloses for God to <i>love</i>, nothing kindred to Himself.
+“Hast thou considered my servant Job?” the Hebrew
+poet pictures Him saying before heaven and hell!—“Hast
+thou considered my servant Job?—a perfect
+man and upright: there is none like him in the earth.”
+How proud God is of a man like that, in a world like
+this. Who can tell the value that the Father of glory
+sets upon the tried fidelity of His humblest servant here
+on earth; the intensity with which He reciprocates the
+confidence of one timid, trembling human heart, or the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+simple reverence of one little child that lisps His
+awful name? “He <i>taketh pleasure</i> in them that fear
+Him, in those that hope in His mercy!” Beneath
+His feet all the worlds lie spread in their starry splendour,
+our sun with its train of planets no more than
+one glimmering spot of light amongst ten thousand.
+But amidst this magnificence, what is the sight that
+wins His tender fatherly regard? “To that man will
+I look, that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that
+trembles at my word.” Thus saith the High and Lofty
+One that inhabiteth eternity. The Creator rejoices in
+His works as at the beginning, the Lord of heaven
+and earth in His dominion. But these are not His
+“inheritance.” That is in the love of His children, in
+the character and number of His saints. <i>We</i> are to
+be the praise of His glory.</p>
+
+<p>Let us learn, then, to respect ourselves. Let us
+not take the world’s tinsel for wealth, and spend our
+time, like the man in Bunyan’s dream, scraping with
+“the muck-rake” while the crown of life shines above
+our head. The riches of a Church—nay, of any human
+community—lies not in its moneyed resources, but in
+the men and women that compose it, in their godlike
+attributes of mind and heart, in their knowledge, their
+zeal, their love to God and man, in the purity, the
+gentleness, the truthfulness and courage and fidelity
+that are found amongst them. These are the qualities
+which give distinction to human life, and are beautiful
+in the eyes of God and holy angels. “Man that is in
+honour and understandeth not, is like the beasts that
+perish.”</p>
+
+<p>III. One thing more we need to understand, or what
+we have seen already will be of little practical avail.
+We may see glorious visions, we may cherish high
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+aspirations; and they may prove to be but the dreams of
+vanity. Nay, it is conceivable that God Himself might
+have wealth invested in our nature, a treasure beyond
+price, shipwrecked and sunk irrecoverably through our
+sin. What means exist for realizing this inheritance?
+what power is there at work to recover these forfeited
+hopes, and that glory of God of which we have come
+so miserably short?</p>
+
+<p>The answer lies in the apostle’s words: “That ye
+may know what is the exceeding greatness of His
+power toward us that believe,”—a power measured by
+“the energy of the might of His
+strength<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> which He
+wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the
+dead and set Him at His right hand in the heavenly
+places.” This is the power that we have to count
+upon, the force that is yoked to the world’s salvation
+and is at the service of our faith. Its energy has
+turned the tide and reversed the stream of nature—in
+the person of Jesus Christ and in the course of human
+history. It has changed death to life. Above all, it
+certifies the forgiveness of sin and releases us from
+its liabilities; it transforms the law of sin and death
+into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>We preachers hear it said sometimes:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> “You live in
+a speculative world. Your doctrines are ideal and
+visionary,—altogether too high for men as they are and
+the world as we find it. Human nature and experience,
+the coarse realities of life are all against you.”</p>
+
+<p>What would our objectors have said at the grave-side
+of Jesus? “The beautiful dreamer, the sublime
+idealist! He was too good for a world such as ours.
+It was sure to end like this. His ideas of life were
+utterly impracticable.” So they would have moralized.
+“And the good prophet talked—strangest fanaticism of
+all—of rising again on the third day! One thing at
+least we know, that the dead are dead and gone from
+us. No, we shall never see Jesus or His like again.
+Purity cannot live in this infected air. The grave ends
+all hope for men.” But, despite human nature and
+human experience, He has risen again, He lives for
+ever! That is the apostle’s message and testimony to
+the world. For those “who believe” it, all things are
+possible. A life is within our reach that seemed far
+off as earth from heaven. <i>You</i> may become a perfect
+saint.</p>
+
+<p>From His open grave Christ breathed on His disciples,
+and through them on all mankind, the Holy
+Spirit. This is the efficient cause of Christianity,—the
+Spirit that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. The
+limit to its efficacy lies in the defects of our faith,
+in our failure to comprehend what God gave us in
+His Son. Is anything now too hard for the Lord?
+Shall anything be called impossible, in the line of God’s
+promise and man’s spiritual need? Can we put an
+arrest upon the working of this mysterious force, upon
+the Spirit of the new life, and say to it: Thus far shalt
+thou go, and no farther?</p>
+
+<p>Look at Jesus where He was—the poor, tortured,
+wounded body, slain by our sins, lying cold and still
+in Joseph’s grave: then lift up your eyes and see Him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+<i>where He is</i>,—enthroned in the worship and wonder of
+heaven! Measure by that distance, by the sweep and
+lift of that almighty Arm, the strength of the forces
+engaged to your salvation, the might of the powers
+at work through the ages for the redemption of
+humanity.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a>
+See Westcott and Hort’s <i>New Testament in Greek</i>, vol. ii., pp.
+124, 125.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a>
+Dr. Beet abides by the critical text. He solves the difficulty by
+giving <span class="greek" title="pistis">
+πίστις</span> a double sense: “the faith among you in the Lord Jesus,
+and the <i>faithfulness</i> towards all the saints.” See his Commentary on
+<i>Ephesians, etc.</i>, pp. 284–6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a>
+In 1 Thess. i. 7–9; 2 Thess. i. 4, the same thought enters into Paul’s
+thanksgiving; comp. 2 Cor. ix. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a>
+This is the emphatic <span class="greek" title="epignôsis">
+ἐπιγνῶσις</span>, so frequent in the later epistles. See
+Lightfoot’s <i>note</i> on Col. i. 9; or Cremer’s <i>Lexicon to N.T. Greek</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
+See ch. iii. 3–5, iv. 11; and comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 26–40, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a>
+Adolphe Monod: <i>Explication de l’épître de S. Paul aux Éphésiens</i>.
+A deeply spiritual and suggestive Commentary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a>
+In this amplitude of expression there is no idle heaping up of
+words. The four synonyms for <i>power</i> have each a distinct force in the
+sentence. <span class="greek" title="Dynamis">
+Δύναμις</span> is <i>power</i> in general, as that which is able to effect some
+purpose; <span class="greek" title="energeia">
+ἐνέργεια</span> is <i>energy</i>, power in effective action and operation;
+<span class="greek" title="kratos">
+κράτος</span> is <i>might</i>, <i>mastery</i>, sovereign power,—in the New Testament
+used chiefly of the power of God; <span class="greek" title="ischys">
+ἰσχύς</span> is <i>force</i>, <i>strength</i>, power resident
+in some person and belonging to him. This is the order in which the
+words follow each other. Compare vi. 10 in the Greek.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="section"><a name="THE_DOCTRINE" id="THE_DOCTRINE"></a>THE DOCTRINE.</h2>
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> i. 20–iii. 13.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+<span class="greek" title="Hypsêlôn sphodra gemei tôn noêmatôn kai hyperonkôn. Ha gar mêdamou
+schedon ephthenxato, tauta entautha phêsin.">
+Ὑψηλῶν σφόδρα γέμει τῶν νοημάτων καὶ ὑπερόγκων.
+Ἃ γὰρ μηδαμοῦ σχέδον ἐφθέγξατο, ταῦτα ἐνταῦθά φησιν.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ref">
+<span class="smcap">John Chrysostom</span>: <i>In epistolam ad Ephesios.</i><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h4>WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right
+hand in the heavenly <i>places</i>, far above all rule, and authority, and
+power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
+world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in
+subjection under His feet, and Him He gave—the head over all things—to
+the Church which is His body,—the fulness of Him that filleth all
+in all.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> i. 20–23.</p></div>
+
+<p>The division that we make at verse 20, marking
+off at this point the commencement of the Doctrine
+of the epistle, may appear somewhat forced. The great
+doxology of the first half of the chapter is intensely
+theological; and the prayer which follows it, like that
+of the letter to the Colossians, melts into doctrine
+imperceptibly. The apostle teaches upon his knees.
+The things he has to tell his readers, and the things
+he has asked on their behalf from God, are to a great
+extent the same. Still the writer’s attitude in the
+second chapter is manifestly that of teaching; and his
+doctrine there is so directly based upon the concluding
+sentences of his prayer, that it is necessary for logical
+arrangement to place these verses within the doctrinal
+section of the epistle.</p>
+
+<p>The resurrection of Christ made men sensible that a
+new force of life had come into the world, of incalculable
+potency. This power was in existence before. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+prelusive ways, it has wrought in the world from its
+foundation, and since the fall of man. By the incarnation
+of the Son of God it took possession of human
+flesh; by His sacrificial death it won its decisive
+triumph. But the virtue of these acts of Divine grace
+lay in their hiding of power, in the self-abnegation
+of the Son of God who emptied Himself and took a
+servant’s form, and became obedient unto death.</p>
+
+<p>With what a rebound did the “energy of the might of
+God’s strength” put forth itself in Him, when once this
+sacrifice was accomplished! Even His disciples who
+had seen Jesus still the tempest and feed the multitude
+from a handful of bread and call back the spirit to its
+mortal frame, had not dreamed of the might of Godhead
+latent in Him, until they beheld Him risen from
+the dead. He had promised this in words; but they
+understood His words only when they saw the fact,
+when He actually stood before them “alive after His
+passion.” The scene of Calvary—the cruel sufferings of
+their Master, His helpless ignominy and abandonment
+by God, the malignant triumph of his enemies—gave to
+this revelation an effect beyond measure astonishing
+and profound in its impression. From the stupor of
+grief and despair they were raised to a boundless hope,
+as Jesus rose from the death of the cross to glorious
+life and Godhead.</p>
+
+<p>Of the same nature was the effect produced by His
+manifestation to Paul himself. The Nazarene prophet
+known to Saul by report as an attractive teacher and
+worker of miracles, had made enormous pretensions,
+blasphemous if they were not true. He put Himself forward
+as the Messiah and the very Son of God! But
+when brought to the test, His power utterly failed. God
+disowned and forsook Him; and He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> “was crucified of
+weakness.” His followers declared, indeed, that He had
+returned from the grave. But who could believe them,
+a handful of Galilean enthusiasts, desperately clinging to
+the name of their disgraced leader! If He has risen, why
+does He not show Himself to others? Who can accept
+a crucified Messiah? The new faith is a madness,
+and an insult to our common Judaism! Such were
+Saul’s former thoughts of the Christ. But when his
+challenge was met and the Risen One confronted him
+in the way to Damascus, when from that Form of insufferable
+glory there came a voice saying, “I am Jesus,
+whom thou persecutest!” it was enough. Instantly
+the conviction penetrated his soul, “He liveth by the
+power of God.” Saul’s previous reasonings against
+the Messiahship of Jesus by the same rigorous logic
+were now turned into arguments for Him.</p>
+
+<p>It is “<i>the</i> Christ,” let us observe, in whom God
+“wrought raising Him from the dead”: the Christ of
+Jewish hope (ver. 12), the centre and sum of the Divine
+counsel for the world (ver. 10),<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a>
+the Christ whom in
+that moment never to be forgotten the humbled Saul
+recognized in the crucified Nazarene.</p>
+
+<p>The demonstration of the power of Christianity Paul
+had found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The
+power which raised Him from the dead is the working
+energy of our faith. Let us see what this mysterious
+power wrought in the Redeemer Himself; and then we
+will consider how it bears upon us. There are two
+steps indicated in Christ’s exaltation: He was raised
+<i>from the death of the cross to new life amongst men</i>; and
+again from the world of men He was raised <i>to the throne
+of God in heaven</i>. In the enthronement of Jesus Christ
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+at the Father’s right hand, verses 22, 23 further distinguish
+two separate acts: there was conferred on Him
+<i>a universal Lordship</i>; and He was made specifically
+<i>Head of the Church</i>, being given to her for her Lord
+and Life, He who contains the fulness of the Godhead.
+Such is the line of thought marked out for us.</p>
+
+<p>I. <i>God raised the Christ from the dead.</i></p>
+
+<p>This assertion is the corner-stone of St Paul’s life
+and doctrine, and of the existence of Christendom. Did
+the event really take place? There were Christians at
+Corinth who affirmed, “There is no resurrection of the
+dead.” And there are followers of Jesus now who with
+deep sadness confess, like the author of <i>Obermann once
+more</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Now He is dead! Far hence He lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the lorn Syrian town;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on His grave, with shining eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The Syrian stars look down.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If we are driven to this surrender, compelled to think
+that it was an apparition, a creation of their own
+passionate longing and heated fancy that the disciples
+saw and conversed with during those forty days, an
+apparition sprung from his fevered remorse that arrested
+Saul on the Damascus road—if we no longer believe
+in Jesus and the resurrection, it is in vain that we still
+call ourselves Christians. The foundation of the Christian
+creed is struck away from under our feet. Its spell
+is broken; its energy is gone.</p>
+
+<p>Individual men may and do continue to believe in
+Christ, with no faith in the supernatural, men who are
+sceptics in regard to His resurrection and miracles.
+They believe in Himself, they say, not in His legendary
+wonders; in His character and teaching, in His
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+beneficent influence—in the <i>spiritual</i> Christ, whom no
+physical marvel can exalt above His intrinsic greatness.
+And such trust in Him, where it is sincere, He accepts
+for all that it is worth, from the believer’s heart. But
+this is not the faith that saved Paul, and built the
+Church. It is not the faith which will save the world.
+It is the faith of compromise and transition, the faith
+of those whose conscience and heart cling to Christ
+while their reason gives its verdict against Him. Such
+belief may hold good for the individuals who profess
+it; but it must die with them. No skill of reasoning
+or grace of sentiment will for long conceal its inconsistency.
+The plain, blunt sense of mankind will decide
+again, as it has done already, that Jesus Christ was
+either a blasphemer, or He was the Son of the eternal
+God; either He rose from the dead in very truth, or
+His religion is a fable. Christianity is not bound up
+with the infallibility of the Church, whether in Pope or
+Councils, nor with the inerrancy of the letter of Scripture:
+it stands or falls with the reality of the facts
+of the gospel, with the risen life of Christ and His
+presence in the Spirit amongst men.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of Christ’s resurrection is one upon which
+modern science has nothing new to say. The law of
+death is not a recent discovery. Men were as well
+aware of its universality in the first century as they are
+in the nineteenth, and as little disposed as we are ourselves
+to believe in the return of the dead to bodily life.
+The stark reality of death makes us all sceptics.
+Nothing is clearer from the narratives than the utter
+surprise of the friends of Jesus at His reappearance,
+and their complete unpreparedness for the event.
+They were not eager, but “<i>slow</i> of heart to believe.”
+Their very love to the Master, as in the case of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+Thomas, made them fearful of self-deception. It is
+a shallow and an unjust criticism that dismisses the disciples
+as interested witnesses and predisposed to faith
+in the resurrection of their dead Master. Should we
+be thus credulous in the case of our best-beloved dead?
+The instinctive feeling that meets any thought of the
+kind, after the fact of death is once certain, is rather that
+of deprecation and aversion, such as Martha expressed
+when Jesus went to call her brother from his grave. In
+all the long record of human imposture and illusion, no
+resurrection story has ever found general credence
+outside of the Biblical revelation. No system of faith
+except our own has ever been built on the allegation
+that a dead man rose from the grave.</p>
+
+<p>Christ’s was not the only resurrection; but it is the
+only <i>final</i> resurrection. Lazarus of Bethany left his tomb
+at the word of Jesus, a living man; but he was still a
+mortal man, doomed to see corruption. He returned from
+the grave on this side, as he had entered it, “bound hand
+and foot with grave-clothes.” Not so with the Christ.
+He passed through the region of death and issued on the
+immortal side, escaped from the bondage of corruption.
+Therefore He is called the “firstfruits” and “the firstborn
+<i>out of</i> the dead.”<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a>
+Hence the alteration manifest
+in the risen form of Jesus. He was “changed,” as St
+Paul conceives those will be who await on earth their
+Lord’s return (1 Cor. xv. 51). The mortal in Him was
+swallowed up of life. The corpse that was laid in
+Joseph’s tomb was there no longer. From it another
+body has issued, recognized for the same person by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+look and voice and movement, but indescribably
+transfigured. Visible and tangible as the body of the
+Risen One was—“Handle me, and see,” He said—it
+was superior to material limitations; it belonged to a
+state whose laws transcend the range of our experience,
+in which the body is the pliant instrument of the
+animating spirit. From the Person of the risen
+Saviour the apostle formed his conception of the
+“spiritual body,” the “house from heaven” with
+which, as he teaches, each of the saints will be clothed—the
+wasted form that we lay down in the grave being
+transformed into the semblance of His “body of glory,
+according to the mighty working whereby He is able
+to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. iii. 20, 21).</p>
+
+<p>The resurrection of the Christ inaugurated a new
+order of things. It was like the appearance of the first
+living organism amidst dead matter, or of the first
+rational consciousness in the unconscious world. He
+“is,” says the apostle, the “beginning, first-begotten
+out of the dead” (Col. i. 18). With the harvest filling
+our granaries, we cease to wonder at the firstfruits;
+and in the new heavens and earth Christ’s resurrection
+will seem an entirely natural thing. Immortality will
+then be the normal condition of human existence.</p>
+
+<p>That resurrection, nevertheless, did homage to the
+fundamental law of science and of reason, that
+every occurrence, ordinary or extraordinary, shall
+have an adequate cause. The event was not more
+singular and unique than the nature of Him to whom
+it befell. Looking back over the Divine life and deeds
+of Jesus, St Peter said: “It was not possible that He
+should be holden of death.” How unfitting and repugnant
+to thought, that the common death of all men
+should come upon Jesus Christ! There was that in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+His Person, in its absolute purity and godlikeness,
+which repelled the touch of corruption. He was
+“marked out,” writes our apostle, “as Son of God,
+<i>according to His spirit of holiness</i>, by His resurrection
+from the dead” (Rom. i. 4). These two signs of Godhead
+agree in Jesus; and the second is no more superhuman
+than the first. For Him the supernatural was
+natural. There was a mighty working of the being of
+God latent in Him, which transcended and subdued to
+itself the laws of our physical frame, even more completely
+than they do the laws and conditions of the
+lower realms of nature.</p>
+
+<p>II. The power which raised Jesus our Lord from the
+dead could not leave Him in the world of sin and
+death. Lifting Him from hades to earth, by another
+step it exalted the risen Saviour above the clouds,
+and <i>seated Him at God’s right hand in the heavens</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The forty days were a halt by the way, a condescending
+pause in the operation of the almighty power that
+raised Him. “I ascend,” He said to the first that saw
+Him,—“I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my
+God and your God.” He must see His own in the
+world again; He must “show Himself alive after His
+passion by infallible proofs,” that their hearts may be
+comforted and knit together in the assurance of faith,
+that they may be prepared to receive His Spirit and to
+bear their witness to the world. Then He will ascend
+up where He was before, returning to the Father’s
+bosom. It was impossible that a spiritual body should
+tarry in a mortal dwelling; impossible that the familiar
+relations of discipleship should be resumed. No
+new follower can now ask of Him, “Rabbi, where
+dwellest Thou,” under what roof amid the homes of
+men? For He dwells with those that love Him always
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+and everywhere, like the Father (John xiv. 23). From
+this time Christ will not be known after the flesh, but as
+the “Lord of the Spirit” (2 Cor. iii. 18).</p>
+
+<p>“In the heavenlies” now abides the Risen One.
+This expression, so frequent in the epistle as to be
+characteristic of it,<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a>
+denotes not locality so much as
+condition and sphere. It speaks of the bright and
+deathless world of God and the angels, of which the
+sky has always been to men the symbol. Thither
+Christ ascended in the eyes of His apostles on the
+fortieth day from His rising. Once before His death
+its brightness for a moment had irradiated His form
+upon the Mount of Transfiguration. Clad in the like
+celestial splendour He showed Himself to His future
+apostle Paul, as to one born out of due time, to make
+him His minister and witness. Since then, of all the
+multitudes that have loved His appearing, no other has
+looked upon Him with bodily eyes. He dwells with
+the Father in light unapproachable.</p>
+
+<p>But rest and felicity are not enough for Him. Christ
+sits at the right hand of power, that He may <i>rule</i>. In
+those heavenly places, it seems, there are thrones
+higher and lower, names more or less eminent, but His
+stands clear above them all. In the realms of space,
+in the epochs of eternity there is none to rival our
+Lord Jesus, no power that does not owe Him tribute.
+God “hath put all things under His feet.” <i>The Christ</i>,
+who died on the cross, who rose in human form from
+the grave, is exalted to share the Father’s glory and
+dominion, is filled with God’s own fulness, and made
+without limitation or exception “Head over all things.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+In his enumeration of the angelic orders in verse 21,
+the apostle follows the phraseology current at the time,
+without giving any precise dogmatic sanction to it. The
+epistle to the Colossians furnishes a somewhat different
+list (ch. i. 16); and in 1 Corinthians xv. 24 we find
+the “principality, dominion, and power” without the “lordship.” As Lightfoot
+says,<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a>
+St Paul “brushes away all these speculations” about the ranks and titles of the
+angels, “without inquiring how much or how little truth
+there may be in them.... His language shows a spirit
+of impatience with this elaborate angelology.” There
+is, perhaps, a passing reproof conveyed by this sentence
+to the “worshipping of the angels” inculcated at the
+present time in Colossæ, to which other Asian Churches
+may have been drawn. “Paul’s faith saw the Risen
+and Rising One passing through and beyond and above
+successive ranks of angelic powers, until there was in
+heaven no grandeur which He had not left behind.
+Then, after naming heavenly powers known to him,
+he uses a universal phrase covering ‘not only’ those
+known by men living on earth ‘in the’ present ‘age, but
+also’ those names which will be needed and used to
+describe men and angels throughout the eternal future”
+(Beet).</p>
+
+<p>The apostle appropriates here two sentences of
+Messianic prophecy, from Psalms cx. and viii. The
+former was addressed to the Lord’s Anointed, the King-Priest
+enthroned in Zion: “Sit thou on my right hand,
+until I make thine enemies thy footstool!” The latter
+text describes man in his pristine glory, as God formed
+him after His likeness and set him in command over
+His creation. This saying St Paul applies, with an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+unbounded scope, to the God-man raised from the dead,
+Founder of the new creation: “Thou madest Him to
+have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast
+put all things under His feet.” To the former of these
+passages St Paul repeatedly alludes; indeed, since our
+Lord quoted it in this sense, it became the standing
+designation of His heavenly
+dignity.<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> The words of
+Psalm viii. are brought in evidence again in Hebrews
+ii. 5–10, and expounded from a somewhat different
+standpoint. As the writer of the other epistle shows,
+this coronation belongs to the human race, and it falls
+to the Son of man to win it. St Paul in quoting the
+same Psalm is not insensible of its human reference.
+It was a prophecy for Jesus and His brethren, for
+Christ and the Church. So it forms a natural transition
+from the thought of Christ’s dominion over the
+universe (ver. 21) to that of His union with the
+Church (ver. 22<i>b</i>).</p>
+
+<p>III. The second clause of verse 22 begins with an
+emphasis upon the <i>object</i> which the English Version
+fails to recognize: “and <i>Him</i> He gave”—the Christ
+exalted to universal authority—“<i>Him</i> God gave, Head
+over all things [as He is], to the Church which is His
+body,—the fulness of Him who fills all things in all.”</p>
+
+<p>At the topmost height of His glory, with thrones
+and princedoms beneath His feet, <i>Christ is given to the
+Church</i>! The Head over all things, the Lord of the
+created universe, He—and none less or lower—is the
+Head of redeemed humanity. For the Church “is His
+body” (this clause is interjected by way of explanation):
+she is the vessel of His Spirit, the organic instrument
+of His Divine-human life. As the spirit belongs to its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+body, by the like fitness the Christ in His surpassing
+glory is the possession of the community of believing
+men. The body claims its head, the wife her husband.
+No matter where Christ is, however high in heaven,
+He belongs to us. Though the Bride is lowly and of
+poor estate, He is hers! and she knows it, and holds
+fast His heart. She recks little of the people’s ignorance
+and scorn, if their Master is her affianced Lord, and she
+the best-beloved in His eyes.</p>
+
+<p>How rich is this gift of the Father to the Church
+in the Son of His love, the concluding words of the
+paragraph declare: “Him He gave ... to the Church ... [gave]
+the fulness of Him that fills all in all.” In
+the risen and enthroned Christ God bestowed on men
+a gift in which the Divine plenitude that fills creation is
+embraced. For this last clause, it is clear to us, does
+not qualify “the Church which is His body,” and
+expositors have needlessly taxed their ingenuity with
+the incongruous apposition of “body” and “fulness”;
+it belongs to the grand Object of the foregoing description,
+to “the Christ” whom God raised from the dead
+and invested with His own prerogatives. The two
+separate designations, “Head over all things” and
+“Fulness of the All-filler,” are parallel, and alike point
+back to <i>Him</i> who stands with a weight of gathered
+emphasis—heaped up from verse 19 onwards—at the
+front of this last sentence (ver. 22<i>b</i>). There has been
+nothing to prepare the reader to ascribe the august
+title of the <i>pleroma</i>, the Divine fulness, to the Church—enough
+for her, surely, if she is His body and He God’s
+gift to her—but there has been everything to prepare
+us to crown the Lord Jesus with this glory. To that
+which God had wrought in Him and bestowed on Him,
+as previously related, verse 23 adds something more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+and greater still; for it shows what God makes the
+Christ to be, not to the creatures, to the angels, to the Church, <i>but to God
+Himself</i>!<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p>
+
+<p>Our text is in strict agreement with the sayings
+about “the fulness” in Colossians i. 15–20 and ii. 9, 10;
+as well as with the later references of this epistle, in
+chapter iii. 19, iv. 13; and with John i. 16. This title
+belongs to Christ as God is in Him and communicates
+to Him all Divine powers. It was, in the apostle’s view,
+a new and distinct act by which the Father bestowed
+on the incarnate Son, raised by His power from the
+dead, the functions of Deity. Of this glory Christ had
+of His own accord “emptied Himself” in becoming
+man for our salvation (Phil. ii. 6, 7). Therefore when
+the sacrifice was effected and the time of humiliation
+past, it “was the Father’s pleasure that all the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him” (Col. i. 19). At no
+point did Christ exalt Himself, or arrogate the glory
+once renounced. He prayed, when the hour was come:
+“Now, Father, <i>glorify Thou me</i> with Thine own self,
+with the glory which I had with Thee before the world
+was.” It was for the Father to say, as He raised and
+enthroned Him: “Thou art my Son; I to-day have
+begotten Thee!” (Acts xiii. 33).</p>
+
+<p>Again there was poured into the empty, humbled
+and impoverished form of the Son of God the brightness
+of the Father’s glory and the infinitude of the Father’s
+authority and power. The majesty that He had foregone
+was restored to Him in undiminished measure.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+But how great a change meanwhile in Him who
+received it! This plenitude devolves not now on the
+eternal Son in His pure Godhead, but on the Christ,
+the Head and Redeemer of mankind. God who fills
+the universe with His presence, with His cherishing
+love and sustaining power, has conferred the fulness of
+all that He is upon our Christ. He has given Him, so
+replenished and perfected, to the body of His saints,
+that He may dwell and work in them for ever.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a>
+See the note upon this definite article on p. 47.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Prôtotokos ek tôn nekrôn">
+Πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν</span>, Col. i. 18: comp. Rom. vi. 13, x. 7, for
+the force of the preposition. Hence the peculiar
+<span class="greek" title="exanastasin tên ek nekrôn">
+ἐξανάστασιν τὴν ἐκ νεκρῶν</span> of Phil. iii. 10, 11,—the <i>out-and-out</i> resurrection, which will
+utterly remove us from the sphere of death.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a>
+Ver. 3, ch. ii. 6, iii. 10, vi. 12; nowhere else in the New Testament.
+Comp., however, 1 Cor. xv. 40, 48; Phil. ii. 10; Heb. viii. 5, ix. 23,
+xi. 16, xii. 22, where the adjective has the same kind of use.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a>
+<i>Note</i> on Col. i. 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a>
+Matt. xxii. 41–46, also in Mark and Luke; Acts ii. 34, 35; Rom.
+viii. 34; Col. iii. 1; Heb. i. 13; 1 Peter iii. 22, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a>
+The reader of the Old Testament, unless otherwise advertized, must
+inevitably have referred the words <i>who filleth all things in all</i> to the
+Supreme God. See Jer. xxiii. 24; Isai. vi. 1, 3; Hag. ii. 7; Ps. xxxiii.
+5, etc.; Exod. xxxi. 3. “That filleth all in all” is an attribute belonging
+to “the same God, that worketh all in all” (1 Cor. xii. 6). Comp. iv. 6.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h4>FROM DEATH TO LIFE.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“And you <i>did He quicken</i>, when ye were dead through your trespasses
+and sins, wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of
+this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit
+that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we also
+all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and
+of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:—but
+God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved
+us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us
+together with the Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us
+up together and made us to sit together in the heavenly <i>places</i> in Christ
+Jesus.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 1–6.</p></div>
+
+<p>We pass by a sudden transition, just as in
+Colossians i. 21, 22, from the thought of that
+which God wrought in Christ Himself to that which
+He works through Christ in believing men. So God
+raised, exalted, and glorified His Son Jesus Christ
+(i. 19–23)—<i>and you</i>! The finely woven threads of
+the apostle’s thought are frequently severed, and awkward
+chasms made in the highway of his argument by
+our chapter and verse divisions. The words inserted
+in our Version (<i>did He quicken</i>) are borrowed by anticipation
+from verse 5; but they are more than supplied
+already in the foregoing context.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> “The same almighty
+Hand that was laid upon the body of the dead Christ
+and lifted Him from Joseph’s grave to the highest seat
+in heaven, is now laid upon your soul. It has raised
+<i>you</i> from the grave and death of sin to share by faith
+His celestial life.”</p>
+
+<p>The apostle, in verse 3, pointedly includes amongst
+the “dead in trespasses and sins” himself and his
+Jewish fellow-believers as they “once lived,” when
+they obeyed the motions and “volitions of the flesh,”
+and so were “by birth” not children of favour, as Jews
+presumed, but “children of anger, even as the
+rest.”<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>This passage gives us a sublime view of the event
+of our conversion. It associates that change in us
+with the stupendous miracle which took place in our
+Redeemer. The one act is a continuation of the other.
+There is an acting over again in us of Christ’s crucifixion,
+resurrection and ascension, when we realize
+through faith that which was done for mankind in Him.
+At the same time, the redemption which is in Christ
+Jesus is no mere legacy, to be received or declined; it
+is not something done once for all, and left to be appropriated
+passively by our individual will. It is a “<i>power</i>
+of God unto salvation,” unceasingly operative and effective,
+that works “of faith and <i>unto faith</i>” that summons
+men to faith, challenging human confidence wherever
+its message travels and awakening the spiritual possibilities
+dormant in our nature.</p>
+
+<p>It is a supernatural force, then, which is at work
+upon us in the word of Christ. It is a resurrection-power,
+that turns death into life. And it is a power
+instinct with love. The love which went out towards
+the slain and buried Jesus when the Father stooped
+to raise Him from the dead, bends over us as we
+lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts itself with a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+might no less transcendent, that it may raise us from
+the dust of death to sit with Him in the heavenly
+places (vv. 4–6).</p>
+
+<p>Let us look at the two sides of the change effected
+in men by the gospel—at the death they leave, and
+the life into which they enter. Let us contemplate the
+task to which this unmatched power has set itself.</p>
+
+<p>I. <i>You that were dead</i>, the apostle says.</p>
+
+<p>Jesus Christ came into a dead world—He the one
+living man, alive in body, soul, and spirit—alive to God
+in the world. He was, like none besides, aware of
+God and of God’s love, breathing in His Spirit, “living
+not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded
+from His mouth.” “This,” He said, “is life eternal.”
+If His definition was correct, if it be life to know God,
+then the world into which Christ entered by His
+human birth, the world of heathendom and Judaism,
+was veritably dying or dead—“dead indeed unto God.”</p>
+
+<p>Its condition was visible to discerning eyes. It was
+a world rotting in its corruption, mouldering in its
+decay, and which to His pure sense had the moral
+aspect and odour of the charnel-house. We realize
+very imperfectly the distress, the inward nausea, the
+conflict of disgust and pity which the fact of being in
+such a world as this and belonging to it caused in the
+nature of Jesus Christ, in a soul that was in perfect
+sympathy with God. Never was there loneliness such
+as His, the solitude of life in a region peopled with the
+dead. The joy which Christ had in His little flock,
+in those whom the Father had given Him out of the
+world, was proportionately great. In them He found
+companionship, teachableness, signs of a heart awakening
+towards God—men to whom life was in some
+degree what it was to Him. He had come, as the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+prophet in his vision, into “the valley full of dry
+bones,” and He “prophesied to these slain, that they
+might live.” What a comfort to see, at His first words,
+a shaking in the valley,—to see some who stirred at
+His voice, who stood upon their feet and gathered
+round Him—not yet a great army, but a band of living
+men! In their breasts, inspired from His, was the life
+of the future. “I am come,” He said, “that they
+might have life.” It was the work of Jesus Christ to
+breathe His vital spirit into the corpse of humanity, to
+reanimate the world.</p>
+
+<p>When St Paul speaks of his readers in their heathen
+condition as “dead,” it is not a figure of speech. He
+does not mean that they were like dead men, that their
+state resembled death; “nor only that they were in
+peril of death; but he signifies a real and present
+death” (Calvin). They were, in the inmost sense and
+truth of things, <i>dead men</i>. We are twofold creatures,
+two-lived,—spirits cased in flesh. Our human nature
+is capable, therefore, of strange duplicities. It is
+possible for us to be alive and flourishing upon one
+side of our being, while we are paralyzed or lifeless
+upon the other. As our bodies live in commerce with
+the light and air, in the environment of house and food
+and daily exercise of the limbs and senses under the
+economy of material nature, so our spirits live by the
+breath of prayer, by faith and love towards God, by
+reverence and filial submission, by communion with
+things unseen and eternal. “With Thee,” says the
+Psalmist to his God, “is the fountain of life: in Thy
+light we see light.” We must daily resort to that
+fountain and drink of its pure stream, we must faithfully
+walk in that light, or there is no such life for us. The
+soul that wants a true faith in God, wants the proper
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+spring and principle of its being. It sees not the light,
+it bears not the voices, it breathes not the air of that
+higher world where its origin and its destiny lie.</p>
+
+<p>The man who walks the earth a sinner against God,
+becomes by the act and fact of his transgression a dead
+man. He has imbibed the fatal poison; it runs in his
+veins. The doom of sin lies on his unforgiven spirit.
+He carries death and judgement about with him. They
+lie down with him at night and wake with him in the
+morning; they take part in his transactions; they sit
+by his side in the feast of life. His works are “dead
+works”; his joys and hopes are all shadowed and
+tainted. Within his living frame he bears a coffined
+soul. With the machinery of life, with the faculties
+and possibilities of a spiritual being, the man lies
+crushed under the activity of the senses, wasted and
+decaying for want of the breath of the Spirit of God.
+In its coldness and powerlessness—too often in its
+visible corruption—his nature shows the symptoms of
+advancing death. It is dead as the tree is dead, cut
+off from its root; as the fire is dead, when the spark is
+gone out; dead as a man is dead, when the heart stops.</p>
+
+<p>As it is with the departed saints sleeping in Christ,—“put
+to death, indeed, in the flesh, but living in the
+spirit,”—so by a terrible inversion with the wicked in
+this life. They are put to death, indeed, in the spirit,
+while they live in the flesh. They may be and often
+are powerfully alive and active in their relations to the
+world of sense, while on the unseen and Godward side
+utterly paralyzed. Ask such a man about his business
+or family concerns; touch on affairs of politics or trade,—and
+you deal with a living mind, its powers and susceptibilities
+awake and alert. But let the conversation
+pass to other themes; sound him on questions of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+inner life; ask him what he thinks of Christ, how he
+stands towards God, how he fares in the spiritual
+conflict,—and you strike a note to which there is no
+response. You have taken him out of his element.
+He is a practical man, he tells you; he does not live
+in the clouds, or hunt after shadows; he believes in
+hard facts, in things that he can grasp and handle.
+“The natural man perceiveth not the things of the
+Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him.” They
+are pictures to the eye of the blind, heavenly music
+to the stone-deaf.</p>
+
+<p>And yet that hardened man of the world—starve and
+ignore his own spirit and shut up its mystic chambers
+as he will—cannot easily destroy himself. He has not
+extirpated his religious nature, nor crushed out, though
+he has suppressed, the craving for God in his breast.
+And when the callous surface of his life is broken
+through, under some unusual stress, some heavy loss
+or the shock of a great bereavement, one may catch a
+glimpse of the deeper world within of which the man
+himself was so little conscious. And what is to be seen
+there? Haunting memories of past sin, fears of a conscience
+fretted already by the undying worm, forms of
+weird and ghostly dread flitting amid the gloom and dust
+of death through that closed house of the spirit,—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“The bat and owl inhabit here:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The snake nests on the altar stone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sacred vessels moulder near:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The image of the God is gone!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In this condition of death the word of life comes to
+men. It is the state not of heathendom alone; but of
+those also, favoured with the light of revelation, who
+have not opened to it the eyes of the heart, of all who
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+are “doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts”—who
+are governed by their own impulses and ideas
+and serve no will above the world of
+sense.<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a>
+Without distinction of birth or formal religious standing, “all”
+who thus live and walk are dead while they live. Their
+<i>trespasses and sins</i> have killed them. From first to last
+Scripture testifies: “Your sins have separated between
+you and your God.” We find a hundred excuses for our
+irreligion: there is the cause. There is nothing in
+the universe to separate any one of us from the love and
+fellowship of his Maker but his own unforsaken sin.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, there are other hindrances to faith, intellectual
+difficulties of great weight and seriousness, that
+press upon many minds. For such men Christ has
+all possible sympathy and patience. There is a real,
+though hidden faith that “lives in honest doubt.”
+Some men have more faith than they suppose, while
+others certainly have much less. One has a name to
+live, and yet is dead; another, perchance, has a name
+to die, and yet is alive to God through Jesus Christ.
+There are endless complications, self-contradictions,
+and misunderstandings in human nature. “Many are
+first” in the ranks of religious profession and notoriety,
+“which shall be last, and the last first.” We make
+the largest allowance for this element of uncertainty
+in the line that bounds faith from unfaith; “The Lord
+knoweth them that are His.” No intellectual difficulty,
+no mere misunderstanding, will ultimately or for long
+separate between God and the soul that He has made.</p>
+
+<p>It is <i>antipathy</i> that separates. “They did not like
+to retain God in their knowledge”; that is Paul’s
+explanation of the ungodliness and vice of the ancient
+world. And it holds good still in countless instances.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+“Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion
+in order to encourage each other in sin, because they
+need encouragement. They know that they ought to
+be other than they are; but are glad to avail themselves
+of anything that looks like argument, to overcome their
+consciences withal” (Newman). The fashionable scepticism
+of the day too often conceals an inner revolt
+against the moral demands of the Christian life; it is
+the pretext of a carnal mind, which is “enmity against
+God, because it is not subject to His law.” Christ’s
+sentence upon unbelief as He knew it was this: “Light
+is come into the world; and men love darkness rather
+than light, because their deeds are evil.” So said the
+keenest and the kindest judge of men. If we are
+refusing Him our faith, let us be very sure that this
+condemnation does not touch ourselves. Is there no
+passion that bribes and suborns the intellect? no desire
+in the soul that dreads His entrance? no evil deeds
+that shelter themselves from His accusing light?</p>
+
+<p>When the apostle says of his Gentile readers that
+they “once walked in the way of the age, according to
+the course of this world,<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a>
+according to the prince of
+the power of the air,” the former part of his statement
+is clear enough. The age in which he lived was
+godless to the last degree; the stream of the world’s
+life ran in turbid course toward moral ruin. But the
+second clause is obscure. The “prince” (or “ruler”)
+who guides the world along its career of rebellion is
+manifestly Satan, the spirit of darkness and hate whom
+St Paul entitles “the god of this world” (2 Cor. iv. 4),
+and in whom Jesus recognized, under the name of “the
+prince of the world,” His great antagonist (John xiv. 30).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+But what has this spirit of evil to do with “the
+air”? The Jewish rabbis supposed that the terrestrial
+atmosphere was Satan’s abode, that it was peopled by
+demons flitting about invisibly in the encompassing
+element. But this is a notion foreign to Scripture—certainly
+not contained in chapter vi. 12—and, in its
+bare physical sense, without point or relevance to this
+passage. There follows in immediate apposition to
+“the domain of the air, <i>the spirit</i> that now works in
+the sons of disobedience.” Surely, <i>the air</i> here partakes
+(if it be only here) of the figurative significance
+of <i>spirit</i> (i.e. <i>breath</i>). St Paul refines the Jewish idea
+of evil spirits dwelling in the surrounding atmosphere
+into an ethical conception of <i>the atmosphere of the world</i>,
+as that from which the sons of disobedience draw their
+breath and receive the spirit that inspires them. Here
+lies, in truth, the dominion of Satan. In other words,
+Satan constituted the <i>Zeitgeist</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As Beck profoundly remarks upon this
+text:<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a>
+“The
+Power of the air is a fitting designation for the prevailing
+spirit of the times, whose influence spreads itself
+like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of the
+world. It manifests itself as a contagious nature-power;
+and a <i>spiritus rector</i> works within it, which takes possession
+of the world of men, alike in individuals and
+in society, and assumes the direction of it. The form
+of expression here employed is based on the conception
+of evil peculiar to Scripture. In Scripture, evil
+and the principle of evil are not conceived in a purely
+spiritual way; nor could this be the case in a world of
+fleshly constitution, where the spiritual has the sensuous
+for its basis and its vehicle. Spiritual evil exists as a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+power immanent in cosmical
+nature.”<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> Concerning
+great tracts of the earth, and large sections even of
+Christianized communities, we must still confess with
+St John: “The world lieth in the Evil One.” The air
+is impregnated with the infection of
+sin;<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> its germs
+float about us constantly, and wherever they find
+lodgement they set up their deadly fever. Sin is the
+malarial poison native to our soil; it is an epidemic
+that runs its course through the entire “age of this
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>Above this feverous, sin-laden atmosphere the apostle
+sees God’s anger brooding in threatening clouds. For
+our trespasses and sins are, after all, not forced on us
+by our environment. Those offences by which we
+provoke God, lie in our nature; they are no mere
+casual acts, they belong to our bias and disposition.
+Sin is a constitutional malady. There exists a bad
+element in our human nature, which corresponds but
+too truly to the course and current of the world around
+us. This the apostle acknowledges for himself and his
+law-honouring Jewish kindred: “We were by nature
+children of wrath, even as the rest.” So he wrote in
+the sad confession of Romans vii. 14–23: “I see a
+different law in my members, warring against the law
+of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law
+of sin which is in my members.”</p>
+
+<p>It is upon this “other law,” the contradiction of His
+own, upon the sinfulness beneath the sin, that God’s
+displeasure rests. Human law notes the overt act:
+“the Lord looketh upon the heart.” There is nothing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+more bitter and humiliating to a conscientious man than
+the conviction of this penetrating Divine insight, this
+detection to himself of his incurable sin and the hollowness
+of his righteousness before God. How it confounds
+the proud Pharisee to learn that he <i>is</i> as other men
+are,—and even as this publican!</p>
+
+<p>“The sons of disobedience” must needs be “children
+of wrath.” All sin, whether in nature or practice, is
+the object of God’s fixed displeasure. It cannot be
+matter of indifference to our Father in heaven that His
+human children are disobedient toward Himself. Children
+of His favour or anger we are each one of us, and
+at every moment. We “keep His commandments,
+and abide in His love”; or we do not keep them, and
+are excluded. It is His smile or frown that makes the
+sunshine or the gloom of our inner life. How strange
+that men should argue that God’s love forbids His
+wrath! It is, in truth, the cause of it. I could neither
+love nor fear a God who did not care enough about me
+to be angry with me when I sin. If my child does
+wilful wrong, if by some act of greed or passion he
+imperils his moral future and destroys the peace and
+well-being of the house, shall I not be grieved with
+him, with an anger proportioned to the love I bear
+him? How much more shall your heavenly Father—how
+much more justly and wisely and mercifully!</p>
+
+<p>St Paul feels no contradiction between the words of
+verse 3 and those that follow. The same God whose
+wrath burns against the sons of disobedience while
+they so continue, is “rich in mercy” and “loved us
+even when we were dead in our trespasses!” He
+pities evil men, and to save them spared not His Son
+from death; but Almighty God, the Father of glory,
+hates and loathes the evil that is in them, and has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+determined that if they will not let it go they shall
+perish with it.</p>
+
+<p>II. Such was the death in which Paul and his readers
+once had lain. But God in His “great love” has
+“<i>made them to live</i> along with the Christ.”</p>
+
+<p>How wonderful to have witnessed a resurrection: to
+see the pale cheek of the little maid, Jairus’ daughter,
+flush again with the tints of life, and the still frame
+begin to stir, and the eyes softly open—and she looks
+upon the face of Jesus! or to watch Lazarus, four days
+dead, coming out of his tomb, slowly, and as one dreaming,
+with hands and feet bound in the grave-clothes.
+Still more marvellous to have beheld the Prince of Life
+at the dawn of the third day issue from Joseph’s grave,
+bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen
+glory as one refreshed from slumber.</p>
+
+<p>But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for
+their marvel, that take place upon this earth day by
+day. When a human soul awakes from its trespasses
+and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart
+that was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God
+breathes into a spirit lying powerless and buried in the
+flesh, there is as true a rising from the dead as when
+Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was
+of this spiritual resurrection that He said: “The hour
+cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice
+of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.”
+Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily
+resurrection of mankind: “Marvel not at this; for the
+hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall
+hear His voice, and shall come forth!” The second
+wonder only matches and consummates the first (John
+v. 24–28).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+“This is life eternal, to know God the Father,”—the
+life, as the apostle elsewhere calls it, that is
+“life indeed.” It came to St Paul by a new creation,
+when, as he describes it, “God who said, Light
+shall shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to
+give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the
+face of Jesus Christ.” We are born again—the God-consciousness
+is born within us: an hour mysterious
+and decisive as that in which our personal consciousness
+first emerged and the soul knew itself. Now
+it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: “I have
+seen God face to face; and my life is preserved.” God
+and the soul have met in Christ—and are reconciled.</p>
+
+<p>The words the apostle uses—<i>gave us life</i>—<i>raised us
+up</i>—<i>seated us in the heavenly places</i>—embrace the whole
+range of salvation. “Those united with Christ are
+through grace delivered from their state of death, not
+only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation
+of Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed
+to them; but by the life-giving energy of God they are
+brought out of their condition of death into a new and
+actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of the
+Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration”
+(Beck). This comprehensive action of the Divine
+grace upon believing men takes place by a constant and
+constantly deepening union of the soul with Christ.
+This is well expressed by A. Monod: “The entire
+history of the Son of man is reproduced in the man
+who believes in Him, not by a simple moral analogy,
+but by a spiritual communication which is the true
+secret of our justification as well as of our sanctification,
+and indeed of our whole salvation.”</p>
+
+<p>There is no repetition in the three verbs employed,
+which are alike extended by the Greek preposition <i>with</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+(<i>syn</i>). The first sentence (raised us up <i>with the Christ</i>)
+virtually includes everything; it shows us one with Christ
+who lives evermore to God. The second sentence gathers
+into its scope all believers—the <i>you</i> of verse 1 and the
+<i>we</i> of verse 3: “He raised us up together, and together
+made us sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
+Nothing is more characteristic of our epistle than this
+turn of thought. To the conception of our <i>union with
+Christ</i> in His celestial life, it adds that of our <i>union
+with each other in Christ</i> as sharers in common of that
+life. Christ “reconciles us in one body unto God”
+(ver. 16). We sit not alone, but together in the
+heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this
+completes our salvation.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a>
+For the antithesis of “you” and “we,” comp. vv. 11–18, ch. i,
+12, 13; also Rom. iii. 19, 23 (<i>For there is no distinction</i>), Gal. ii. 15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Poiountes ta thelêmata tês sarkos kai tôn dianoiôn">
+Ποιοῦντες τὰ θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν</span> (ver. 3).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a>
+Perhaps this double rendering may bring out the force of <span class="greek" title="kata ton aiôna tou kosmou toutou">
+κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου</span>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a>
+In the posthumous <i>Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser</i>—a
+valuable exposition, marked by Beck’s theological acumen and lucidity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a>
+The <span class="greek" title="physei">
+φύσει</span> of verse 3 thus corresponds to the <span class="greek" title="exousia tou aeros">
+ἐξουσία τοῦ ἀέρος</span> of
+verse 2. “Sin entered into <i>the world</i>” (<span class="greek" title="kosmos">
+κόσμος</span>), Rom. v. 12, which
+signifies more than the nature of individual men.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a>
+I John iii. 8; comp. John viii. 41–44.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h4>SAVED FOR AN END.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of
+His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye
+been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, <i>it is</i> the gift of
+God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His workmanship,
+created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
+prepared that we should walk in them.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 7–10.</p></div>
+
+<p>The plan which God has formed for men in Christ
+is of great dimensions every way,—in its length
+no less than in its breadth and height. He “raised us
+up and seated us together [Gentiles with Jews] in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that <i>in the ages which
+are coming on</i> He might show the surpassing riches of
+His grace.” All the races of mankind and all future
+ages are embraced in the redeeming purpose, and are
+to share in its boundless wealth. Nor are the ages
+past excluded from its operations. God “afore prepared
+the good works in which” He summons us to
+walk. The highway of the new life has been in
+building since time began.</p>
+
+<p>Thus large and limitless is the range of “the purpose
+and grace given us in Christ Jesus before times
+eternal” (2 Tim. i. 9). But what strikes us most in
+this passage is the exuberance of the grace itself.
+Twice over the apostle exclaims, “By grace you are
+saved”: once in verse 5, in an eager, almost jealous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+parenthesis, where he hastens to assure the readers of
+their deliverance from the fearful condition just described
+(vv. 1–3, 5). Again, deliberately and with full
+definition he states the same fact, in verse 8: “For by
+grace you are saved, through faith; and this is not of
+yourselves, it is the gift of God. It does not come of
+works, to the end that none may boast.”</p>
+
+<p>These words place us on familiar ground. We recognize
+the Paul of Galatians and Romans, the dialect
+and accent of the apostle of salvation by faith. But
+scarcely anywhere do we find this wonder-working grace
+so affluently described. “God being rich in mercy, for
+the great love wherewith He loved us—the exceeding
+riches of His grace, shown in kindness toward us—the
+gift of God.” <i>Mercy</i>, <i>love</i>, <i>kindness</i>, <i>grace</i>, <i>gift</i>: what a
+constellation is here! These terms present the character
+of God in the gospel under the most delightful aspects,
+and in vivid contrast to the picture of our human state
+outlined in the beginning of the chapter.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mercy</i> denotes the Divine pitifulness towards feeble,
+suffering men, akin to those “compassions of God” to
+which the apostle repeatedly
+appeals.<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> It is a constant
+attribute of God in the Old Testament, and fills much
+the same place there that grace does in the New.
+“Of mercy and judgement” do the Psalmists sing—of
+mercy most. Out of the thunder and smoke of Sinai
+He declared His name: “Jehovah, a God full of compassion
+and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in
+mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands.” The
+dread of God’s justice, the sense of His dazzling holiness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+and almightiness threw His mercy into bright relief and
+gave to it an infinite preciousness. It is the contrast
+which brings in “mercy” here, in verse 4, by antithesis
+to “wrath” (ver. 3).<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>
+These qualities are complementary.
+The sternest and strongest natures are the most
+compassionate. God is “<i>rich</i> in mercy.” The wealth
+of His Being pours itself out in the exquisite tendernesses,
+the unwearied forbearance and forgivingness
+of His compassion towards men. The Judge of all the
+earth, whose hate of evil is the fire of hell, is gentler
+than the softest-hearted mother,—rich in mercy as He
+is grand and terrible in wrath.</p>
+
+<p>God’s mercy regards us as we are weak and miserable:
+His <i>love</i> regards us as we are, in spite of trespass
+and offence, His offspring,—objects of “much love”
+amid much displeasure, “even when we were dead
+through our trespasses.” What does the story of the
+prodigal son mean but this? and what Christ’s great
+word to Nicodemus (John iii. 16)?—<i>Grace</i> and <i>kindness</i>
+are love’s executive. Grace is love in administration,
+love counteracting sin and seeking our salvation.
+Christ is the embodiment of grace; the cross its
+supreme expression; the gospel its message to mankind;
+and Paul himself its trophy and
+witness.<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> The
+“overpassing riches” of grace is that affluence of
+wealth in which through Christ it “superabounded” to
+the apostolic age and has outdone the magnitude of sin
+(Rom. v. 20), in such measure that St Paul sees future
+ages gazing with wonder at its benefactions to himself
+and his fellow-believers. Shown “in <i>kindness</i> toward
+us,” he says,—in a condescending fatherliness, that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+forgets its anger and softens its old severity into comfort
+and endearment. God’s kindness is the touch
+of His hand, the accent of His voice, the cherishing
+breath of His Spirit. Finally, this generosity of the
+Divine grace, this infinite goodwill of God toward men,
+takes expression in <i>the gift</i>—the gift of Christ, the gift
+of righteousness (Rom. v. 15–18), the gift of eternal
+life (Rom. vi. 23); or—regarded, as it is here, in
+the light of experience and possession—<i>the gift of
+salvation</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The opposition of <i>gift</i> and <i>debt</i>, of gratuitous salvation
+through faith to salvation earned by works of law,
+belongs to the marrow of St Paul’s divinity. The teaching
+of the great evangelical epistles is condensed into
+the brief words of verses 8 and 9. The reason here
+assigned for God’s dealing with men by way of gift and
+making them absolutely debtors—“lest any one should
+boast”—was forced upon the apostle’s mind by the
+stubborn pride of legalism; it is stated in terms identical
+with those of the earlier letters. Men will glory in
+their virtues before God; they flaunt the rags of their
+own righteousness, if any such pretext, even the
+slightest, remains to them. We sinners are a proud
+race, and our pride is oftentimes the worst of our sins.
+Therefore God humbles us by His compassion. He
+makes to us a free gift of His righteousness, and
+excludes every contribution from our store of merit;
+for if we could supply anything, we should inevitably
+boast as though all were our own. We must be content
+to receive mercy, love, grace, kindness—everything,
+without deserving the least fraction of the immense
+sum. How it strips our vanity; how it crushes us to
+the dust—“the weight of pardoning love!”</p>
+
+<p>Concerning the office of <i>faith</i> in salvation we have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+already spoken in Chapter IV.<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a>
+It is on the objective fact rather than the subjective means of salvation that
+the apostle lays stress in this passage. His readers
+do not seem to have realized sufficiently what God has
+given them and the greatness of the salvation already
+accomplished. They measured inadequately the power
+which had touched and changed their lives (i. 19).
+St Paul has shown them the depth to which they were
+formerly sunk, and the height to which they have been
+raised (vv. 1–6). He can therefore assure them, and he
+does it with redoubled emphasis: “You <i>are saved</i>; By
+grace you are saved men!”<a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a>
+Not, “You will be saved”; nor, “You were saved”; nor, “You are in course of
+salvation,”—for salvation has many moods and tenses,—but,
+in the perfect passive tense, he asserts the glorious
+accomplished <i>fact</i>. With the same reassuring emphasis
+in chapter i. 7 he declared, “We have redemption in
+His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”</p>
+
+<p>Here is St Paul’s doctrine of Assurance. It was
+laid down by Christ Himself when He said: “He that
+believeth on the Son of God hath eternal life.” This
+sublime confidence is the ruling note of St John’s
+great epistle: “We know that we are in Him.... We
+know that we have passed out of death into life....
+This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our
+faith.” It was this confidence of present salvation
+that made the Church irresistible. With its foundation
+secure, the house of life can be steadily and calmly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+built up. Under the shelter of the full assurance of
+faith, in the sunshine of God’s love felt in the heart,
+all spiritual virtues bloom and flourish. But with a
+faith hesitant, distracted, that is sure of no doctrine in the
+creed and cannot plant a firm foot anywhere, nothing
+prospers in the soul or in the Church. Oh for the clear
+accent, the ringing, joyous note of apostolic assurance!
+We want a faith not loud, but deep; a faith not born of
+sentiment and human sympathy, but that comes from
+the vision of the living God; a faith whose rock and
+corner-stone is neither the Church nor the Bible, but
+Christ Jesus Himself.</p>
+
+<p>Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul
+and John, to “assure our hearts” before God. With
+death confronting us, with the hideous evil of the world
+oppressing us; when the air is laden with the contagion
+of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast
+of doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly
+through the haze of an all-encompassing scepticism and
+a hundred voices say, in mockery or grief, Where is
+now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our
+faith refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless,—then is
+the time for the Christian assurance to recover its first
+energy and to rise again in radiant strength from the
+heart of the Church, from the depths of its mystic life
+where it is hid with Christ in God.</p>
+
+<p><i>You are saved!</i> cries the apostle; not forgetting that
+his readers have their battle to fight, and many hazards
+yet to run (vi. 10–13). But they hold the earnest of
+victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit they sit
+with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death,
+temptation, persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly
+history, by these God means to perfect that which He
+has begun in His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+saints—“if you continue in the faith,
+grounded and firm” (Col. i. 23). That condition is
+expressed, or implied, in all assurance of final salvation.
+It is a condition which excites to watchfulness, but can
+never cause misgiving to a loyal heart. God is for us!
+He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus
+who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God,
+and there intercedes for us. <i>Quis
+separabit?</i><a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>This is the epistle of the Church and of humanity.
+It dwells on the grand, objective aspects of the truth,
+rather than upon its subjective experiences. It does
+not invite us to rest in the comforts and delights of
+grace, but to lift up our eyes and see whither Christ has
+translated us and what is the kingdom that we possess
+in Him. God “quickened us together with the Christ”:
+He “raised us up, He made us to sit <i>in the heavenly
+places in Christ Jesus</i>.” Henceforth “our citizenship
+is in heaven” (Phil. iii. 20).</p>
+
+<p>This is the inspiring thought of the third group of
+St Paul’s epistles; we heard it in the first note of his
+song of praise (i. 3). It supplies the principle from
+which St Paul unfolds the beautiful conception of the
+Christian life contained in the third chapter of the
+companion letter to the Colossians: “Your life is hid
+with the Christ in God”; therefore “seek the things
+that are above, where He is.” We live in two worlds
+at once. Heaven lies about us in this new mystic
+childhood of our spirit. There our names are written;
+thither our thoughts and hopes resort. Our treasure is
+there; our heart we have lodged there, with Christ in
+God. <i>He</i> is there, the Lord of the Spirit, from whom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+we draw each moment the life that flows into His
+members. In the greatness of His love conquering
+sin and death, time and space, He is with us to the
+world’s end. May we not say that we, too, are with
+Him and shall be with Him always? So we reckon
+in the logic of our faith and at the height of our high
+calling, though the soul creeps and drudges upon the
+lower levels.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“With Him we are gone up on high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Since He is ours and we are His;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Him we reign above the sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We walk upon our subject seas!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In his lofty flights of thought the apostle always has
+some practical and homely end in view. The earthly
+and heavenly, the mystical and the matter-of-fact were
+not distant and repugnant, but interfused in his mind.
+From the celestial heights of the life hidden with Christ
+in God (ver. 6), he brings us down in a moment and
+without any sense of discrepancy to the prosaic level
+of “good works” (ver. 10). The love which viewed us
+from eternity, the counsels of Him who works all things
+in all, enter into the humblest daily duties.</p>
+
+<p>Grace, moreover, sets us great tasks. There should
+be something to show in deed and life for the wealth
+of kindness spent upon us, some visible and commensurate
+result of the vast preparations of the gospel plan.
+Of this result the apostle saw the earnest in the work
+of faith wrought by his Gentile Churches.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul was the last man in the world to undervalue
+human effort, or disparage good work of any sort. It
+is, in his view, the end aimed at in all that God bestows
+on His people, in all that He Himself works in them.
+Only let this end be sought in God’s way and order.
+Man’s doings must be the fruit and not the root of his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+salvation. “Not <i>of</i> works,” but “<i>for</i> good works”
+were believers chosen. “This little word <i>for</i>” says
+Monod, “reconciles St Paul and St James better than
+all the commentators.” God has not raised us up to
+sit idly in the heavenly places lost in contemplation,
+or to be the useless pensioners of grace. He sends us
+forth to “walk in the works, prepared for us,”—equipped
+to fight Christ’s battles, to till His fields, to labour in
+the service of building His Church.</p>
+
+<p>The “workmanship” of our Version suggests an idea
+foreign to the passage. The apostle is not thinking of
+the Divine art or skill displayed in man’s creation; but
+of the simple fact that “God made man” (Gen. i. 27).
+“We are His <i>making</i>, created in Christ Jesus.” The
+“preparation” to which he refers in verse 10 leads us
+back to that primeval election of God’s sons in Christ
+for which we gave thanks at the outset (i. 3). There
+are not two creations, the second formed upon the ruin
+and failure of the first; but one grand design throughout.
+Redemption is creation re-affirmed. The new
+creation, as we call it, restores and consummates the
+old. When God raised His Son from the dead, He
+vindicated His original purpose in raising man from
+the dust a living soul. He has not forsaken the work
+of His hands nor forgone His original plan, which
+took account of all our wilfulness and sin. God in
+making us meant us to do good work in His world.
+From the world’s foundation down to the present
+moment He who worketh all in all has been working
+for this end—most of all in the revelation of His grace
+in Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Far backward in the past, amid the secrets of
+creation, lay the beginnings of God’s grace to mankind.
+Far onward in the future shines its lustre revealed in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+the first Christian age. The apostle has gained some
+insight into those “times and seasons” which formerly
+were veiled from him. In his earliest letters, to the
+Thessalonians and Corinthians, St Paul echoes our
+Lord’s warning, never out of season, that we should
+“watch, for the hour is at hand.” <i>Maran atha</i> is his
+watchword: “Our Lord cometh; the time is short.”
+Nor does that note cease to the end. But when in
+this epistle he writes of “the ages that are coming on,”
+and of “all the generations of the age of the ages”
+(iii. 21), there is manifestly some considerable period of
+duration before his eyes. He sees something of the
+extent of the world’s coming history, something of the
+magnitude of the field that the future will afford for the
+unfolding of God’s designs.</p>
+
+<p>In those approaching æons he foresees that the
+apostolic dispensation will play a conspicuous part.
+Unborn ages will be blessed in the blessing now
+descending upon Jews and Gentiles through Christ
+Jesus. So marvellous is the display of God’s kindness
+toward them, that all the future will pay homage to it.
+The overflowing wealth of blessing poured upon St
+Paul and the first Churches had an end in view that
+reached beyond themselves, an end worthy of the Giver,
+worthy of the magnitude of His plans and of His
+measureless love. If all this was theirs—this fulness of
+God exceeding the utmost they had asked or thought—it
+is because God means to convey it through them to
+multitudes besides! There is no limit to the grace that
+God will impart to men and to Churches who thus
+reason, who receive His gifts in this generous and
+communicative spirit. The apostolic Church chants
+with Mary at the Annunciation:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> “For, behold, from
+henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!”</p>
+
+<p>Never was any prediction better fulfilled. This spot
+of history shines with a light before which every other
+shows pale and commonplace. The companions of
+Jesus, the humble fraternities of the first Christian
+century have been the object of reverent interest and
+intent research on the part of all centuries since.
+Their history is scrutinized from all sides with a zeal
+and industry which the most pressing subjects of the
+day hardly command. For we feel that these men
+hold the secret of the world’s life. The key to the
+treasures we all long for is in their hands. As time
+goes on and the stress of life deepens, men will turn
+with yet fonder hope to the age of Jesus Christ. “And
+many nations will say: Come, and let us go up to the
+mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of
+Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways; and we
+will walk in His paths.”</p>
+
+<p>The stream will remember its fountain; the children
+of God will gather to their childhood’s home. The
+world will hear the gospel in the recovered accents of
+its prophets and apostles.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a>
+Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The
+<span class="greek" title="oiktirmoi tou Theou, splanchna kai oiktirmoi">
+οἰκτιρμοὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ, σπλάγχνα καὶ οἰκτιρμοί</span>, rendered in our Version
+“mercies of God,” denotes something even more affecting,—God’s sense
+of the woefulness of human life,—“the pitying tenderness Divine.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a>
+Comp. Rom. ix. 22, 23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a>
+On <i>grace</i>, comp. <i>The Epistle to the Galatians</i> (Expositor’s Bible),
+Chapter X.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a>
+Compare also, on Faith, <i>The Epistle to the Galatians</i> (Expositor’s
+Bible), Chapters X.–XII. and XV.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Este sesôsmenoi">
+Ἐστὲ σεσωσμένοι</span>: for the peculiar emphasis of this form of the
+verb, implying a settled fact, an assured state, compare ver. 12,
+<span class="greek" title="ête ... apêllotriômenoi">
+ἢτε ... ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι</span>; Col. ii. 10; Gal. ii. 11, iv. 3; 2 Cor.
+iv. 3, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a>
+Rom. viii. 31–39; comp. vv. 9–17; also 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2
+Thess. iii. 3–5; 1 Cor. i. 4–9; Phil. i. 6, iii. 13, 14; 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 18,
+for St Paul’s doctrine of Assurance.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE FAR AND NEAR.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh,
+who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in
+the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from
+Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
+from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
+the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off are
+made nigh in the blood of Christ.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 11–13.</p></div>
+
+<p>The apostle’s <i>Wherefore</i> sums up for his readers
+the record of their salvation rehearsed in the
+previous verses. “You were buried in your sins,
+sunk in their corruption, ruined by their guilt, living
+under God’s displeasure and in the power of Satan.
+All this has passed away. The almighty Hand has
+raised you with Christ into a heavenly life. God has
+become your Father; His love is in your heart; by the
+strength of His grace you are enabled to walk in the
+way marked out for you from your creation. <i>Wherefore
+remember</i>: think of what you were, and of what
+you are!”</p>
+
+<p>To such recollections we do well to summon ourselves.
+The children of grace love to recall, and on fit occasions
+recount for God’s glory and the help of their fellows,
+the way in which God led them to the knowledge of
+Himself. In some the great change came suddenly.
+He “made speed” to save us. It was a veritable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+resurrection, as signal and unlooked for as the rising
+of Christ from the dead. By a swift passage we were
+“translated from the power of darkness into the
+kingdom of the Son of His love.” Once living without
+God in the world, we were arrested by a strange providence—through
+some overthrow of fortune or shock
+of bereavement, or by a trivial incident touching unaccountably
+a hidden spring in the mind—and the whole
+aspect of life was altered in a moment. We saw
+revealed, as by a lightning flash at night, the emptiness
+of our own life, the misery of our nature, the folly of
+our unbelief, the awful presence of <i>God</i>—God whom
+we had forgotten and despised! We sought, and
+found His mercy. From that hour the old things
+passed away: we lived who had been dead,—made
+alive to God through Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>This instant conversion, such as Paul experienced,
+this sharp and abrupt transition from darkness to light,
+was common in the first generation of Christians, as it
+is wherever religious awakening takes place in a society
+that has been largely dead to God. The advent of Christianity
+in the Gentile world was much after this fashion,—like
+a tropical sunrise, in which day leaps on the earth
+full-born. This experience gives a stamp of peculiar
+decision to the convictions and character of its subjects.
+The change is patent and palpable; no observer can
+fail to mark it. And it burns itself into the memory
+with an ineffaceable impression. The violent throes
+of such a spiritual birth cannot be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>But if our entrance into the life of God was gradual,
+like the dawn of our own milder clime, where the light
+steals by imperceptible advances upon the darkness—if
+the glory of the Lord has thus risen upon us, our certainty
+of its presence may be no less complete, and our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+remembrance of its coming no less grateful and joyous.
+One leaps into the new life by a single eager bound;
+another reaches it by measured, thoughtful steps: but
+both are <i>there</i>, standing side by side on the common
+ground of salvation in Christ. Both walk in the same
+light of the Lord, that floods the sky from east to west.
+The recollections which the latter has to cherish of the
+leading of God’s kindly light—how He touched our
+childish thought, and checked gently our boyish waywardness,
+and mingled reproof with the first stirrings
+of passion and self-will, and wakened the alarms of
+conscience and the fears of another world, and the sense
+of the beauty of holiness and the shame of sin,—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Shaping to truth the froward will<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Along His narrow way,”—<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>such remembrances are a priceless treasure, that grows
+richer as we grow wiser. It awakens a joy not so
+thrilling nor so prompt in utterance as that of the soul
+snatched like a brand from the burning, but which
+passes understanding. Blessed are the children of
+the kingdom, those who have never roamed far from
+the fold of Christ and the commonwealth of Israel,
+whom the cross has beckoned onwards from their
+childhood. But however it was—by whatever means,
+at whatever time it pleased God to call you from darkness
+to His marvellous light, <i>remember</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>But we must return to Paul and his Gentile readers.
+The old death in life was to them a sombre reality,
+keenly and painfully remembered. In that condition
+of moral night out of which Christ had rescued them,
+Gentile society around them still remained. Let us
+observe its features as they are delineated in contrast
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+with the privileges long bestowed on Israel. The
+Gentile world was <i>Christless</i>, <i>hopeless</i>, <i>godless</i>. It had
+no share in the Divine polity framed for the chosen
+people; the outward mark of its uncircumcision was
+a true symbol of its irreligion and debasement.</p>
+
+<p>Israel had a <i>God</i>. Besides, there were only “those
+who are called gods.” This was the first and cardinal
+distinction. Not their race, not their secular calling,
+their political or intellectual gifts, but their faith formed
+the Jews into a nation. They were “the people of
+God,” as no other people has been—of <i>the</i> God, for
+theirs was “the true and living God”—Jehovah, the
+I AM, the One, the Alone. The monotheistic belief
+was, no doubt, wavering and imperfect in the mass of
+the nation in early times; but it was held by the ruling
+minds amongst them, by the men who have shaped the
+destiny of Israel and created its Bible, with increasing
+clearness and intensity of passion. “All the gods of
+the nations are idols—vapours, phantoms, nothings!—but
+Jehovah made the heavens.” It was the ancestral
+faith that glowed in the breast of Paul at Athens,
+amidst the fairest shrines of Greece, when he “saw
+the city wholly given to idolatry”—man’s highest art
+and the toil and piety of ages lavished on things that
+were no gods; and in the midst of the splendour of a
+hollow and decaying Paganism he read the confession
+that God was “unknown.”</p>
+
+<p>Ephesus had her famous goddess, worshipped in the
+most sumptuous pile of architecture that the ancient
+world contained. Behold the proud city, “temple-keeper
+of the great goddess Artemis,” filled with
+wrath! Infuriate Demos flashes fire from his thousand
+eyes, and his brazen throat roars hoarse vengeance
+against the insulters of “her magnificence, whom all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+Asia and the world worshippeth”! Without God—<i>atheists</i>,
+in fact, the apostle calls this devout Asian
+population; and Artemis of Ephesus, and Athené, and
+Cybelé of Smyrna, and Zeus and Asclepius of Pergamum,
+though all the world worship them, are but “creatures
+of art and man’s device.”</p>
+
+<p>The Pagans retorted this reproach. “Away with
+<i>the atheists</i>!” they cried, when Christians were led to
+execution. Ninety years after this time the martyr
+Polycarp was brought into the arena before the magistrates
+of Asia and the populace gathered in Smyrna
+at the great Ionic festival. The Proconsul, wishing to
+spare the venerable man, said to him: “Swear by the
+Fortune of Cæsar; and say, Away with the atheists!”
+But Polycarp, as the story continues, “with a grave
+look gazing on the crowd of lawless Gentiles in the
+stadium and shaking his hand against them, then
+groaning and looking up to heaven, said, <i>Away with
+the atheists</i>!” Pagan and Christian were each godless
+in the eyes of the other. If visible temples and images,
+and the local worship of each tribe or city made a god,
+then Jews and Christians had none: if God was a
+Spirit—One, Holy, Almighty, Omnipresent—then polytheists
+were in truth atheists; their many gods, being
+many, were no gods; they were idols,—<i>eidola</i>, illusive
+shows of the Godhead.</p>
+
+<p>The more thoughtful and pious among the heathen
+felt this already. When the apostle denounced the
+idols and their pompous worship as “these vanities,”
+his words found an echo in the Gentile conscience.
+The classical Paganism held the multitude by the force
+of habit and local pride, and by its sensuous and artistic
+charms; but such religious power as it once had was
+gone. In all directions it was undermined by mystic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+Oriental and Egyptian rites, to which men resorted in
+search of a religion and sick of the old fables, ever growing
+more debased, that had pleased their fathers. The
+majesty of Rome in the person of the Emperor, the
+one visible supreme power, was seized upon by the
+popular instinct, even more than it was imposed by
+state policy, and made to fill the vacuum; and temples
+to Augustus had already risen in Asia, side by side
+with those of the ancient gods.</p>
+
+<p>In this despair of their ancestral religions many
+piously disposed Gentiles turned to Judaism for
+spiritual help; and the synagogue was surrounded in
+the Greek cities by a circle of earnest proselytes.
+From their ranks St Paul drew a large proportion of
+his hearers and converts. When he writes, “Remember
+that you were at that time <i>without God</i>,” he is
+within the recollection of his readers; and they will
+bear him out in testifying that their heathen creed was
+dead and empty to the soul. Nor did philosophy
+construct a creed more satisfying. Its gods were the
+Epicurean deities who dwell aloof and careless of men;
+or the supreme Reason and Necessity of the Stoics,
+the <i>anima mundi</i>, of which human souls are fleeting
+and fragmentary images. “Deism finds God only
+in heaven; Pantheism, only on earth; Christianity
+alone finds Him both in heaven and on earth” (Harless).
+The Word made flesh reveals <i>God in the world</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When the apostle says “without God <i>in the world</i>,”
+this qualification is both reproachful and sorrowful. To
+be without God in the world that He has made, where
+His “eternal power and Godhead” have been visible
+from creation, argues a darkened and perverted
+heart.<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+To be without God in the world is to be in the wilderness,
+without a guide; on a stormy ocean, without
+harbour or pilot; in sickness of spirit, without medicine
+or physician; to be hungry without bread, and weary
+without rest, and dying with no light of life. It is to
+be an orphaned child, wandering in an empty, ruined
+house.</p>
+
+<p>In these words we have an echo of Paul’s preaching
+to the Gentiles, and an indication of the line of his
+appeals to the conscience of the enlightened pagans
+of his time. The despair of the age was darker than
+the human mind has known before or since. Matthew
+Arnold has painted it all in one verse of those lines,
+entitled <i>Obermann once more</i>, in which he so perfectly
+expresses the better spirit of modern scepticism.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“On that hard Pagan world disgust<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And secret loathing fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep weariness and sated lust<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made human life a hell.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The saying by which St Paul reproved the Corinthians,
+“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
+die,” is the common sentiment of pagan epitaphs of
+the time. Here is an extant specimen of the kind:
+“Let us drink and be merry; for we shall have no
+more kissing and dancing in the kingdom of Proserpine.
+Soon shall we fall asleep, to wake no more.” Such
+were the thoughts with which men came back from
+the grave-side. It is needless to say how depraving
+was the effect of this hopelessness. At Athens, in
+the more religious times of Socrates, it was even considered
+a decent and kindly thing to allow a criminal
+condemned to death to spend his last hours in gross
+sensual indulgence. There is no reason to suppose that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+the extinction of the Christian hope of immortality would
+prove less demoralizing. We are “saved by hope,”
+said St Paul: we are ruined by despair. Pessimism
+of creed for most men means pessimism of conduct.</p>
+
+<p>Our modern speech and literature and our habits of
+feeling have been for so many generations steeped in
+the influence of Christ’s teaching, and it has thrown so
+many tender and hallowed thoughts around the state
+of our beloved dead, that it is impossible even for
+those who are personally without hope in Christ
+to realize what its general decay and disappearance
+would mean. To have possessed such a treasure, and
+then to lose it! to have cherished anticipations so
+exalted and so dear,—and to find them turn out a
+mockery! The age upon which this calamity fell would
+be of all ages the most miserable.</p>
+
+<p>The hope of Israel which Paul preached to the
+Gentiles was a hope for the world and for the nations,
+as well as for the individual soul. “The commonwealth
+[or <i>polity</i>] of Israel” and “the covenants of
+promise” guaranteed the establishment of the Messianic
+kingdom upon earth. This expectation took
+amongst the mass of the Jews a materialistic and even
+a revengeful shape; but in one form or other it
+belonged, and still belongs to every man of Israel.
+Those noble lines of Virgil in his fourth
+Eclogue<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a>—like
+the words of Caiaphas, an unintended Christian
+prophecy—which predicted the return of justice and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+the spread of a golden age through the whole world
+under the rule of the coming heir of Cæsar, had been
+signally belied by the imperial house in the century
+that had elapsed. Never were human prospects darker
+than when the apostle wrote as Nero’s prisoner in
+Rome. It was an age of crime and horror. The
+political world and the system of pagan society seemed
+to be in the throes of dissolution. Only in “the
+commonwealth of Israel” was there a light of hope
+and a foundation for the future of mankind; and of
+this in its wisdom the world knew nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The Gentiles were “alienated from the commonwealth
+of Israel,”—that is to say, treated as aliens
+and made such by their exclusion. By the very fact
+of Israel’s election, the rest of mankind were shut out
+of the visible kingdom of God. They became mere
+<i>Gentiles</i>, or <i>nations</i>,—a herd of men bound together only
+by natural affinity, with no “covenant of promise,” no
+religious constitution or destiny, no definite relationship
+to God, Israel being alone the acknowledged and
+organized “<i>people</i> of Jehovah.”</p>
+
+<p>These distinctions were summed up in one word,
+expressing all the pride of the Jewish nature, when
+the Israelites styled themselves “the Circumcision.”
+The rest of the world—Philistines or Egyptians, Greeks,
+Romans, or Barbarians, it mattered not—were “the
+Uncircumcision.” How superficial this distinction was
+in point of fact, and how false the assumption of moral
+superiority it implied in the existing condition of
+Judaism, St Paul indicates by saying, “those who are
+<i>called</i> Uncircumcision by that which is <i>called</i> Circumcision,
+in flesh, wrought by human hands.” In the
+second and third chapters of his epistle to the Romans
+he exposed the hollowness of Jewish sanctity, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+brought his fellow-countrymen down to the level of
+those “sinners of the Gentiles” whom they so bitterly
+despised.</p>
+
+<p>The destitution of the Gentile world is put into a
+single word, when the apostle says: “You were at
+that time <i>separate from Christ</i>”—without a Christ,
+either come or coming. They were deprived of the
+world’s one treasure,—shut out, as it appeared, for
+ever<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a>
+from any part in Him who is to mankind all
+things and in all.—<i>Once far off!</i></p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>“But now in Christ Jesus ye were <i>made nigh</i>.”
+What is it that has bridged the distance, that has
+transported these Gentiles from the wilderness of
+heathenism into the midst of the city of God? It is
+“the blood of Christ.” The sacrificial death of Jesus
+Christ transformed the relations of God to mankind,
+and of Israel to the Gentiles. In Him God reconciled
+not a nation, but “a world” to Himself (2 Cor. v. 19).
+The death of the Son of man could not have reference
+to the sons of Abraham alone. If sin is universal and
+death is not a Jewish but a human experience, and if
+one blood flows in the veins of all our race, then the
+death of Jesus Christ was a universal sacrifice; it
+appeals to every man’s conscience and heart, and puts
+away for each the guilt which comes between his soul
+and God.</p>
+
+<p>When the Greeks in Passion week desired to see
+Him, He exclaimed: “I, if I be lifted up from the
+earth, will draw <i>all</i> unto me.” The cross of Jesus
+was to draw humanity around it, by its infinite love
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+and sorrow, by the perfect apprehension there was in
+it of the world’s guilt and need, and the perfect submission
+to the sentence of God’s law against man’s sin.
+So wherever the gospel was preached by St Paul, it
+won Gentile hearts for Christ. Greek and Jew found
+themselves weeping together at the foot of the cross,
+sharing one forgiveness and baptized into one Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The union of Caiaphas and Pilate in the condemnation
+of Jesus and the mingling of the Jewish crowd
+with the Roman soldiers at His execution were a tragic
+symbol of the new age that was coming. Israel and
+the Gentiles were accomplices in the death of the
+Messiah—the former of the two the more guilty partner
+in the counsel and deed. If this Jesus whom they
+slew and hanged on a tree was indeed the Christ,
+God’s chosen, then what availed their Abrahamic
+sonship, their covenants and law-keeping, their proud
+religious eminence? They had killed their Christ;
+they had forfeited their calling. His blood was on
+them and on their children.</p>
+
+<p>Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of
+Christ were found far off,—that both together, the far
+and the near, might be reconciled and brought back
+to God. “He shut up all unto disobedience, that He
+might have mercy upon all.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a>
+Rom. i. 19–23; comp. John i. 10: “He [the true Light] was <i>in
+the world</i>, and the world knew Him not.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem foot">
+<span class="i0">Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Casta, fave, Lucina.<br /></span>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a>
+Observe the perfect participle <span class="greek" title="apêllotriômenoi">
+ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι</span>, which signifies an
+abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in
+ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the
+middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, <i>even</i>
+the law of commandments <i>contained</i> in ordinances, that He might
+create in Himself of the twain one new man, <i>so</i> making peace; and
+might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
+having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good
+tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were
+nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the
+Father.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 14–18.</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Peace, peace—to the far off, and to the near!</i> Such
+was God’s promise to His scattered people in the
+times of the exile (Isai. lvii. 19). St Paul sees that
+peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and
+terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the
+prophet had foreseen. Christ is “our peace”—not for
+the divided members of Israel alone, but for all the
+tribes of men. He brings about a universal pacification.</p>
+
+<p>There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to
+be overcome by Christ, in preaching to the world
+His good tidings of peace (ver. 17). There was the
+hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its
+cause and principle when Christ “in His flesh” (by His
+incarnate life and death) “abolished the law of commandments
+in decrees”—<i>i.e.</i>, the law of Moses as it
+constituted a body of external precepts determining the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+way of righteousness and life. This abolition of the
+law by the evangelical principle “dissolved the middle
+wall of partition.” The occasion of quarrel between
+Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier disappeared
+that had for so long fenced off the privileged
+ground of the sons of Abraham (vv. 14, 15). But
+behind this human enmity, underneath the feud and
+rancour existing between the Jews and the nations,
+there lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God.
+Both enmities centred in the law; both were slain by
+one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross (ver. 16).</p>
+
+<p>The Jewish and Gentile peoples formed two distinct
+types of humanity. Politically, the Jews were insignificant
+and had scarcely counted amongst the great
+powers of the world. Their religion alone gave them
+influence and importance. Bearing his inspired
+Scriptures and his Messianic hope, the wandering
+Israelite confronted the vast masses of heathenism and
+the splendid and fascinating classical civilization with
+the proudest sense of his superiority. To his God
+he knew well that one day every knee would bow and
+every tongue confess. The circumstances of the time
+deepened his isolation and aggravated to internecine
+hate his spite against his fellow-men, the <i>adversus
+omnes alios hostile odium</i> stigmatized by the incisive
+pen of Tacitus. Within three years of the writing of
+this letter the Jewish war against Rome broke out,
+when the enmity culminated in the most appalling and
+fateful overthrow recorded in the pages of history.
+Now, it is this enmity at its height—the most inveterate
+and desperate one can conceive—that the apostle proposes
+to reconcile; nay, that he sees already slain by
+the sacrifice of the cross, and within the brotherhood
+of the Christian Church. It was slain in the heart
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+of Saul of Tarsus, the proudest that beat in Jewish
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>In his earlier writings the apostle has been concerned
+chiefly to guard the position and rights of the two parties
+within the Church. He has abundantly maintained,
+especially in the epistle to the Galatians, the claims of
+Gentile believers in Christ against Judaic assumptions
+and impositions. He has defended the just prerogative
+of the Jew and his hereditary sentiments from the
+contempt to which they were sometimes exposed on the part of the Gentile
+majority.<a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a>
+But now that this has been done, and that Gentile liberties and Jewish
+dignity have been vindicated and safeguarded on both
+sides, St Paul advances a step further: he seeks to
+amalgamate the Jewish and Gentile section of the
+Church, and to “make of the twain one new man, so
+making peace.” This, he declares, was the end of
+Christ’s mission; this a chief purpose of His atoning
+death. Only by such union, only through the burying
+of the old enmity slain on the cross, could His Church
+be built up to its completeness. St Paul would have
+Gentile and Jewish believers everywhere forget their
+differences, efface their party lines, and merge their
+independence in the oneness of the all-embracing and
+all-perfecting Church of Jesus Christ, God’s habitation
+in the Spirit. Instead of saying that a catholic ideal
+like this belongs to a later and post-apostolic age, we
+maintain, on the contrary, that a catholic mind like
+St Paul’s, under the conditions of his time, could not
+fail to arrive at this conception.</p>
+
+<p>It was his confidence in the victory of the cross
+over all strife and sin that sustained St Paul through
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+these years of captivity. As he looks out from his
+Roman prison, under the shadow of Nero’s palace,
+the future is invested with a radiance of hope that
+makes the heart of the chained apostle exult within
+him. The world is lost, to all outward seeming:
+he knows it is saved! Jew and Gentile are about to
+close in mortal conflict: he proclaims peace between
+them, assured of their reconcilement, and knowing that
+in their reunion the salvation of human society is
+assured.</p>
+
+<p>The enmity of Jew and Gentile was representative
+of all that divides mankind. In it were concentrated
+most of the causes by which society is rent asunder.
+Along with religion, race, habits, tastes and culture,
+moral tendencies, political aspirations, interests of
+trade, all helped to widen the breach. The cleavage
+ran deep into the foundations of life; the enmity was
+the growth of two thousand years. It was not a case
+of local friction, nor a quarrel arising from temporary
+causes. The Jew was ubiquitous, and everywhere was
+an alien and an irritant to Gentile society. No antipathy
+was so hard to subdue. The grace that conquers
+it, can and will conquer all enmities.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s view embraced, in fact, a world-wide
+reconcilement. He contemplates, as the Hebrew prophets
+themselves did, the fraternization of mankind
+under the rule of the Christ. After this scale he laid
+down the foundation of the Church, “wise master-builder”
+that he was. It was destined to bear the weight
+of an edifice in which all the races of men should dwell
+together, and every order of human faculty should find
+its place. His thoughts were not confined within the
+Judaic antithesis. “There is no Jew and Greek,” he
+says in another place; yes, and “no barbarian, Scythian,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+bondman, freeman, male or female. Ye are all one
+in Christ Jesus.”<a name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>
+Birth, rank, office in the Church,
+culture, even sex are minor and subordinate distinctions,
+merged in the unity of redeemed souls in Christ.
+That which He “creates in Himself of the twain” is
+<i>one new man</i>—one incorporate humanity, neither Jew
+nor Gentile, Englishman nor Hindu, priest nor layman,
+male nor female; but simply <i>man</i>, and <i>Christian</i>.</p>
+
+<p>At the present time we are better able to enter into
+these views of the apostle than at any intervening
+period of history. In his day almost the whole visible
+world, lying round the Mediterranean shores, was
+brought under the government and laws of Rome. This
+fact made the establishment of one religious polity a
+thing quite conceivable. The Roman empire did not,
+as it proved, allow Christianity to conquer it soon
+enough and to leaven it sufficiently to save it. That
+huge construction, the mightiest fabric of human polity,
+fell and covered the earth with its ruins. In its fall
+it reacted disastrously upon the Church, and has bequeathed
+to it the corrupt and despotic unity of Papal
+Rome. Now, in these last days, the whole world is
+opened to the Church, a world stretching far beyond
+the horizon of the first century. Science and Commerce,
+those two strong-winged angels and giant
+ministers of God, are swiftly binding the continents
+together in material ties. The peoples are beginning to
+realize their brotherhood, and are feeling their way in
+many directions towards international union; while
+in the Churches a new, federal catholicity is taking
+shape, that must displace the false catholicism of
+external uniformity and the disastrous absolutism inherited
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+from Rome. The spread of European empire
+and the marvellous expansion of our English race are
+carrying forward the world’s unification with enormous
+strides,—towards some end or other. What end is
+this to be? Is the kingdom of the world about to
+become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ? and
+are the nations preparing to be “reconciled in one
+body unto God”?</p>
+
+<p>If Christendom were worthy of her Master and her
+name, this question would be answered with no doubtful
+affirmative. The Church is well able, if she were
+prepared, to go up and possess the whole earth for her
+Lord. The way is open; the means are in her hand.
+Nor is she ignorant, nor wholly negligent of her opportunity
+and of the claims that the times impose upon her.
+She is putting forth new strength and striving to overtake
+her work, notwithstanding the weight of ignorance
+and sloth that burdens her. Soon the reconciling cross
+will be planted on every shore, and the praises of the
+Crucified sung in every human language.</p>
+
+<p>But there are dark as well as bright auguries for
+the future. The advance of commerce and emigration
+has been a curse and not a blessing to many heathen
+peoples. Who can read without shame and horror the
+story of European conquest in America? And it is a
+chapter not yet closed. Greed and injustice still mark
+the dealings of the powerful and civilized with the
+weaker races. England set a noble example in the
+abolition of negro slavery; but she has since inflicted,
+for purposes of gain, the opium curse on China, putting
+poison to the lips of its vast population. Under our
+Christian flags fire-arms are imported, and alcohol,
+amongst tribes of men less able than children to resist
+their evils. Is this “preaching peace to those far off”?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+It is likely that the commercial profits made in the
+destruction of savage races as yet exceed all that our
+missionary societies have spent in saving them. One
+of these days Almighty God may have a stern reckoning
+with modern Europe about these things. “When
+He maketh inquisition for blood, He will remember.”</p>
+
+<p>And what shall we say of ourselves at home, in our
+relation to this great principle of the apostle? The
+old “middle wall of partition,” the temple-barrier that
+sundered Jew and Gentile, is “broken down,”—visibly
+levelled by the hand of God when Jerusalem fell, as it
+had been virtually and in its principle destroyed by the
+work of Christ. But are there no other middle walls,
+no barriers raised within the fold of Christ? The rich
+man’s purse, and the poor man’s penury; aristocratic
+pride, democratic bitterness and jealousy; knowledge
+and refinement on the one hand, ignorance and rudeness
+on the other—how thick the veil of estrangement
+which these influences weave, how high the party walls
+which they build in our various Church communions!</p>
+
+<p>It is the duty of the Church, as she values her existence,
+with gentle but firm hands to pull down and to
+keep down all such partitions. She cannot abolish the
+natural distinctions of life. She cannot turn the Jew
+into a Gentile, nor the Gentile into a Jew. She will
+never make the poor man rich in this world, nor the
+rich man altogether poor. Like her Master, she
+declines to be “judge or divider” of our secular inheritance.
+But she can see to it that these outward
+distinctions make no difference in her treatment of the
+men as men. She can combine in her fellowship all
+grades and orders, and teach them to understand and
+respect each other. She can soften the asperities and
+relieve many of the hardships which social differences
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+create. She can diffuse a healing and purifying influence
+upon the contentions of society around her.</p>
+
+<p>Let us labour unweariedly for this, and let our meeting
+at the Lord’s table be a symbol of the unreserved
+communion of men of all classes and conditions in the
+brotherhood of the redeemed sons of God. “<i>He</i> is our
+peace”; and if He is in our hearts, we must needs be
+sons of peace. “Behold the secret of all true union!
+It is not by others coming to us, nor by our going over
+to them; but it is by both them and ourselves coming
+to Christ” that peace is made (Monod).</p>
+
+<p>Thus within and without the Church the work of
+atonement will advance, with Christ ever for its preacher
+(ver. 17). He speaks through the words and the lives
+of His ten thousand messengers,—men of every order,
+in every age and country of the earth. The leaven of
+Christ’s peace will spread till the lump is leavened.
+God will accomplish His purpose of the ages, whether
+in our time, or in another worthier of His calling.
+His Church is destined to be the home of the
+human family, the universal liberator and instructor
+and reconciler of the nations. And Christ shall sit
+enthroned in the loyal worship of the federated peoples
+of the earth.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>But the question remains: What is the foundation,
+what the warrant of this grand idealism of the apostle
+Paul? Many a great thinker, many an ardent reformer
+before and since has dreamed of some such millennium
+as this. And their enthusiastic plans have ended too
+often in conflict and destruction. What surer ground
+of confidence have we in Paul’s undertaking than in
+those of so many gifted visionaries and philosophers?
+The difference lies here: his expectation rests on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+word and character of God; his instrument of reform
+is the cross of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>God is the centre of His own universe. Any reconciliation
+that is to stand, must include Him first of all.
+Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile “both in one body
+<i>to God</i>.” There is the meeting point, the true focus of
+the orbit of human life, that can alone control its movements
+and correct its wild aberrations. Under the
+shadow of His throne of justice, in the arms of His
+fatherly love, the kindreds of the earth will at last find
+reconciliation and peace. Humanitarian and secularist
+systems make the simple mistake of ignoring the
+supreme Factor in the scheme of things; they leave
+out the All in all.</p>
+
+<p>“Be ye <i>reconciled to God</i>,” cries the apostle. For
+Almighty God has had a great quarrel with this world
+of ours. The hatred of men towards each other is
+rooted in the “carnal mind which is enmity against God.”
+The “law of commandments contained in ordinances,”
+in whose possession the Jew boasted over the lawless
+and profane Gentile, in reality branded both as culprits.</p>
+
+<p>The secret disquiet and dread lurking in man’s conscience,
+the pangs endured in his body of humiliation,
+the groaning frame of nature declare the world unhinged
+and out of course. Things have gone amiss,
+somehow, between man and his Creator. The face of
+the earth and the field of human history are scarred
+with the thunderbolts of His displeasure. God, the
+Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King of the
+ages, is not the amiable, almighty Sentimentalist that
+some pious people would make Him out to be. The
+men of the Bible felt and realized, if we do not,
+the grave and tremendous import of the Lord’s controversy
+with all flesh. He is unceasingly at war
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+with the sins of men. “God is <i>love</i>”—oh yes; but
+then He is also “a consuming fire”! There is
+no anger so crushing as the anger of love, for there
+is none so just; no wrath to be feared like “the
+wrath of the Lamb.” God is not a man, weak and
+passionate, whom a spark of anger might set all on
+fire, burning out His justice and compassion. “In His
+wrath He remembers mercy.” Within that infinite
+nature there is room for an absolute loathing and
+resentment towards sin, in consistence with an immeasurable
+pity and yearning towards His sinful
+children. Hence the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Look at it from what side you will (and it has many
+sides), propound it in what terms you may (and it
+translates itself anew into the dialect of every age), you
+must not explain the cross of Christ away nor cause
+its offence to cease. “The atonement has always been
+a scandal and a folly to those who did not receive it; it
+has always contained something which to formal logic
+is false and to individualistic ethics immoral; yet in
+that very element which has been branded as immoral
+and false, has always lain the seal of its power and
+the secret of its truth.” The Holy One of God, the
+Lamb without spot and blemish, He died by His own
+consent a sinner’s death. That sacrifice, undergone by
+the Son of God and Son of man dying as man for men,
+in love to His race and in obedience to the Divine will
+and law, gave an infinite satisfaction to God in His
+relation to the world, and there went up to the Divine
+throne from the anguish of Calvary a “savour of sweet
+smell.” The moral glory of the act of Jesus Christ in
+dying for His guilty brethren outshone its horror and
+disgrace; and it redeemed man’s lost condition, and
+clothed human nature with a new character and aspect
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+in the eyes of God Himself. “Now therefore there
+is no more condemnation to them that are in Christ
+Jesus.” The mercy of God, if we may so say, is
+set free to act in forgiveness and restoration, without
+any compromise of justice and inflexible law. No
+peace without this: no peace that did not <i>satisfy God</i>,
+and satisfy that law, deep as the deepest in God, that
+binds suffering to wrong-doing and death to sin.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you say: This is immoral, surely, that the
+just should suffer for the unjust; that one commits the
+offence, and another bears the penalty.—Stay a moment:
+that is only half the truth. We are more than individuals;
+we are members of a race; and vicarious
+suffering runs through life. Our sufferings and
+wrong-doings bind the human family together in an
+inextricable web. We are <i>communists in sin and
+death</i>. It is the law and lot of our existence. And
+Christ, the Lord and centre of the race, has come
+within its scope. He bound Himself to our sinking
+fortunes. He became co-partner in our lost estate,
+and has redeemed it to God by His blood. If He was
+true and perfect man, if He was the creative Head and
+Mediator of the race, the eternal Firstborn of many
+brethren, He could do no other. He who alone had
+the right and the power,—“<i>One</i> died for all.” He took
+upon His Divine heart the sin and curse of the world,
+He fastened it to His shoulders with the cross; and He
+bore it away from Caiaphas’ hall and Pilate’s judgement-seat,
+away from guilty Jerusalem; He took away the
+sin of the world, and expiated it once for all. He
+quenched in His blood the fires of wrath and hate it
+kindled. He slew <i>the enmity</i> thereby.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>Still, we are individuals, as you said, not lost after
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+all in the world’s solidarity. Here your personal right
+and will must come in. What Christ has done for you
+is yours, so far as you accept it. He has died your
+death beforehand, trusting that you would not repudiate
+His act, that you would not let His blood be spilt in
+vain. But He will never force His mediation upon
+you. He respects your freedom and your manhood.
+Do you now endorse what Jesus Christ did on your
+behalf? Do you renounce the sin, and accept the
+sacrifice? Then it is yours, from this moment, before
+the tribunal of God and of conscience. By the witness
+of His Spirit you are proclaimed a forgiven and reconciled
+man. Christ crucified is yours—if you will have
+Him, if you will identify your sinful self with the sinless
+Mediator, if as you see Him lifted up on the cross
+you will let your heart cry out, “Oh my God, He dies
+for <i>me</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>Coming “in one Spirit to the Father,” the reconciled
+children join hands again with each other. Social
+barriers, caste feelings, family feuds, personal quarrels,
+national antipathies, alike go down before the virtue of
+the blood of Jesus.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">“Neither passion nor pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">His cross can abide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But melt in the fountain that streams from His side!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Beloved,” you will say to the man that hates or has
+wronged you most,—“Beloved, if God so loved us, we
+ought also to love one another.” In these simple
+words of the apostle John lies the secret of universal
+peace, the hope of the fraternization of mankind.
+Nations will have to say this one day, as well as men.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a>
+See to this effect such passages as Rom. i. 16 (<i>to the Jew first</i>),
+ix. 4, 5; and especially xi. 13–32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a>
+Gal. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11. Comp. John x. 16, xi. 52. See <i>The
+Epistle to the Galatians</i> (Expositor’s Bible), Chapter XV.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h4>GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens
+with the saints and of the household of God, being built upon
+the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being
+the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed
+together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are
+builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> ii. 19–22.</p></div>
+
+<p>Not unfrequently it is the last word or phrase
+of the paragraph that gives us the clue to St
+Paul’s meaning and discloses the point at which he has
+aimed all along. So in this instance. “For a habitation
+of God in the Spirit”: behold the goal of God’s
+ways with mankind! For this end the Divine grace
+has wrought through countless ages and has made its
+great sacrifice. For this end Jew and Gentile are
+being gathered into one and compacted into a new
+humanity.</p>
+
+<p>I. The Church is a house built for an <i>Occupant</i>. Its
+quality and size, and the mode of its construction are
+determined by its destination. It is built to suit the
+great Inhabitant, who says concerning the new Zion as
+He said of the old in figure: “This is my rest for ever!
+Here will I dwell, for I have desired it.” God, who is
+spirit, cannot be satisfied with the fabric of material
+nature for His temple, nor does “the Most High dwell
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+in houses made by men’s hands.” He seeks our spirit
+for His abode, and</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i16">“Doth prefer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before all temples the upright heart and pure.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the collective life and spirit of humanity God claims
+to reside, that He may fill it with His glory and His
+love. “Know you not,” cries the apostle to the once
+debased Corinthians, “that you are God’s temple, and
+that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”</p>
+
+<p>Nothing that is bestowed upon man terminates in
+himself. The deliverance of Jewish and Gentile
+believers from their personal sins, their re-instatement
+into the broken unity of mankind and the destruction
+in them of their old enmities, of the antipathies generated
+by their common rebellion against God—these
+great results of Christ’s sacrifice were means to a
+further end. “Hallowed be Thy name” is our first
+petition to the Father in heaven; “Glory to God in the
+highest” is the key-note of the angels’ song, that runs
+through all the harmonies of “peace on earth,” through
+every strain of the melody of life. Religion is the mistress,
+not the handmaid in human affairs. She will never
+consent to become a mere ethical discipline, an instrument
+and subordinate stage in social evolution, a ladder
+held for men to climb up into their self-sufficiency.</p>
+
+<p>The old temptation of the Garden, “Ye shall be as
+gods,” has come upon our age in a new and fascinating
+form, “You shall be as gods,” it is whispered: “nay,
+you <i>are</i> God, and there is no other. The supernatural
+is a dream. The Christian story is a fable. There is
+none to fear or adore above yourselves!” Man is to
+worship his collective self, his own humanity. “I am
+the Lord thy God,” the great idol says, “that brought
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+thee up out of animalism and savagery, and me only shalt
+thou serve!—Love and faithful service to one’s kind, a
+holy passion for the welfare of the race, for the relief of
+human ignorance and poverty and pain, this is the true
+religion; and you need no other. Its obligation is
+instinctive, its benefits immediate and palpable; and it
+gives a consecration to individual life that dignifies and
+chastens, while it calls into exercise all our faculties.”</p>
+
+<p>Yes, we willingly admit, such human service is
+“religion pure and undefiled, <i>before our God and
+Father</i>.” If service is rendered to our kind as worship
+to the Father of men; if we reverence in each man the
+image of God and the shrine of His Spirit; if we are
+seeking to cleanse and adorn in men the temple where
+the Most High shall dwell, the humblest work done for
+our fellows’ good is done for Him. The best human
+charity is rendered for the love of God. “Thou shalt
+love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and
+strength. This,” said Jesus, “is the first and great
+commandment. And the second is <i>like unto it</i>: Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two
+commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
+On these two hangs the welfare of men and nations.</p>
+
+<p>But the first commandment must come first. The
+second law of Jesus never has been or will be kept to
+purpose without the first. Humanitarian sentiments,
+dreams of universal brotherhood, projects of social
+reform, may seem for the moment to gain by their independence
+of religion a certain zest and emphasis; but
+they are without root and vitality. Their energy fails,
+or spends itself in revolt; their glow declines, their
+purity is stained. The leaders and first enthusiasts
+trained in the school of Christ, whose spirit, in vain
+repudiated, lives on in them, find themselves betrayed
+and alone. The coarse selfishness and materialism of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+the human heart win an easy triumph over a visionary
+altruism. “Without me,” says Jesus Christ, “ye can
+do nothing.”</p>
+
+<p>In the light of God’s glory man learns to reverence
+his nature and understand the vocation of his race.
+The love of God touches the deep and enduring springs
+of human action. The kingdom of Christ and of God
+commands an absolute devotion; its service inspires
+unfaltering courage and invincible patience. There is
+a grandeur and a certainty, of which the noblest secular
+aims fall short, in the hopes of those who are striving
+together for the faith of the gospel, and who work to
+build human life into a dwelling-place for God.</p>
+
+<p>II. God’s temple in the Church of Jesus Christ, while
+it is one, is also manifold. “In whom <i>each several
+building</i> [or <i>every part of the
+building</i><a name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a>],
+while it is compacted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”</p>
+
+<p>The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings,
+such as the ancient temples commonly were, in process
+of construction at different points over a wide area.
+The builders work in concert, upon a common plan.
+The several parts of the work are adjusted to each
+other; and the various operations in process are so
+harmonized, that the entire construction preserves the
+unity of the architect’s design. Such an edifice was
+the apostolic Church—one, but of many parts—in its
+diverse gifts and multiplied activities animated by
+one Spirit and directed towards one Divine purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome—what
+a various scene of activity these centres of Christian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+life presented! The Churches founded in these great
+cities must have differed in many features. Even in
+the communities of his own province the apostle did
+not, so far as we can judge, impose a uniform administration.
+St Peter and St Paul carried out their plans
+independently, only maintaining a general understanding
+with each other. The apostolic founders, inspired by
+one and the self-same Spirit, could labour at a distance,
+upon material and by methods extremely various, with
+entire confidence in each other and with an assurance
+of the unity of result which their teaching and
+administration would exhibit. The many buildings
+rested on the one foundation of the apostles. “Whether
+it were I or they,” says our apostle, “so we preach,
+and so you believed.” Where there is the same Spirit
+and the same Lord, men do not need to be scrupulous
+about visible conformity. Elasticity and individual
+initiative admit of entire harmony of principle. The
+hand may do its work without irritating and obstructing
+the eye; and the foot run on its errands without mistrusting
+the ear.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the catholicism of the apostolic age. The
+true reading of verse 21, as it is restored by the Revisers,
+is an incidental witness to the date of the epistle.
+A churchman of the second century, writing under
+Paul’s name in the interests of catholic unity as it was
+then understood, would scarcely have penned such a
+sentence without attaching to the subject the definite
+article: he must have written “all the building,” as
+the copyists from whom the received text proceeds
+very naturally have done. From that time onwards,
+as the system of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was
+developed, external unity was more and more strictly
+imposed. The original “diversity of operations”
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+became a rigid uniformity. The Church swallowed up
+the Churches. Finally, the spiritual bureaucracy of
+Rome gathered all ecclesiastical power into one centre,
+and placed the direction of Western Christendom in
+the hands of a single priest, whom it declared to be the
+Vicar of Jesus Christ and endowed with the Divine
+attribute of infallibility.</p>
+
+<p>Had not Jerusalem been overthrown and its Church
+destroyed, the hierarchical movement would probably
+have made that city, rather than Rome, its centre.
+This was in fact the tendency, if not the express
+purpose of the Judaistic party in the Church. St Paul
+had vindicated in his earlier epistles the freedom of
+the Gentile Christian communities, and their right of
+non-conformity to Jewish usage. In the words “each
+several building, fitly framed together,” there is an
+echo of this controversy. The Churches of his mission
+claim a standing side by side with those founded by
+other apostles. For himself and his Gentile brethren
+he seems to say, in the presence of the primitive
+Church and its leaders: “As they are Christ’s, so also
+are we.”</p>
+
+<p>The co-operation of the different parts of the body
+of Christ is essential to their collective growth. Let
+all Churches beware of crushing dissent. Blows aimed
+at our Christian neighbours recoil upon ourselves.
+Undermining their foundation, we shake our own.
+Next to positive corruption of doctrine and life, nothing
+hinders so greatly the progress of the kingdom of God
+as the claim to exclusive legitimacy made on behalf of
+ancient Church organizations. Their representatives
+would have every part of God’s temple framed upon
+one pattern. They refuse a place on the apostolic
+foundation to all Churches, however numerous, however
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+rich in faith and good works, however strong the
+historical justification for their existence, however clear
+the marks they bear of the Spirit’s seal, which do
+not conform to the rule they themselves have received.
+Their rites and ministry, they assert, are those alone
+approved by Christ and authorized by His apostles,
+within a given area. They refuse the right hand of
+fellowship to men who are doing Christ’s work by their
+side; they isolate their flocks, as far as possible, from
+intercourse with the Christian communities around them.</p>
+
+<p>This policy on the part of any Christian Church, or
+Church party, is contrary to the mind of Christ and
+to the example of His apostles. Those who hold aloof
+from the comity of the Churches and prevent the many
+buildings of God’s temple being fitly framed together,
+must bear their judgement, whosoever they be. They
+prefer conquest to peace, but that conquest they will
+never win; it would be fatal to themselves. Let the
+elder sister frankly allow the birthright of the younger
+sisters of Christ’s house in these lands, and be our
+example in justice and in charity. Great will be her
+honour; great the glory won for our common Lord.</p>
+
+<p>“Every building fitly framed together <i>groweth into
+a holy temple</i> in the Lord.” The subject is distributive;
+the predicate collective. The parts give place to the
+whole in the writer’s mind. As each several piece of
+the structure, each cell or chapel in the temple, spreads
+out to join its companion buildings and adjusts itself
+to the parts around it, the edifice grows into a richer
+completeness and becomes more fit for its sacred purpose.
+The separate buildings, distant in place or
+historical character, approximate by extension, as they
+spread over the unoccupied ground between them and as
+the connecting links are multiplied. At last a point is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+reached at which they will become continuous. Growing
+into each other step by step and forming across the
+diminishing distance a web of mutual attachment constantly
+thickening, they will insensibly, by a natural
+and vital growth, become one in visible communion as
+they are one in their underlying faith.</p>
+
+<p>When each organ of the body in its own degree is
+perfect and holds its place in keeping with the rest, we
+think no longer of their individual perfection, of the
+charm of this feature or of that; they are forgotten in
+the beauty of the perfect frame. So it will be in the
+body of Christ, when its several communions, cleansed
+and filled with His Spirit, each honouring the vocation
+of the others, shall in freedom and in love by a spontaneous
+movement be gathered into one. Their
+strength will then be no longer weakened and their
+spirit chafed by internal conflict. With united forces
+and irresistible energy, they will assail the kingdom of
+darkness and subjugate the world to Christ.</p>
+
+<p>For this consummation our Saviour prayed in the
+last hours before His death: “that they all may be
+one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that
+they also may be in us, that the world may believe
+that Thou didst send me” (John xvii. 21). Did He
+fear that His little flock of the Twelve would be parted
+by dissensions? Or did He not look onward to the
+future, and see the “offences that must come,” the
+alienations and fierce conflicts that would arise amongst
+His people, and the blood that would be shed in His
+name? Yet beyond these divisions, on the horizon
+of the end of the age, He foresaw the day when the
+wounds of His Church would be healed, when the sword
+that He had brought on the earth would be sheathed,
+and through the unity of faith and love in His people
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+all mankind would at last come to acknowledge Him
+and the Father who had sent Him.</p>
+
+<p>III. To appearance, we are many rather than one
+who bear the name of Christ. But we are one notwithstanding,
+if below the variety of superstructure
+our faith rests upon the witness of the apostles, and
+the several buildings have Christ Jesus Himself for
+chief corner-stone. The <i>one foundation</i> and the <i>one
+Spirit</i> constitute the unity of God’s temple in the
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>“The apostles and prophets” are named as a single
+body, <i>the prophets</i> being doubtless, in this passage and
+in chapters iii. 5 and iv. 11, the existing prophets of
+the apostolic Church, whose inspired teaching supplemented
+that of the apostles and helped to lay down
+the foundation of revealed truth. That foundation has
+been, through the providence of God, preserved for later
+ages in the Scriptures of the New Testament, on which
+the faith of Christians has rested ever since. Such a
+prophet Barnabas was in the first days (Acts xiii. 1),
+and such was the unknown, but deeply inspired writer
+of the epistle to the Hebrews; such prophets, again,
+were SS. Mark and Luke, the Evangelists. Prophecy
+was not a stated gift of office. Just as there were
+“teachers” in the early Church whose knowledge and
+eloquence did not entitle them to bear rule, so prophecy
+was frequently exercised by private persons and carried
+with it no such official authority as belonged in the
+highest degree to the apostles.</p>
+
+<p>It is thought surprising that St Paul should write
+thus, in so general and distant a fashion, of the order to
+which he belonged (comp. iii. 5). This, it is said, is
+the language of a later generation, which looks back
+with reverence to the inspired Founders. But this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+letter is written, as we observed at the outset, from a
+peculiarly objective and impersonal standpoint. It
+differs in this respect from other epistles of St Paul.
+He is addressing a number of Churches, with some of
+which his personal relations were slight and distant.
+He is contemplating the Church in its most general
+character. He is not the only founder of Churches;
+he is one of a band of colleagues, working in different
+regions. It is natural that he should use the plural
+here. He sets his successors an example of the recognition
+due to fellow-labourers whose work bears the
+seal of Christ’s Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>These men have laid <i>the foundation</i>—Peter and Paul,
+John and James, Barnabas and Silas, and the rest.
+They are our spiritual progenitors, the fathers of our
+faith. We see Jesus Christ through their eyes; we
+read His teaching, and catch His Spirit in their words.
+Their testimony, in its essential facts, stands secure
+in the confidence of mankind. Nor was it their word
+alone, but the men themselves—their character, their
+life and work—laid for the Church its historical foundation.
+This “glorious company of the apostles” formed
+the first course in the new building, on whose firmness
+and strength the stability of the entire structure depends.
+Their virtues and their sufferings, as well as the revelations
+made through them, have guided the thoughts and
+shaped the life of countless multitudes of men, of the
+best and wisest men in all ages since. They have
+fixed the standard of Christian doctrine and the type of
+Christian character. At our best, we are but imitators
+of them as they were of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the chief part of their teaching, both as
+to its meaning and authority, the great bulk of Christians
+in all communions are agreed. The keen disputes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+which engage us upon certain points, testify to the
+cardinal importance which is felt on all hands to attach
+to the words of Christ’s chosen apostles. Their living
+witness is in our midst. The self-same Spirit that
+wrought in them, works amongst men and dwells in the
+communion of saints. He still reveals the things of
+Christ, and guides into truth the willing and obedient.</p>
+
+<p>So “the firm foundation of God standeth”; though
+men, shaken themselves, seem to see it tremble. On
+that basis we may labour confidently and loyally, with
+those amongst whom the Master has placed us. Some
+of our fellow-workmen disown and would hinder us:
+that shall not prevent us from rejoicing in their good
+work, and admiring the gold and precious stones that
+they contribute to the fabric. The Lord of the temple
+will know how to use the labour of His many servants.
+He will forgive and compose their strife, who are jealous
+for His name. He will shape their narrow aims to His
+larger purposes. Out of their discords He will draw
+a finer harmony. As the great house grows to its
+dimensions, as the workmen by the extension of their
+labours come nearer to each other and their sectional
+plans merge in Christ’s great purpose, reproaches will
+cease and misunderstandings vanish. Over many who
+followed not with us and whom we counted but as
+“strangers and sojourners,” as men whose place within
+the walls of Zion was doubtful and unauthorized, we
+shall hereafter rejoice with a joy not unmixed with self-upbraiding,
+to find them in the fullest right our fellow-citizens
+amongst the saints and of the household of
+God.</p>
+
+<p>The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder of the
+Church, as He is the supreme witness to Jesus Christ
+(John xv. 26, 27). The words <i>in the Spirit</i>, closing the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+verse with solemn emphasis, denote not the mode of
+God’s habitation—that is self-evident—but the agency
+engaged in building this new house of God. With one
+“chief corner-stone” to rest upon and one Spirit to
+inspire and control them, the apostles and prophets
+laid their foundation and the Church was “builded
+together” for a habitation of God. Hence its unity.
+But for this sovereign influence the primitive founders
+of Christianity, like later Church leaders, would have
+fallen into fatal discord. Modern critics, reasoning
+upon natural grounds and not understanding the grace
+of the Holy Spirit, assume that they did thus quarrel
+and contend. Had this been so, no foundation could
+ever have been laid; the Church would have fallen to
+pieces at the very beginning.</p>
+
+<p>In the hands of these faithful and wise stewards
+of God’s dispensation, “the stone which the builders
+rejected was made the head of the corner.” Their work
+has been tried by fire and by flood; and it abides.
+The rock of Zion stands unworn by time, unshaken by
+the conflict of ages,—amidst the movements of history
+and the shifting currents of thought the one foundation
+for the peace and true welfare of mankind.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Pasa oikodomê">Πᾶσα οἰκοδομή</span>,
+according to the well-established critical reading.
+For <span class="greek" title="pas">πᾶς</span> without the article, implying a various whole, compare
+<span class="greek" title="pasês ktiseôs">πάσης κτίσεως</span> in Col. i. 15;
+<span class="greek" title="pasa graphê">πᾶσα γραφή</span>, 2 Tim. iii. 16;
+<span class="greek" title="en pasê anastrophê">ἐν πάσῃ ἀναστροφῇ</span>, 1 Peter i. 15; and
+<span class="greek" title="Theos pasês charitos">Θεὸς πάσης χάριτος</span>, 1 Peter v. 10.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE SECRET OF THE AGES.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you
+Gentiles,—if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace
+of God which was given me toward you; how that by revelation was
+made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in few words,
+whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the
+mystery of Christ), which in other generations was not made known
+unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His holy
+apostles and prophets in the Spirit; <i>to wit</i>, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs,
+and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the
+promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, whereof I was made a
+minister, according to the gift of that grace of God which was given me
+according to the working of His power. Unto me, who am less than
+the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles
+the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to bring to light what is the
+dispensation of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God
+who created all things.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 1–9.</p></div>
+
+<p>Verses 2–13 are in form a parenthesis. They
+interrupt the prayer which appears to be commencing
+in the first verse and is not resumed until
+verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical,
+however, in appearance more than in reality. The
+matter it contains is so weighty and so essential to the
+argument and structure of the epistle, that it is impossible
+to treat it as a mere <i>aside</i>. The writer intends,
+at the pause which occurs after the paragraph just
+concluded (ii. 22), to interpose a few words of prayer
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+before passing on to the next topic. But in the act
+of doing so, this subject of which his mind is full—viz.,
+that of his own relation to God’s great purpose
+for mankind—forces itself upon him; and the prayer
+that was on his lips is pent up for a few moments
+longer, until it flows forth again, in richer measure, in
+verses 14–19.</p>
+
+<p>Like chapter i. 3–14, this passage is an extreme
+instance of St Paul’s amorphous style. His sentences
+are not composed; they are spun in a continuous
+thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial,
+and relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes
+like living things, putting forth new processes every
+moment, now in this and now in that direction. Within
+the main parenthesis we soon come upon another
+parenthesis including verses 3<i>b</i> and 4 (“as I wrote
+afore,” etc.); and at several points the grammatical
+connexion is uncertain. In its general scope, this
+intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of
+<i>what God has wrought in the apostle</i> toward the accomplishment
+of His great plan. It thus completes the
+exposition given already of that which <i>God wrought in
+Christ for the Church</i>, and that which <i>He has wrought
+through Christ in Gentile believers</i> in fulfilment of the
+same end.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>Verses 1–9 speak (1) of the mystery itself—God’s
+gracious intention toward the human race, unknown
+in earlier times; and (2) of the man to whom, above
+others, it was given to make known the secret.</p>
+
+<p>I. <i>The mystery</i> is defined twice over. First, it consists
+in the fact that “in Christ Jesus through the
+gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and co-incorporate and
+co-partners in the promise” (ver. 6); and secondly, it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+is “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (ver. 8). The
+latter phrase gathers to a point what is diversely
+expressed in the former.</p>
+
+<p>Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of
+the mysteries of Divine truth, of the whole enigma of
+existence. In the parallel epistle he calls Him “the
+mystery of God—in whom are all the treasures of
+wisdom and knowledge hidden” (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.).
+The mystery of God, discovered in Christ, was hidden
+out of the sight and reach of previous times. Now,
+by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common
+property of mankind (Col. i. 25–28).</p>
+
+<p>In close connexion with these statements, St Paul
+speaks there, as he does here, of his own heavy sufferings
+endured on this account and the joy they gave
+him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose
+worthy of God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation
+waiting to be spoken since the world began, that is
+addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along
+with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate
+with the greatness of the truth given him to
+announce.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery, as we have said, consists in <i>Christ</i>.
+This we learned from chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In
+Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and laid His
+plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness
+of the times dispenses. The Old Testament, the
+reservoir of previous revelation, had Him for its close-kept
+secret, “held in silence through eternal times”
+(Rom. xvi. 25–27). The drift of its prophecies, the
+focus of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards
+which its spiritual indications pointed, was “Christ.”
+He “was the spiritual rock that followed” Israel in
+its wanderings, from whose springs the people drank,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+as it answered to the touch of one and now another of
+the holy men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ
+gives unity, substance, and meaning to the history of
+Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without goal, a
+problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law
+and sacrifice; the kingly Son of David, and the suffering
+Servant of Jehovah; the Seed of the woman with bruised
+foot bruising the serpent’s head; the Lord whom His
+people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone
+hewn from the mountains without hands, that grows
+till it fills the earth—the manifold representations of
+Israel’s ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus Christ. The
+lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of
+prophecy—disconnected as they seemed and without
+a plan, giving rise to a thousand dreams and speculations—are
+filled out and drawn into shape and take life
+and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of
+a consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment
+or of that belonging to the consummate Person
+and the comprehensive plan manifest in the revelation
+of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated
+wealth of former revelation, His fulness is not
+measured thereby or exhausted. He solves the problems
+of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But
+He creates new and deeper problems, some explained
+in the continued teaching of His Spirit and His providence,
+others that remain, or emerge from time to time
+to tax the faith and understanding of His Church.
+There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person,
+with which the Greek Church struggled long—His
+eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation to mankind
+and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial
+reign and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+of God. These depths St Paul sounded with his
+plummet; but he found them unfathomable. Theological
+science has explored and defined them, and
+illuminated them on many sides, but cannot reach to
+their inmost mystery. Then there is the problem of
+the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching
+the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt,
+touching the adjustment of law and grace, the method
+of justification, the extent and efficacy of Christ’s redeeming
+work, touching the future destiny and eternal
+state of souls. Another class of questions largely
+occupies the minds of thoughtful men to-day. They
+are studying the relation of Christ and His Church
+to nature and the outward world, the bearings of
+Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of
+the Spirit of God in communities, and the place of man’s
+collective life in the progress and upbuilding of the
+kingdom of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation
+is given to those who humbly seek His light.
+He is given afresh in every age. Out of Christ’s unsearchable
+riches ever-new resources are forthcoming
+at His Church’s need, new treasures lying hidden in
+the old for him who can extract them. But His riches,
+however far they are investigated, remain unsearchable,
+and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God’s
+ways may be tracked further and further in each generation;
+they will remain to the end, as they were to the
+mind of Paul at the limit of his bold researches, “past
+finding out.” The inspired apostle confesses himself
+a child in Divine learning: “We know in part,” he
+says, “we prophesy in part.” Oh the depths of “hidden
+wisdom” unimagined now, that are in store for us in
+Christ, “foreordained before the worlds unto our glory!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with
+which the apostle is concerned, is that of His relationship
+to the Gentile world. “The grace of God,” he
+says in verse 2, “was given me <i>for you</i>.” Such is
+“the dispensation” in which God is now engaged.
+Upon this lavish and undreamed-of scale He is dealing
+forth salvation to men. St Paul describes this revelation
+of God’s goodness to the Gentiles by three parallel
+but distinct terms in verse 6. They “are fellow-heirs”—a
+word that carries us back to chapter i. 11–13, and
+assures the Gentile readers of their final redemption
+and heavenly glory.<a name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>
+They “are of the same body”—which
+sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii.
+11–22. And they “are fellow-partakers of the promise”—receiving
+upon a footing of equal privilege with
+Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit and the blessings
+promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St
+Paul formally proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles
+into the body of Christ, their investiture with the franchise
+of faith. The forgiveness of sins is theirs, the
+light of God’s smile, the breath of His Spirit, the
+worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and
+honours of His service. The incarnation of Christ is
+theirs; His life, teaching, and miracles; His cross is
+theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His second
+coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom—all
+made their own on the bare condition of a penitent
+and obedient faith. The past is theirs—is ours, along
+with the present and the future. The God of Israel
+is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons
+after the flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+prophesied of the grace that should come unto us.
+Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile peoples
+in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and
+praises. In their words we find expression for our
+heart-griefs and joys. At the wedding-feast or by
+the grave-side, amidst “the multitude that keep holy
+day” and in “dry lands” where the soul thirsts for
+God’s ordinances, we carry the Psalmists with us and
+the teachers of Israel.</p>
+
+<p>What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by
+Jesus Christ, have discovered in the Jewish Bible!
+When will the Jewish people understand that their
+greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the
+Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept
+their part in the riches of which they have made all
+the world partakers? The mystery of our participation
+in their Christ has now been “revealed to the sons of
+men” long enough. Is it not time that they themselves
+should see it, that the veil should be lifted from the
+heart of Israel? The disclosure was in the first
+instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished
+expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was
+at first rejected. But God the King of the ages has
+been asserting and re-asserting the fact in the course
+of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him!
+how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!</p>
+
+<p>II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,—men
+of unveiled heart to whom the mystery of ages was
+disclosed. “The secret of Jehovah is with them that
+fear Him, and He will show them His covenant.”
+Such is the rule of revelation. To the like effect
+Christ said: “The pure in heart shall see God. He
+that willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine.”</p>
+
+<p>The light of God’s universal love had come into the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+world; but where it fell on cold or impure hearts, it
+shone in vain. The mystery “was made manifest to
+His <i>saints</i>,” writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So
+in this passage: “revealed to His <i>holy</i> apostles and
+prophets in the Spirit.” The pure eye sees the true
+light. This was the condition which made it possible
+for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be
+the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere
+and devoted men, willing to be taught of God, willing to
+surrender every prejudice and the preconceptions of
+flesh and blood, in order to receive and convey to the
+world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than
+the thoughts of men. To such men—true disciples,
+loyal at all costs to God and truth, holy and humble
+of heart—Jesus Christ gave His great commission
+and bade them “go and make disciples of all the
+nations.”</p>
+
+<p>The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he
+was taught at the house of Cornelius “not to call any
+man common or unclean.” He saw, and the Church
+of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God “gave the
+like gift” to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves
+and had “purified their hearts by faith.” Many prophetic
+voices, unrecorded, confirmed this revelation. Of
+all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors
+in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself
+that he refers when he speaks of “holy apostles and
+prophets” in verse 5. His readers would naturally
+turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The
+original apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth
+first attested the doctrine of universal grace; and that
+they did so was a fact of vital importance to Paul and
+the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is
+shown by the stress which is laid upon it and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+prominence given to it in the narrative of the Acts of
+the Apostles.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made
+to himself; he never claims that this chief matter
+was <i>revealed</i> personally to himself. It was an open
+secret when Saul entered the Church. “Whereof,” he
+says, in verse 7, “I <i>became minister</i>”; again, “to me
+was this grace given, to <i>preach to the Gentiles</i> Christ’s
+unsearchable riches.” The leaders of the Jewish
+Christian Church knew well that their message was
+meant for all the world. But the abstract knowledge
+of a truth is one thing; the practical power to
+realize it is another. Until the new apostle came upon
+the field, there was no man ready for this great task
+and equal to it. It was at this crisis that Paul was
+raised up. Then “it pleased God to reveal His Son”
+in him, that he might “preach Him among the
+Gentiles.”</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was
+overwhelming, and continued to be so till the end of
+life. The immense favour humbles him to the dust.
+He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative,
+to describe his astonishment as the import of his
+mission unfolds itself: “To me, less than the least of
+all the saints, was this grace given.” That Saul the
+Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and
+most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to
+bear Christ’s riches to the Gentile world, how shall
+he sufficiently give thanks for this! how express his
+wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness that
+the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can
+see well that this choice was precisely the fittest. A
+Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped in Jewish traditions
+and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew better
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures
+stored in the house of Abraham that he had to make
+over to the Gentiles. A true son of that house, he was
+the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its precious
+things and make them at home within its walls.</p>
+
+<p>To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The
+universalism of the gospel—a commonplace of our
+modern rhetoric—had burst upon his mind in its unspoilt
+freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out
+into an undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon.
+A new heaven and earth are opened to him in the revelation
+that the Gentiles are partakers of the promise in
+Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the
+largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent
+sweep and scope of the designs of grace. These verses
+give us the warm and genuine impression made upon
+the hearts of its first recipients by the disclosure of
+the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s work, in carrying out the dispensation of
+this mystery, was twofold. It was both external and
+internal. He was a “herald and apostle”; he was
+also “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth”
+(1 Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry
+the good tidings from one end to the other of the
+Roman empire, to spread it abroad as far as his feet
+could travel and his voice reach, and thus “to fulfil the
+gospel of Christ.” But there was another, mental
+task, as necessary and still more difficult, which likewise
+fell to his lot. He had to <i>think out</i> the gospel.
+It was his office to unfold and apply it to the wants of
+a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted
+him as evangelist and pastor,—questions that
+contained the seed and beginning of the intellectual
+difficulties of the Church in future times. He had to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism,
+to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical
+and legal interpretation. On the other hand, he had
+equally to guard the truth as it is in Jesus from the
+dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and theosophy.
+Fighting his way through fierce and incessant
+opposition on both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind
+of the Church onwards and guides it still in the faith
+and knowledge of the Son of God. These noble epistles
+are the fruit and record of St Paul’s theological work.
+Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience
+of the world than any one man besides, except
+the Master of truth who was more than man.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence
+he now possessed, and that must accrue to him in the
+future from the transcendent interest of the doctrines
+committed to his charge. There is no false modesty
+about this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only
+to “preach to the Gentiles the good news of Christ’s
+unsearchable riches”; but more than that, “to bring to
+light what is the administration of the mystery that has
+been hidden away from the ages in God who created
+all things.” The great secret was out while Saul of
+Tarsus was still a persecutor and blasphemer. But
+as to the <i>management</i> and <i>dispensation</i> of the mystery,
+the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in
+which God would convey and apply it to the world
+at large, and as to the bearings and consequences of
+this momentous truth,—the apostle Paul, and no one
+but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He
+was, in fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul’s
+debtors; and are included amongst the “all men” of
+verse 9 (if this reading of the text is correct). St John
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the mind of
+Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation;
+but the labours and the logic of St Paul provided
+the field into which he entered in his ripe old age
+spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and assimilated
+everything that belonged to Christ and found for
+everything its principle and centre in the Master of his
+youth—“the way, the truth, and the life”—passed
+through the school of Paul. With the rest, he learnt
+through the new apostle to see more perfectly “what
+is the dispensation of the mystery hidden from the
+ages in God.”</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this
+letter in the Asian towns, if they have not known it
+before, will now “perceive” his “understanding in the
+mystery of Christ.” All ages have discerned it since.
+And the ages to come will measure its value better
+than we can do now.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a>
+See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14–25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h4>EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the
+heavenly <i>places</i> might be made known through the Church the manifold
+wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages which He
+formed in the Christ, <i>even</i> Jesus our Lord: in whom we have boldness
+and access in confidence through our faith in Him. Wherefore I ask
+that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which are your glory.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+iii. 10–13.</p></div>
+
+<p><i>The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God
+who created all things</i>: so the last paragraph concluded.
+The added phrase “through Jesus Christ”
+is a comment of the pious reader, that has been incorporated
+in the received text; but it is wanting in the
+oldest copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not
+concerned with the prerogatives of Christ, but with the
+scope of the Christian economy. He is displaying the
+breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace,
+the infinite range of the Divine plans and operations
+of which it forms the centre. Its secret was cherished
+in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations are laid in the
+very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now
+being made brings new light and wisdom to the
+powers of the celestial realms.</p>
+
+<p>“There is nothing covered,” said Jesus, “which shall
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+not be revealed, and hidden which shall not be known.”
+The mysteries which God sets before His intelligent
+creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are drafts,
+to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of
+wisdom hidden in Christ. So this great secret of the
+destiny of the Gentile world was “from all ages hidden,
+in order that now through the Church it might be made
+known,” and by its means God’s wisdom, to these
+sublime intelligences. This intention was a part of
+the “plan of the ages” formed in Christ (ver. 11).
+God designed by our redemption to bless higher races
+along with our own. The elder sons of God, those
+“morning stars” of creation, are schooled and instructed
+by what is transpiring here upon earth.</p>
+
+<p>To some this will appear to be mere extravagance.
+They see in such expressions the marks of an unrestrained
+enthusiasm, of theological speculation pushed
+beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge
+of the physical universe. This censure would be
+plausible and it might seem that the apostle had
+extended the mission of the gospel beyond its province,
+were it not for what he says in verse 11: This “purpose
+of the ages” God “made in <i>the Christ</i>, even <i>Jesus
+our Lord</i>.” Jesus Christ links together angels and
+men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of heaven.
+Christ’s coming to this world and identification with it
+unite to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The
+scenes enacted upon this planet and the events of its
+religious history have sent their shock through the
+universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to
+human life a boundless interest and significance. It is
+idle to oppose to this conviction the fact of the littleness
+of the terrestrial globe. Spiritual and physical
+magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot measure
+a man’s soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+teaches us that the most powerful forces may exist and
+operate within the narrowest space. A microscopic
+cell may contain the potential life of a world. If our
+earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has
+been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which
+God spared not to give His own Son!</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, lies the centre of the apostle’s thoughts
+in this paragraph: <i>God’s all-comprehending purpose in
+Christ</i>. The magnitude and completeness of this plan
+are indicated by the fact that it embraces in its
+purview <i>the angelic powers and their enlightenment</i>. So
+understanding it, our <i>human faith gains confidence and
+courage</i> (vv. 12, 13).</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>I. The textual critics restore the definite article
+which later copyists had dropped before the word
+<i>Christ</i> in verse 11. We have already remarked the
+frequency of “the Christ” in this epistle.<a name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>
+Once besides this peculiar combination of the names of our
+Saviour occurs—in Colossians ii. 6, where Lightfoot
+renders it <i>the Christ, even Jesus the Lord</i>. So it
+should be rendered in this place. St Paul sets forth
+the purpose of “God who created all things.” He is
+looking back through “the ages” during which the
+Divine plan was kept secret. God was all the time
+designing His work of mercy, pointing meanwhile the
+hopes of men by token and promise to the Coming One.
+The Messiah was the burden of those prophetic ages.
+That inscrutable Christ of the Old Testament, the
+veiled mystery of Jewish hope, stands manifested
+before us and challenges our faith in the glorious
+person of “Jesus our Lord.” This singular turn of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+expression identifies the ideal and the real, the promise
+and fulfilment, the dream of Old Testament prophecy
+and the fact of New Testament history. For Jesus
+our Lord is the very Christ to whom the generations
+before His coming looked forward out of their twilight
+with wistful expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>Not without meaning is He called “Jesus <i>our Lord</i>.”
+The “principalities and powers” of the heavenly places
+are in our view (ver. 10). These potentates some of
+the Asian Christians were fain to worship. “See ye
+do it not,” Paul seems to say. “Jesus, the Christ of
+God, is alone our Lord; not these. He is our Lord
+<i>and theirs</i> (i. 21, 22). As our Lord He commands
+their homage, and gives them lessons through His
+Church in God’s deep counsels.” Everything that the
+apostle says tends to exalt our Redeemer and to
+enhance our confidence in Him. His position is
+central and supreme, in regard alike to the ages of
+time and the powers of the universe. In His hand is
+the key to all mysteries. He is the Alpha and Omega,
+the beginning, middle, and end of God’s ways. He is
+the centre of Israel, Israel of the world and the human
+ages; while the world of men is bound through Him
+to the higher spheres of being, over which He too
+presides.</p>
+
+<p>There is a splendid intellectual courage, an incredible
+boldness and reach of thought in St Paul’s conception
+of the sovereignty of Christ. Remember that He of
+whom these things are said, but thirty years before died
+a felon’s death in the sight of the Jewish people. It is
+not <i>our</i> Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is hallowed by
+the lips of millions and glorified by the triumphs of
+centuries upon centuries past, but the Nazarene with
+the obscurity of His life and the cruel shame of Calvary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+fresh in the recollection of all men. With what
+immense force had the facts of His glorification wrought
+upon men’s minds—His resurrection and ascension, the
+witness of His Spirit and the virtue of His gospel—for
+it to be possible to speak of Him thus, within a
+generation of His death! While “the foolishness of
+preaching” such a Christ and the weakness in which
+He was crucified were patent to all eyes, unrelieved by
+the influence of time and the glamour of success, how
+was it that the first believers raised Jesus to this limitless
+glory and dominion? It was through the conviction,
+certified by outward fact and inward experience,
+that “He liveth by the power of God.” Thus Peter
+on the day of Pentecost: “By the right hand of God
+exalted, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and
+hear.” The resurrection from the dead, the demonstration
+of the Spirit proved Jesus Christ to be that
+which He had claimed to be, the Saviour of men and
+the eternal Son of God.</p>
+
+<p>The supremacy here assigned to Christ is a consequence
+of the exaltation described at the close of the
+first chapter. There we see the height, here the
+breadth and length of His dominion. If He is raised
+from the grave so high that all created powers and
+names are beneath His feet, we cannot wonder that the
+past ages were employed in preparing His way, that
+the basis of His throne lies in the foundation of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>II. The universe is one. There is a solidarity of
+rational and moral interests amongst all intelligences.
+Granting the existence of such beings as the angels
+of Scripture, we should expect them to be profoundly
+concerned in the redeeming work of Christ. They are
+the “watchers” and “holy ones” spoken of by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+later Isaiah and Daniel, whom the Lord has “set upon
+the walls of Jerusalem” and who survey the affairs
+of nations. Such was “the angel who talked” with
+Zechariah in his vision, and whom the prophet overheard
+pleading for Jerusalem. In the Apocalypse,
+again, we find the angels acting as God’s unseen executive.
+We decline to believe that these superhuman
+creatures are nothing more than apocalyptic machinery,
+that they are creations of fancy employed to give a
+livelier aspect to spiritual truth. “Cannot I pray to
+my Father, and He shall presently give me more than
+twelve legions of angels?” So Jesus said, in the most
+solemn hour of His life. And who can forget His tender
+words concerning the little children, whose “angels do
+always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven”?</p>
+
+<p>The apostle Paul, who denounces “worship of the
+angels” in the fellow epistle to this, earnestly believed
+in their existence and their interest in human affairs.
+If he did not write the words of Hebrews i. 14, he
+certainly held that “they are ministering spirits sent
+forth to do service for the sake of them that shall
+inherit salvation.” Most clearly is their relationship
+to the Church affirmed by the words of the revealing
+angel to the apostle John: “I am a fellow-servant with
+thee and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them
+that keep the words of this book.”</p>
+
+<p>Christ’s service is the high school of wisdom for the
+universe. These princes of heaven win by their
+ministry to Christ and His Church a great reward.
+Their intelligence, however lofty its range, is finite.
+Their keen and burning intuition could not penetrate
+the mystery of God’s intentions toward this world.
+The revelations of the latter days—the incarnation, the
+cross, the publication of the gospel, the outpouring of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+the Spirit—were full of surprises to the heavenly
+watchers. They sang at Bethlehem; they hid their
+faces and shrouded heaven in blackness at the sight
+of Calvary. They bent down with eager observation
+and searching thought “desiring to look into” the
+things made known to men (1 Peter i. 12),—close and
+sympathetic students of the Church’s history. The
+apostle felt that there were other eyes bent upon him
+than those of his fellow-men, and that he was acting
+in a grander arena than the visible world. “We are
+a spectacle,” he says, “<i>to angels</i> and to men.” So he
+enjoins faithfulness on Timothy, and with Timothy on
+all who bear the charge of the gospel, “before God and
+Christ Jesus, and the elect angels.” What is public
+opinion, what the applause or derision of the crowd,
+to him who lives and acts in the presence of these
+august spectators?</p>
+
+<p>“Through the Church,” we are told, the angels of
+God are “now” having His “manifold wisdom made
+known” to them. It is not from the abstract scheme
+of salvation, from the theory or theology of the Church
+that they get this education, but through the living
+Church herself. The Saviour’s mission to earth created
+a problem for them, the development of which they
+follow with the most intense and sympathetic interest.
+With what solicitude they watch the conflict between
+good and evil and the varying progress of Christ’s
+kingdom amongst men! Many things, doubtless, that
+engage our attention and fill a large space in our Church
+records, are of little account with them; and much that
+passes in obscurity, names and deeds unchronicled by
+fame, are written in heaven and pondered in other
+spheres. No brave and true blow is struck in Christ’s
+battle, but it has the admiration of these high spectators.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+No advance is made in character and habit, in Christian
+intelligence and efficiency and the application of the
+gospel to human need, but they notice and approve.
+When the cause of the Church and the salvation of
+mankind go forward, when righteousness and peace
+triumph, the morning stars sing together and the sons
+of God shout for joy. The joy that there is in the
+presence of the angels of God over the repenting sinner,
+is not the joy of sympathy or pity only; it is the delight
+of growing wisdom, of deepening insight into the ways
+of God, into the heart of the Father and the love that
+passes knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>One would suppose from what the apostle hints,
+that our world presents a problem unique in the
+kingdom of God, one which raises questions more complicated
+and crucial than have elsewhere arisen. The
+heavenly princedoms are learning through the Church
+“the <i>manifold</i> wisdom of God.” His love, in its pure
+essence, those happy and godlike beings know. They
+have lived for ages in its unclouded light. His power
+and skill they may see displayed in proportions immensely
+grander than this puny globe of ours presents.
+God’s justice, it may be, and the thunders of His law
+have issued forth in other regions clothed with a
+splendour of which the scenes of Sinai were but a faint
+emblem. It is in the combination of the manifold
+principles of the Divine government that the peculiarity
+of the human problem appears to lie. The delicate
+and continuous balancing of forces in God’s plan of
+dealing with this world, the reconciliation of seeming
+incompatibilities, the issue found from positions of
+hopeless contradiction, the accord of goodness with
+severity, of inflexible rectitude and truth with fatherly
+compassion, afford to the greatest minds of heaven
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+a spectacle and a study altogether wonderful. So
+amongst ourselves the child of a noble house, reared
+in cultured ease and shielded from moral peril, in visiting
+the homes of poverty in the crowded city finds a
+new world opened to him, that can teach him Divine
+lessons if he has the heart to learn. His mind is
+awakened, his sympathies enriched. He hears the
+world’s true voice, “the still, sad music of humanity.”
+He measures the heights and depths of man’s nature.
+A host of questions are thrust upon him, whose urgency
+he had scarcely guessed; and wide ranges of truth are
+lighted up for him, which before were distant and
+unreal. The highest have ever to learn from the lowest
+in Christ’s school, the seeming-wise from the simple;
+even the pure and good, from contact with the fallen
+whom they seek to save.</p>
+
+<p>And “the principalities and the powers in the
+heavenly places” are, it seems, willing to learn from
+those below them. As they traced the course of human
+history in those “eternal times” during which the
+mystery lay wrapped in silence, the angel watchers
+were too wise to play the sceptic, too cautious to
+criticize an unfinished plan and arraign a justice they
+could not yet understand. With a dignified patience
+they waited the uplifting of the curtain and the unravelling
+of the entangled plot. They looked for the
+coming of the Promised One. So in due time they
+witnessed and, for their reward, assisted in His manifestation.
+With the same docility these high sharers
+of our theological inquiries still wait to see the end of
+the Lord and to take their part in the dénouement of
+the time-drama, in the revelation of the sons of God.
+Let us copy their long patience. God has not made us
+to mock us. “What thou knowest not now,” said the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+great Revealer, the Master of all mysteries, to His
+disciple, “thou shalt know hereafter.”</p>
+
+<p>These wise elder brothers of ours, rich in the lore of
+eternity, foresee the things to come as we cannot do.
+They are far above the smoke and dust of the earthly
+conflict. The doubts that shake the strongest souls
+amongst us, the cries of the hour which confuse and
+deceive us, do not trouble them. They behold us in
+our weakness, our fears and our divisions; but they
+also look on Him who “sits expecting till His enemies
+are made His footstool.” They see how calmly He
+sits, how patiently expectant, while the sound of clashing
+arms and the rage and tumult of the peoples go up
+from the earth. They mark the steadiness with which
+through century after century, in spite of refluent
+waves, the tide of mercy rises, and still rises on the
+shores of earth. Thrones, systems, civilizations have
+gone down; one after another of the powers that strove
+to crush or to corrupt Christ’s Church has disappeared;
+and still the name of Jesus lives and spreads. It has
+traversed every continent and sea; it stands at the head
+of the living and moving forces of the world. Those
+who come nearest to the angelic point of view, and
+judge of the progress of things not by the froth upon
+the surface but by the trend of the deeper currents, are
+the most confident for the future of our race. The
+kingdom of Satan will not fall without a struggle—a
+last struggle, perhaps more furious than any in the past—but
+it is doomed, and waning to its end. So far has
+the kingdom of Christ advanced, so mightily does the
+word of God grow and prevail in the earth, that faith
+may well assure itself of the promised triumph. Soon
+we shall shout: “Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent
+reigneth!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+III. Suddenly, according to his wont, the apostle
+drops down from the heights of contemplation to the
+level of ordinary fact. He descends in verse 12 from
+the thought of the eternal purpose and the education
+of the angels to the struggling Church. The assurance
+of its life in the Spirit corresponds to the grandeur of
+that Divine order to which it belongs. “In whom,”
+he says—in this Christ, the revealed mystery of ages
+past, the Teacher of angels and archangels—“we have
+our freedom and confident access to God through faith
+in Him.”</p>
+
+<p>If it be “Jesus our Lord” to whom these attributes
+belong, and He is not ashamed of us, well may we
+draw near with <i>confidence</i> to the Father, unashamed in
+the presence of His holy angels. We have no need to
+be abashed, if we approach the Divine Majesty with
+a true faith in Christ. His name gives the sinner
+access to the holiest place. The cherubim sheathe
+their swords of flame. The heavenly warders at this
+passport open the golden gates. We “come unto
+Mount Sion, the city of the living God, and to an
+innumerable company of angels.” Not one of these
+mightinesses and ancient peers of heaven, not Gabriel
+or Michael himself, would wish or dare to bar our
+entrance.</p>
+
+<p>“We <i>have</i> boldness and access,” says the apostle, as
+in chapter i. 7: “We have redemption in His blood.”
+He insists upon the conscious fact. This freedom of
+approach to God, this sonship of faith, is no hope or
+dream of what may be; it is a present reality, a filial
+cry heard in a multitude both of Gentile and Jewish
+hearts (comp. ii. 18).</p>
+
+<p>This sentence exhibits the richness of synonyms
+characteristic of the epistle. There is <i>boldness</i> and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+<i>access</i>, <i>confidence</i> as well as <i>faith</i>. The three former
+terms Bengel nicely distinguishes: “libertatem <i>oris</i> in
+orando,” and “admissionem in fiducia <i>in re</i>, et <i>corde</i>”—freedom
+of <i>speech</i> (in prayer), of <i>status</i>, and of <i>feeling</i>.
+The second word (as in chapter ii. 18 and Romans
+v. 2) appears to be active rather than passive in its
+force, denoting <i>admittance</i> rather than <i>access</i>. So
+that while the former of the parallel terms (<i>boldness</i>)
+describes the liberty with which the new-born Church
+of the redeemed address themselves to God the Father
+and the unchecked freedom of their petitions, the latter
+(<i>admittance</i>) takes us back to the act of Christ by
+which He introduced us to the Father’s presence and
+gave us the place of sons in the house. Being thus
+admitted, we may come with confidence of heart, though
+we be less than the least of saints. Accepted in
+the Beloved, we are within our right if we say to the
+Father:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Yet in Thy Son divinely great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We claim Thy providential care.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Boldly we stand before Thy seat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our Advocate hath placed us there!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Wherefore,” concludes the imprisoned apostle, “I
+beg you not to lose heart at my afflictions for you.”
+Assuredly Paul did not pray that <i>he</i> should not lose
+heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew
+how his friends were fretting and wearying over his
+long captivity. Hence he writes to the Philippians:
+“I would have you know that the things which have
+happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance
+of the gospel.” Hence, too, he assures the
+Colossians earnestly of his joy in suffering for their
+sake (ch. i. 24).</p>
+
+<p>The Church was fearful for Paul’s life and distressed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+by his prolonged sufferings. It missed his cheering
+presence and the inspiration of his voice. But if
+the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this
+letter show, and grounded in His eternal purposes,
+then let all friends of Christ take courage. The ark
+freighted with such fortunes cannot sink. St Paul is
+a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom!
+Every stroke that falls upon him, every day added to
+the months of his imprisonment helps to show the
+worth of the cause he has espoused and gives to it
+increased lustre: “my afflictions for you, which are
+your glory.”</p>
+
+<p>Those that love him should <i>boast</i> rather than grieve
+over his afflictions. “We make our boast in you
+amongst the Churches of God,” he wrote to the distressed
+Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), “for your patience
+and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions”; so
+he would have the Churches think of him. When
+good men suffer in a good cause, it is not matter for
+pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93" id="Footnote_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a>
+See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>
+<a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="section">PRAYER AND PRAISE.</h2>
+
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> iii. 14–21.</h4>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="greek"
+title="To hyperechon tês gnôseôs Christou Iêsou tou Kyriou mou.">
+Τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου μου.</span>—<span class="smcap">Phil.</span> iii. 8.</p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every
+family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you,
+according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with
+power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may
+dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted
+and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the saints
+what is the breadth and length and height and depth.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 14–18.</p></div>
+
+<p>In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle
+was about to offer at the beginning of the chapter,
+when the current of his thoughts carried him away.
+The supplication is offered “for this cause” (vv. 1, 14),—it
+arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages.
+Thinking of all that God has wrought in the Christ,
+and has accomplished by means of His gospel in
+multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling
+them to Himself in one body and forming them together
+into a temple for His Spirit, the apostle bows
+his knees before God on their behalf. So much he
+had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he
+was in act to pray for the Asian Christians that they
+might be enabled to enter into this far-reaching purpose.
+Other aspects of the great design of God rose
+upon the writer’s mind before his prayer could find
+expression. He has told us of his own part in disclosing
+it to the world, and of the interest it excites
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,—thoughts
+full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his
+imprisonment and continued sufferings. These further
+reflections add new meaning to the “For this cause”
+repeated from verse 1.</p>
+
+<p>The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable
+and unique in his epistles than the act of praise
+in chapter i. Addressing himself to God as the Father
+of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will
+endow the readers in a manner corresponding to <i>the
+wealth of His glory</i>—in other words, that the gifts He
+bestows may be worthy of the universal Father, worthy
+of the august character in which God has now revealed
+Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St
+Paul beseeches for the Church, in the first instance, two
+gifts, which after all are one,—viz., <i>the inward strength
+of the Holy Spirit</i> (ver. 16), and <i>the permanent indwelling
+of Christ</i> (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his readers’
+behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings,
+which are also one,—viz., <i>the power to understand
+the Divine plan</i> (ver. 18) as it has been expounded in
+this letter, and so <i>to know the love of Christ</i> (ver. 19).
+Still, beyond these there rises in the distance a further
+end for man and the Church: <i>the reception of the entire
+fulness of God</i>. Human desire and thought thus reach
+their limit; they grasp at the infinite.</p>
+
+<p>In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle’s
+prayer to the end of the eighteenth verse, where it
+arrives at its chief aim and touches the main thought
+of the epistle, expressing the desire that all believers
+may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation
+of Christ in which they participate.</p>
+
+<p>Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul’s
+invocation: “I bow my knees to the Father, of whom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+[not <i>the whole family</i>, but] <i>every family</i> in heaven and
+upon earth is named.” The point of St Paul’s original
+phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek
+word for <i>family</i> (<i>patria</i>) is based on that for <i>father</i>
+(<i>pater</i>). A distinguished father anciently gave his name
+to his descendants; and this paternal name became
+the bond of family or tribal union, and the title which
+ennobled the race. So we have “the sons of Israel,”
+the “sons of Aaron” or “of Korah”; and in Greek
+history, the Atridæ, the Alcmæonidæ, who form a family
+of many kindred households—a <i>clan</i>, or <i>gens</i>, designated
+by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4)
+is described as “being of the house and family [<i>patria</i>]
+of David”; and Jesus is “the Son of David.” Now
+Scripture speaks also of <i>sons of God</i>; and these of two
+chief orders. There are those “in heaven,” who form
+a race distinct from ourselves in origin—divided, it may
+be, amongst themselves into various orders and dwelling
+in their several homes in the heavenly places.</p>
+
+<p>Of these are “the sons of God” whom the Book
+of Job pictures appearing in the Divine court and
+forming a “family in heaven.” When Christ promises
+(Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state
+will be “equal to the angels,” because they are “sons
+of God,” it is implied that the angels are already
+and by birthright sons of God. Hence in Hebrews
+xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as “the festal
+gathering and assembly of <i>the firstborn</i> enrolled in
+heaven.” We, the sons of Adam, with our many
+tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder
+Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes
+our Name-father, and permits us also to call ourselves
+His sons through faith. Thus the Church of believers
+in the Son of God constitutes the “family on earth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+named” from the same Father who gave His name
+to the holy angels, our wise and strong and brilliant
+elder brothers. They and we are alike God’s offspring.
+Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.</p>
+
+<p>This passage gives to God’s Fatherhood the same
+extension that chapter i. 21 has given to Christ’s Lordship.
+Every order of creaturely intelligence acknowledges
+God for the Author of its being, and bows to
+Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God’s name of Father
+the entire wealth of love that streams forth from Him
+through endless ages and unmeasured worlds is hidden;
+and in the name of sons of God there is contained the
+blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be
+asked to give to His needy children upon earth? They
+have newly learnt His name; they are barely recovered
+from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to
+meet temptation. <i>Strength</i> is their first necessity:
+“I bow my knees to the Father of heaven and earth,
+praying that He may grant you, according to the riches
+of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the
+Spirit into your inward man.” The apostle asked them
+in verse 13, in view of the greatness of his own calling,
+to be of good courage on his account; now he entreats
+God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour into
+their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear
+may remain in them. The <i>strengthening</i> of which he
+speaks is the opposite of the <i>faintness of heart</i>, the
+failure of courage deprecated in verse 13. Using the
+same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians “Quit
+themselves like men, <i>be strong</i>” (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He
+desires for the Asian believers a manful heart, the
+strength that meets battle and danger without quailing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We
+are to be “strengthened <i>with</i> [or <i>by</i>] <i>power</i>,”—by
+“the power” of God “working in us” (ver. 20), the
+very same “power, exceeding great,” that raised Jesus
+our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman
+might of God operating in men is always referred to
+the Holy Spirit: “by power made strong,” he says,
+“<i>through the Spirit</i>.” Nothing is more familiar in
+Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit
+of God as the source of moral strength. The special
+power that belongs to the gospel Christ ascribes altogether
+to this cause. “Ye shall receive power,” He
+said to His disciples, “after that the Holy Spirit is
+come upon you.” Hence is derived the vigour of a
+strong faith, the valour of the good soldier of Christ
+Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and
+indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers
+for righteousness’ sake. There is a great truth expressed
+when we describe a brave and enterprising man as
+a <i>man of spirit</i>. All high and commanding qualities
+of soul come from this invisible source. They are
+inspirations. In the human will, with its <i>vis vivida</i>, its
+elasticity and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved
+purpose, is the highest type of force and the image of
+the almighty Will. When that will is animated and
+filled with “the Spirit,” the man so possessed is the
+embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle,
+hope and constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure
+and pain,—all the elements of a noble courage are
+proper to the man of the Spirit. Such power is not
+neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under
+their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories.
+“My grace is sufficient for thee,” said Christ
+to His disabled servant; “for power is perfected in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+weakness.” In privation and loneliness, in old age
+and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human
+spirit shines with its purest lustre. Never did St Paul
+rise to such a height of moral ascendency as at the
+time when he was “smitten down” and all but destroyed
+by persecution and affliction. “That the excellency
+of the power,” he says, “may be of God, and not from
+ourselves” (2 Cor. iv. 7–11).</p>
+
+<p>The apostle points to “the inner man” as the seat
+of this invigoration, thinking perhaps of its secrecy.
+While the world buffets and dismays the Christian,
+new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The
+surface waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but
+there opens in the heart a spring fed by the river of
+life proceeding from the throne of God. Beneath the
+toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition
+of the prisoner Paul—a mark for the world’s scorn—there
+lives a strength of thought and will mightier than
+the empire of the Cæsars, a power of the Spirit that
+is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent
+power dwelling in the Church of God, the
+apostle prays that every one of his readers may
+partake.</p>
+
+<p>II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance
+identical with it, is the second: “that the Christ may
+make His dwelling through faith in your hearts.”
+Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17.
+Christ’s residence in the heart is to be viewed neither
+as the result, nor the antecedent of the strength given
+by the Spirit to the inward man: the two are simultaneous;
+they are the same things seen in a varying
+light.</p>
+
+<p>We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian
+thought which marks the doxology of chapter i.,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+and other leading passages in this
+epistle.<a name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>
+The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the
+object of the apostle’s devout supplication.</p>
+
+<p>As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears
+emphasis and conveys the point of St Paul’s entreaty;
+he asks that “the Christ may <i>take up His abode</i>,—may
+<i>settle</i> in your hearts.” The word signifies to <i>set up one’s
+house</i> or <i>make one’s home</i> in a place, by way of contrast
+with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19).
+The same verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ
+“<i>dwells</i> all the fulness of the Godhead”; and in
+Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in the same tense as
+here, how it was God’s “pleasure that all the fulness
+should <i>make its dwelling</i> in Him” now raised from the
+dead, who had emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil
+the purpose of the Father’s love. So it is desired that
+Christ should take His seat within us. He is never
+again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a
+doubtful and disputed footing in the house. Let the
+Master come in, and claim His own. Let Him become
+the heart’s fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him, if
+He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within
+us and there rest in His love. For He promised: “If
+any man love me, my Father will love him; and we will
+come unto him, and make our abode with him.”</p>
+
+<p>And “<i>the</i> Christ,” not Christ alone. Why does the
+apostle say this? There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found
+elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_95" id="FNanchor_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a>
+The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something beyond that
+possession of Christ which belongs to every true Christian,—more
+even than the permanence and certainty of
+this indwelling indicated by the verb. “The Christ”
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+is Christ in the significance of His <i>name</i>. It is Christ
+not only possessed, but understood,—Christ realized
+in the import of His work, in the light of His relationship
+to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is
+the Christ of the Church and the ages—known and
+accepted for all this—that St Paul would fain have
+dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile disciples.
+He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension
+of the greatness of the Redeemer’s person
+and offices; he longs to have their minds possessed
+by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.</p>
+
+<p><i>The heart</i>, in the language of the Bible, never denotes
+the emotional nature by itself. The antithesis of “heart
+and head,” the divorce of feeling and understanding in
+our modern speech is foreign to Scripture. The heart
+is our interior, conscious self—thought, feeling, will in
+their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill
+and rule the whole heart,—a Christ who is the Lord of
+the intellect, the Light of the reason, no less than the
+Master of the feelings and desires.</p>
+
+<p>The difference in significance between “Christ” or
+“Christ Jesus” and “the Christ” in such a sentence
+as this, is not unlike the difference between “Queen
+Victoria” and “the Queen.” The latter phrase brings
+Her Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour
+of her Queenship. We think of her vast dominion, of
+her line of royal and famous ancestry, of her beneficent
+and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to
+apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the
+breadth of His humanity, in the plenitude of His nature
+and His powers. And this is the object to which the
+teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches
+at the present time are directed. Understanding in
+this larger sense the indwelling of the Christ for which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+he prays, we see how naturally his supplication
+expands into the “height and depth” of the ensuing
+verse.</p>
+
+<p>But however large the mental conception of Christ
+that St Paul desires to impart to us, it is to be grasped
+“through faith.” All real understanding and appropriation
+of Christ, the simplest and the most advanced,
+come by this channel,—through the faith of the heart
+in which knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one
+act of trustful apprehension of the truth concerning
+Jesus Christ by which the soul commits itself to
+Him.</p>
+
+<p>How much is contained in this petition of the apostle
+that we need to ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus
+dwells now as then in the hearts of all who love Him.
+But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how
+poor a Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul’s
+experience! how slight and empty a word is His name
+to multitudes of those who bear it! If men have once
+attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of
+their interest in His atonement and their right to hope
+for eternal life through Him, their minds are at rest.
+They have accepted Christ and received what He has
+to give them; they turn their attention to other things.
+They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They
+have other mental interests,—scientific, literary, political
+or industrial; but the knowledge of Christ has no
+intellectual attraction for them. With St Paul’s
+passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind
+to “know Him,” these complacent believers have no
+sympathy whatever. This, they think, belongs only
+to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of religious
+genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as
+a subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+and disastrous neglect, leave the study of Christian
+doctrine to the ministry. The Christ cannot take His
+due place in His people’s heart, He will not reveal to
+them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little
+and care to know so little of Him. How many can be
+found, outside the ranks of the ordained, that make
+a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to meditate on
+Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man
+of affairs is there who will spare an hour each day
+from his other gains “for the excellency of the knowledge
+of Christ Jesus my Lord”?—“If at the present
+time the religious life of the Church is languid, and
+if in its enterprises there is little of audacity and
+vehemence, a partial explanation is to be found in
+that decline of intellectual interest in the contents of
+the Christian Faith which has characterized the last
+hundred or hundred and fifty years of our
+history.”<a name="FNanchor_96" id="FNanchor_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the
+mind without limit. St Paul, who knew so much, for
+that reason felt that all he had attained was but in the
+bud and beginning. “The Christ” is a subject infinite
+as nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged
+apprehension of Him, the heart enlarges in capacity
+and moral power. Not unfrequently, the study of
+Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered
+men, to men whose mind before their conversion was
+dull and uninformed, an intellectual quality, a power of
+discernment and apprehension that trained scholars
+might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship
+with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+are sustained, that the apostle first asked from God
+on behalf of his anxious Gentile friends.</p>
+
+<p>III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul
+were concerned only for the individual needs of those
+to whom he writes and their personal advancement in
+the new life. But it is otherwise. <i>The Church</i> fills his
+mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed
+on our attention. This is God’s holy temple and the
+habitation of His Spirit; it is the body in which Christ
+dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The Church is
+the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it
+the angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons
+of God’s wisdom. Round this centre the apostle’s
+intercession must needs revolve. When he asks for
+his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship
+with Christ, it is in order that they may be the
+better able to enter into the Church’s life and to
+apprehend God’s great designs for mankind.</p>
+
+<p>This object so much absorbs the writer’s thoughts
+and has been so constantly in view from the outset,
+that it does not occur to him, in verse 18, to say precisely
+<i>what</i> that is whose “breadth and length and
+height and depth” the readers are to measure. The
+vast building stands before us and needs not to be
+named; we have only not to look away from it, not to
+forget what we have been reading all this time. It
+is <i>God’s plan for the world in Christ</i>; it is the purpose
+of the ages realized in the building of His Church.
+This conception was so impressive to the original
+readers and has held their attention so closely since
+the apostle unfolded it in the course of the second
+chapter, that they would have no difficulty in supplying
+the ellipsis which has given so much trouble to the
+commentators since.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+If we are asked to interpret the four several
+magnitudes that are assigned to this building of God,
+we may say with Hofmann<a name="FNanchor_97" id="FNanchor_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>:
+“It stretches <i>wide</i> over all the world of the nations, east and west. In
+its <i>length</i>, it reaches through all time unto the end
+of things. In <i>depth</i>, it penetrates to the region where
+the faithful sleep in death [comp. iv. 9]. And it rises
+to heaven’s <i>height</i>, where Christ lives.” In the like
+strain Bernardine à Piconio, most genial and spiritual
+of Romanist interpreters: “<i>Wide</i> as the furthest limits
+of the inhabited world, <i>long</i> as the ages of eternity
+through which God’s love to His people will endure,
+<i>deep</i> as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He has
+raised us, <i>high</i> as the throne of Christ in the heavens
+where He has placed us.” Such is the commonwealth
+to which we belong, such the dimensions of this city
+of God built on the foundation of the apostles,—“that
+lieth four-square.”</p>
+
+<p>Do we not need to be <i>strong</i>—to “gain full strength,”
+as the apostle prays, in order to grasp in its substance
+and import this immense revelation and to handle it
+with practical effect? Narrowness is feebleness. The
+greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches
+the greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm
+spiritual faith, a far-seeing intelligence, and a charity
+broad as the love of Christ to comprehend this mystery.
+From many believing eyes it is still hidden. Alas
+for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements!
+alas for the materialism that infects our Church theories,
+and that limits God’s free grace and the sovereign
+action of His Spirit to visible channels and ministrations
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+“wrought by hand.” Those who call themselves
+Churchmen and Catholics contradict the titles they
+boast when they bar out their loyal Christian brethren
+from the covenant rights of faith, when they deny
+churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ
+as warm and fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure
+and saving, a discipline at least as faithful as their own.
+Who are we that we dare to forbid those who are
+doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because
+they follow not with us? When we are fain to pull
+down every building of God that does not square with
+our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend
+“what is the breadth!”</p>
+
+<p>We draw close about us the walls of Christ’s wide
+house, as if to confine Him in our single chamber.
+We call our particular communion “the Church,” and
+the rest “the sects”; and disfranchise, so far as our
+word and judgement go, a multitude of Christ’s freemen
+and God’s elect, our fellow-citizens in the New
+Jerusalem—saints, some of them, whose feet we well
+might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church
+theory that leads to such results as these, that condemns
+Nonconformists to be strangers in the House of God,
+is self-condemned. It will perish of its own chillness
+and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the
+doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist
+or Presbyterian legitimacy, are in feeling and practice
+more catholic than in their creed.</p>
+
+<p>“With <i>all</i> the saints” the Asian Christians are called
+to enter into St Paul’s wider view of God’s work in
+the world. For this is a collective idea, to be shared
+by many minds and that should sway all Christian
+hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity
+that St Paul wants his readers to understand, its mission
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+to save humanity and to reconstruct the world for a
+temple of God. This is a calling for <i>all the saints</i>; but
+only for <i>saints</i>,—for men devoted to God and renewed
+by His Spirit. It was “revealed to His <i>holy</i> apostles
+and prophets” (ver. 5); and it needs men of the same
+quality for its bearers and interpreters.</p>
+
+<p>But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy
+and aim is that stated at the beginning of the verse,
+thrown forward there with an emphasis that almost
+does violence to grammar: “in love being fast rooted
+and grounded.” Where Christ dwells abidingly in the
+heart, love enters with Him and becomes the ground
+of our nature, the basis on which our thought and
+action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. <i>Love</i>
+is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all
+Churches, the man to whom Christ is all things and
+in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike man,
+loves him and counts him a brother.</p>
+
+<p>When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and
+penetrates to their depths, we shall have strength to
+shake off our prejudices, strength to master our intellectual
+difficulties and limitations. We shall have the
+courage to adopt Christ’s simple rule of fellowship:
+“Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in
+heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94" id="Footnote_94"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a>
+See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4–6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95" id="Footnote_95"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a>
+See pp. 47, 83, 169.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96" id="Footnote_96"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a>
+<i>Lectures on Ephesians</i>, pp. 235–8. No one who has read Dr.
+R. W. Dale’s noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same
+subject without being deeply in his debt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97" id="Footnote_97"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a>
+<i>Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser</i>, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those
+writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often
+differ from him as agree with him.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h4>KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong
+to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
+height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
+that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 17–19.</p></div>
+
+<p>We were compelled to pause before reaching the
+end of the apostle’s comprehensive prayer.
+But we must not let slip the thread of its connexion.
+Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of
+verse 18. The catholic love which embraces “all the
+saints” and “comprehends” in its wide dimensions
+the extent of the Redeemer’s kingdom, admits us to
+a deeper knowledge of Christ’s own love. The breadth
+and length, the height and depth of the work of Christ
+in men and the ages give us a worthier conception
+of the love that inspired and sustains it. “In the
+Church” at once “and in Christ Jesus” God’s glory
+is revealed. Our Church views react upon our views
+of Christ and our sense of His love. Bigotry and
+exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart
+towards Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows
+our apprehensions of the Divine grace.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>I. St Paul prays that we may “<i>know</i> [not <i>comprehend</i>]
+the love of Christ”; for it “passes knowledge.”
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+Amongst the Greek words denoting mental
+activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in
+the acquisition rather than possession—<i>getting to know</i>.
+Hence it is rightly, and often used of things Divine
+that “we know in part,” our knowledge of which falls
+short of the reality while it is growing up to it. Thus
+understood, the contradiction of the apostle’s wish
+disappears. We know the unknowable, just as we
+“clearly see the invisible things of God” (Rom. i. 20).
+The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our
+observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches
+apprehension, each discovery revealing depths
+within it unperceived before. Such was the knowledge
+of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the Philippians
+the aged apostle writes: “I do not reckon myself to
+have apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the
+past; I press on eagerly to the goal. I have but one
+object in view and sacrifice everything for it,—that I
+may <i>win Christ</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more
+wonderful and past finding out than His love. For
+nigh thirty years Paul has been living in daily fellowship
+with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and
+all the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension:
+he cannot understand it yet! At this moment
+it amazes him more than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Great as the Christian community is, and large as
+the place and part assigned to it by this epistle, that
+is still finite and a creation of time. The apostle’s
+doctrine of the Church is not beyond the comprehension
+of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened.
+But though we had followed him so far and had well
+and truly apprehended the mystery he has revealed
+to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us. Our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+principles of judgement and standards of comparison
+fail us when applied to this subject. Human love has
+in many instances displayed heroic qualities; it can
+rise to a divine height of purity and tenderness; but
+its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the side
+of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but
+shows poor and dull compared with the reality; no
+eloquence lavished upon it but lowers the theme. Our
+logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold
+it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes
+from all our definitions. Those who know the world
+best, who have ranged through history and philosophy
+and the life of living men and have measured most
+generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled
+with a wondering reverence when they come to know
+the love of Christ. “Never man spake like this man,”
+said one; but verily never man loved like Jesus Christ.
+He expects to be loved more than father or mother;
+for His love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe
+His love, nor delineate its features as Paul saw them
+when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels, and
+behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and
+watch at the cross. Then if the eyes of your heart
+are open, you will see the great sight—the love that
+passeth knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+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 principalities,—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”?</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>need</i> 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 ambassador 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.</p>
+
+<p>II. The <i>love of Christ</i> connects together, in the
+apostle’s thoughts, <i>the greatness of the Church</i> and <i>the
+fulness of God</i>. The two former conceptions—Christ’s
+love and the Church’s greatness—go together in our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+minds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the
+realization of the last.</p>
+
+<p>The “fulness [<i>pleroma</i>] of God,” 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 God 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 God.”</p>
+
+<p>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 God.”
+When we have received all that God has to give in
+Christ, when the community of men is once more a
+family of God 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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>all</i> the fulness,” he
+thinks of other elements of revelation in which we are
+to participate. God’s <i>wisdom</i>, His <i>truth</i>, His <i>righteousness</i>,
+along with His <i>love</i> in its manifold forms,—all
+the qualities that, in one word, go to make up His
+<i>holiness</i>, are communicable and belong to the image
+stamped by the Holy Spirit on the nature of God’s
+children. “Ye shall be holy, for I am holy” is God’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).</p>
+
+<p>While the holiness of God gathers up into one
+stream of white radiance the revelation of His character,
+“the fulness of God” 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 surpassing all,—these
+objects of the soul’s desire issue from the
+fulness of God; and they lead us in pursuing them,
+like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal
+Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+Christ, when He has “put down all rule and authority,”
+will at last “yield it up to His God and Father”; and
+“the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put
+all things under Him, that God 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 God
+which is life eternal.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>St Paul is conscious of the extreme boldness of
+the prayer he has just uttered. But he protests that,
+instead of going beyond God’s purposes, it falls short
+of them. This assurance 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:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Now unto Him that is able to do above all things,—<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, far exceedingly beyond what we ask or think,—<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">According to the power that worketh in us:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unto all generations of the age of the ages.—Amen!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i24">(vv. 20, 21).<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Praise soars higher than prayer. When St Paul
+has reached in supplication the summit of his desires,
+he sees the plenitude of God’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. God’s giving surpasses
+immeasurably our thought and asking; but there must
+be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. He
+puts always more into our hand and better things than
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+we expected—when the expectant hand is reached out
+to Him.</p>
+
+<p>Man’s desires will never overtake God’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 debasement, should enter into these
+exalted notions of yours about Christ and the Church
+and should be filled with the fulness of God! 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 noble” amongst them, some
+of them before their conversion stained with infamous
+vices. Who is to make saints and godlike men out of
+such human refuse as this! But “with God,” as Jesus
+said, “all things are possible.” <i>Fæx urbis, lux orbis</i>:
+“the scum of the city is made the light of the world!”
+The force at work upon the minds of these degraded
+pagans—slaves, thieves, prostitutes, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+disciples anticipate 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 surpassed the utmost that the Church
+asked or thought.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s reliance is not upon the “ability” alone,
+upon the abstract omnipotence of God. The force
+upon which he counts is lodged in the Church, and is
+in visible and constant operation. “According to the
+power <i>that worketh in us</i>” 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 God 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+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. God 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 God. 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!</p>
+
+<p>In such measure, then, shall glory be to God “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 God 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 God’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 God.”
+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 God a
+dimmed and partial glory. “With one accord, with
+one mouth” we are called to “glorify the God and
+Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Wherefore the
+apostle bids us “receive one another, as Christ also
+received us, to the glory of God” (Rom. xv. 6, 7).</p>
+
+<p>The Church, being the creation of God’s love in
+Christ and the receptacle of His communicative fulness,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+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
+God’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 multitude,
+and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of
+mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our
+God, the Almighty reigneth!” Each soul new-born
+into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make
+up the multitudinous harmony of the Church’s praise
+to God.</p>
+
+<p>Nor does the Church by herself alone render this
+praise and honour unto God. The display of God’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:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be blessing and honour and glory and dominion—<br /></span>
+<span class="i24">For ever and ever.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+But the Church is the centre of this tribute of the
+universe to God and to His Christ.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Church and Christ Jesus</i> 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 God. “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 God 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 God.</p>
+
+<p>The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ
+and His Church is expressed by a cumulative phrase
+in keeping with the tenor of the passage 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 God’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 God’s
+praise may resound in the Church “unto <i>all generations</i>,”
+he no longer supposes that the mystery of
+God 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”
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+of the kingdom of God, 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.</p>
+
+<p>The end comes: God is all in all. At this furthest
+horizon of thought, Christ and His own are seen
+together rendering to God unceasing glory.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>
+<a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="section"><a name="THE_EXHORTATION" id="THE_EXHORTATION"></a>THE EXHORTATION.</h2>
+
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> iv. 1—vi. 20.</h4>
+
+<h3 class="section">ON CHURCH LIFE.</h3>
+
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> iv. 1–16.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+<p>“It is good we return unto the ancient bond of unity in the Church
+of God, which was <i>one faith</i>, <i>one baptism</i>, and not <i>one hierarchy</i>, <i>one
+discipline</i>; and that we observe the league of Christians, as it was
+penned by our Saviour Christ, which is in substance of doctrine this:
+<i>He that is not with us is against us</i>; and in things indifferent and but
+of circumstance this: <i>He that is not against us is with us</i>.”—<span class="smcap">Lord
+Bacon</span>: <i>Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and
+Edification of the Church of England</i>, addressed to King James I.</p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem">“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.<br />
+<span class="i12">“There is one body, and one Spirit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">One Lord, one faith, one baptism,<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">One God and Father of all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Who is over all, and through all, and in all.”<br /></span>
+<span class="ref"><span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 1–6.<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 God 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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+thread of devotion; and the smooth flow of the epistle
+breaks ever and again into the music of thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>the</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>His first and main appeal to the Asian brethren, as
+we should expect from the previous tenor of the letter,
+is an exhortation to <i>unity</i>. 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 God” (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.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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—</p>
+
+<p>(1) <i>A due sense of the dignity of our Christian calling</i>:
+“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?”</p>
+
+<p>(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of
+unity comes <i>ambition</i>: “Walk with all lowliness of
+mind and meekness,” he continues. Between the low-minded
+and the lowly-minded there is a total difference.
+The man <i>of lowly mind</i> habitually feels his
+dependence as a creature and his unworthiness as a
+sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a
+wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his
+temper and motives.—The <i>meek</i> man thinks as little of
+his personal claims, as the humble man of his personal
+merits. He is willing to give place to others where
+higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+room and to be in men’s eyes of no account. How
+many seeds of strife and roots of bitterness would be
+destroyed, if this mind were in us all. Self-importance,
+the love of office and power and the craving for applause
+must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the
+unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.</p>
+
+<p>(3) When St Paul adds “with longsuffering, forbearing
+one another in love,” he is opposing a cause
+of division quite different from the last,—to wit, <i>impatience
+and resentfulness</i>. A high Christian ideal and
+a strict self-judgement will render us more sensitive to
+wrong-doing in the world around us. Unless tempered
+with abundant charity, they may lead to harsh and
+one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to condemn,
+are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness.
+Humbleness and meekness are choice graces of the
+Spirit. But they are self-regarding virtues at the best,
+and may be found in a cold nature that has little of
+the patience which bears with men’s infirmities, of the
+sympathetic insight that discovers the good often lying
+close to their faults. “Above all things”—above
+kindness, meekness, longsuffering, forgivingness—“put
+on love, which is the bond of perfectness”
+(Col. iii. 14). Love is the last word of St Paul’s
+definition of the Christian temper in verse 2; it is the
+sum and essence of all that makes for Christian unity.
+In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter
+provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse,—offences
+that must needs arise in the purest
+society composed of infirm and sinful men. “Bind thyself
+to thy brother. Those who are bound together in
+love, bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and
+him to thee. Both are in thy power; for whomsoever
+I will, I may easily make my friend” (Chrysostom).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+Verses 1–3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of
+the Church is to be maintained. Verses 4–6 set forth
+the basis upon which it rests. This passage is a brief
+summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the “foundation
+of the apostles and prophets” asserted in
+chapter ii. 20,—the groundwork of “every building”
+in God’s holy temple, the foundation upon which Paul’s
+Gentile readers, along with the Jewish saints, were
+growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven
+elements of unity St Paul enumerates: one <i>body</i>, <i>Spirit</i>,
+<i>hope</i>; one <i>Lord</i>, <i>faith</i> and <i>baptism</i>; one <i>God and Father
+of all</i>. They form a chain stretching from the Church
+on earth to the throne and being of the universal
+Father in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Closely considered, we find that the seven unities
+resolve themselves into three, centring in the names
+of the Divine Trinity—the Spirit, the Lord, and the
+Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied
+by two kindred uniting elements; while the one God
+and Father, placed alone, in Himself forms a threefold
+bond to His creatures—by His sovereign power, pervasive
+action, and immanent presence: “Who is over
+all, and through all, and in all” (comp. i. 23).</p>
+
+<p>The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests
+that they belonged to some apostolic Christian song.
+Other passages in Paul’s later epistles betray the same
+character;<a name="FNanchor_98" id="FNanchor_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a>
+and we know from chapter v. 19 and
+Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already
+rich in psalmody. This epistle shows that St Paul
+was touched with the poetic as well as the prophetical
+afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we
+see no reason why he should not, like Luther and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+Wesleys afterwards, have taught them to do so by
+giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith in
+“hymns and spiritual songs.” These lines, we could
+fancy, belonged to some chant sung in the Christian
+assemblies; they form a brief metrical creed, the confession
+of the Church then and in all ages.</p>
+
+<p>I. <i>One body</i> there is, <i>and one Spirit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus
+Christ formed a single body, the same in all essentials
+of religion, sharply distinguished from their Jewish and
+their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions
+now existing amongst Christians are vastly greater
+and more numerous, and the boundaries between the
+Church and the world at many points are much less
+visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together
+those “who profess and call themselves Christians”
+throughout the world. As against the multitudes of
+heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and Mohammedan
+rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and
+agnostics and all deniers of the Lord, we are “one
+body,” and should feel and act as one.</p>
+
+<p>In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming
+forces and horrible evils of Paganism, the servants of
+Christ intensely realize their unity; they see how
+trifling in comparison are the things that separate the
+Churches, and how precious and deep are the things
+that Christians hold in common. It may need the
+pressure of some threatening outward force, the sense
+of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence
+our contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to
+fall into line and present to the enemy a united
+front. If the unity of believers in Christ—their oneness
+of worship and creed, of moral ideal and discipline—is
+hard to discern through the variety of human
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+forms and systems and the confusion of tongues that
+prevails, yet the unity is there to be discerned; and
+it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It is
+visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the
+primitive creeds, in the large measure of correspondence
+between the different Church standards of the
+Protestant communions, in our common Christian literature,
+in the numerous alliances and combinations, local
+and general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary
+objects, in the increasing and auspicious comity of the
+Churches. The nearer we get to the essentials of
+truth and to the experience of living Christian men,
+the more we realize the existence of one body in the
+scattered limbs and innumerable sects of Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>There is “one body and one Spirit”: one body
+because, and so far as there is one Spirit. What is it
+constitutes the unity of our physical frame? Outward
+attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing.
+What I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is
+no part of <i>me</i>, any more than if it were in another
+planet. The clothes I wear take the body’s shape;
+they partake of its warmth and movement; they give
+its outward presentment. They are not of the body for
+all this. But the fingers that clasp, the lips that touch,
+the limbs that move and glow beneath the raiment,—these
+are the body itself; and everything belongs to it,
+however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable,
+nay, however diseased and burdensome, that is
+vitally connected with it. The life that thrills through
+nerve and artery, <i>the spirit</i> that animates with one
+will and being the whole framework and governs its
+ten thousand delicate springs and interlacing cords,—it
+is this that makes <i>one body</i> of an otherwise inert and
+decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit depart, it is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of
+Christ, and its members in particular. Am I a living,
+integral part of the Church, quickened by its Spirit? or
+do I belong only to the raiment and the furniture that are
+about it? “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ,
+he is none of His.”</p>
+
+<p>He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place
+within His body. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative,
+sociable spirit. The child of God seeks out
+his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and
+sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body.
+By an instinct of its life, the new-born soul forms
+bonds of attachment for itself to the Christian souls
+nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in
+God’s dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community
+through which it received spiritual life and that
+travailed for its birth claim it by a parental right that
+may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced
+without loss and peril.</p>
+
+<p>Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing,
+formative principle, it finds or makes for itself a body.
+Let no man say: I have the spirit of religion; I can
+dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men;
+I prefer to walk with God.—God will not walk with
+men who do not care to walk with His people. He
+“loved the world”; and we must love it, or we displease
+Him. “This commandment have we from Him,
+that he who loves God love his brother also.”</p>
+
+<p>The oneness of communion amongst the people of
+Christ is governed by a unity of aim: “Even as also
+you were called in <i>one hope</i> of your calling.” Our
+fellowship has an object to realize, our calling a prize
+to win. All Christian organization is directed to a
+practical end. The old Pagan world fell to pieces
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+because it was “without hope”; its golden age was in
+the past. No society can endure that lives upon its
+memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its
+privileges. Nothing holds men together like work and
+hope. This gives energy, purpose, progress to the
+fellowship of Christian believers. In this imperfect
+and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race
+still in bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for
+any purpose that does not bear on human improvement
+and salvation. The Church of Christ is a society for
+the abolition of sin and death. That this will be
+accomplished, that God’s will shall be done on earth
+as in heaven, is <i>the hope of our calling</i>. To this
+hope we “were called” by the first summons of the
+gospel. “Repent,” it cried, “for the kingdom of
+heaven is at hand!”</p>
+
+<p>For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity
+holds out a splendid crown of life. It promises our
+complete restoration to the image of God, the redemption
+of the body with the spirit from death, and our
+entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in
+heaven. This hope, shared by us in common and
+affecting all the interests and relationships of daily life,
+is the ground of our communion. The Christian hope
+supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature
+in her most exalted forms,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all their moral being.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master
+and servants, happy the circle of friends who live and
+work together as “joint-heirs of the grace of life.”
+Well says Calvin here:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> “If this thought were fixed
+in our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of
+God may no more quarrel than the kingdom of heaven
+can be divided, how much more careful we should be
+in cultivating brotherly goodwill! What a dread we
+should have of dissensions, if we considered, as we
+ought to do, that those who separate from their
+brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God.”</p>
+
+<p>But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind,—nay,
+for the entire universe. We labour for the regeneration
+of humanity. “We look for a new heavens
+and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;” for the
+actual gathering into one in Christ of all things in
+all worlds, as they are already gathered in God’s
+eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal salvation
+that we had to seek, Christian communion might
+appear to be an optional thing, and the Church no more
+than a society for mutual spiritual benefit. But seen
+in this larger light, Church membership is of the
+essence of our calling. As children of the household
+of faith, we are heirs to its duties with its possessions.
+We cannot escape the obligations of our spiritual any
+more than of our natural birth. One Spirit dwelling
+in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all
+our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the
+fellowship of Christ? This hope of our calling it is
+our calling to breathe into the dead world. Its virtue
+alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age.
+From the fountain of God’s love in Christ springing
+up in the heart of the Church, there shall pour forth</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“One common wave of thought and joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lifting mankind again!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>II. The first group of unities leads us to the second.
+If one Spirit dwells within us, it is <i>one Lord</i> who reigns
+over us. We have one hope to work for; it is because
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+we have <i>one faith</i> to live by. A common fellowship
+implies a common creed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth
+in this list of unities, between hope and faith, between
+the Spirit and the Father. He is the centre of centres,
+the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the Christ in the
+midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity
+with God and with our fellow-men. We find in Him
+the fulcrum of the forces that are raising the world, the
+corner-stone of the temple of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>But let us mark that it is the one <i>Lord</i> in whom we
+find our unity. To think of Him as Saviour only is
+to treat Him as a means to an end. It is to make
+ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret
+of much of the isolation and sectarianism of modern
+Churches. Individualism is the negation of Church
+life. Men value Christ for what they can get from
+Him for themselves. They do not follow Him and
+yield themselves up to Him, for the sake of what He
+is. “Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and
+I will give you rest”: they listen willingly so far. But
+when He goes on to say “Take my yoke upon you,”
+their ears are deaf. There is a subtle self-seeking and
+self-pleasing even in the way of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection
+for the Church, the indifference to all Christian interests
+beyond the personal and local, which is worse than
+strife; for it is death to the body of Christ. The
+name of the “one Lord” silences party clamours and
+rebukes the voices that cry, “I am of Apollos, I of
+Cephas.” It recalls loiterers and stragglers to the
+ranks. It bids each of us, in his own station of life
+and his own place in the Church, serve the common
+cause without sloth and without ambition.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+Christ’s Lordship over us for life and death is signified
+by our <i>baptism</i> in His name. We have received,
+most of us in infancy through our parents’ reverent
+care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ. The
+baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from
+His apostles, has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this
+be in vain? Or do you now, by the faith of your
+heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith of
+your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf?
+If so, your faith saves you. Your obedience is at once
+accepted by the Lord to whom it is tendered; and the
+sign of God’s redemption of the race which greeted you
+at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance
+and worth. It is the seal upon your brow,
+now stamped upon your heart, of your eternal covenant
+with Christ.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the seal of a <i>corporate</i> life in Him. Christian
+baptism is no private transaction; it attests no
+mere secret vow passing between the soul and its
+Saviour. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized <i>into
+one body</i>, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or
+free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor.
+xii. 13). Our baptism is the sign of a common faith
+and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His
+Church.</p>
+
+<p><i>One</i> baptism there has been through all the ages
+since the ascending Lord said to His disciples: “Go,
+make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into
+the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
+Holy Spirit.” The ordinance has been administered
+in different ways and under varying regulations; but
+with few exceptions, it has been observed from the
+beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment
+of the word of Christ, and in acknowledgement of His
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+dominion. Those who insist on the sole validity of
+this or that mode or channel of administration, recognize
+at least the intention of Churches baptizing otherwise
+than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing
+His name; and so far admit that there is in
+truth “one baptism.” Wherever Christ’s sacraments
+are observed with a true faith, they serve as visible
+tokens of His rule.</p>
+
+<p>In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for
+men, and for all creatures. Our fellowship in the faith
+of Christ is deep as the nature of God; its blessedness
+rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal as His
+power.</p>
+
+<p>III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains.
+Add to our fellowship in the one Spirit and confession
+of the one Lord, our adoption by the <i>one God and Father
+of all</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was
+a new and marvellous thought. “Great is Artemis
+of the Ephesians,” they had been used to shout; or
+haply, “Great is Aphrodité of the Pergamenes,” or
+“Bacchus of the Philadelphians.” Great they knew
+was “Jupiter Best and Greatest” of conquering Rome;
+and great the <i>numen</i> of the Cæsar, to which everywhere
+in this rich and servile province shrines were rising.
+Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering
+hill had its local <i>genius</i> or <i>daimon</i>, requiring worship
+and sacrificial honours. Every office and occupation,
+every function in life—navigation, midwifery, even
+thieving—was under the patronage of its special deity.
+These petty godships by their number and rivalries
+distracted the pious heathen with continual fear lest one
+or other of them might not have received due observance.</p>
+
+<p>With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+of “the one God and Father” rose above this
+vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley deities—some
+gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed
+beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness—which
+filled the imagination of the Græco-Asiatic
+pagans. What rest there was for the mind, what peace
+and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities
+to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!</p>
+
+<p>Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as
+tribute-payers, and needing to be served by human
+hands. He is the Father of men, pitying us as His
+children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our
+God is no local divinity, to be honoured here but not
+there, tied to His temple and images and priestly
+mediators; but the “one God and Father of all, who is
+above all, and through all, and in all.” This was the
+very God whom the logic of Greek thought and the
+practical instincts of Roman law and empire blindly
+sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to
+the people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst
+the nations to bear His light. At last He declared His
+full name and purpose to the world in Jesus Christ.
+So the gods many and lords many have had their day.
+By His manifestation the idols are utterly abolished.
+The proclamation of one God and Father signifies the
+gathering of men into one family of God. The one
+religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.</p>
+
+<p>God is <i>over all</i>, gathering all worlds and beings under
+the shadow of His beneficent dominion. He is <i>through
+all</i>, and <i>in all</i>: an Omnipresence of love, righteousness
+and wisdom, actuating the powers of nature and of
+grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men.
+You need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in
+Him, you are yourself His temple.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98" id="Footnote_98"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a>
+See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii.
+11–13.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith: ‘When He ascended
+on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.’ Now this,
+‘He ascended,’ what is it but that He also descended into the lower parts
+of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far
+above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He gave some
+<i>to be</i> apostles; and some, prophets; and some evangelists; and some,
+pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints for work of ministration,
+for the building up of the body of Christ.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 7–12.</p></div>
+
+<p>In verse 7 the apostle passes from the unities of the
+Church to its diversities, from the common foundation
+of the Christian life to the variety presented in its
+superstructure. “To each single one of us was the
+grace given.” The great gift of God in Christ is
+manifold in its distribution. Its manifestations are
+as various and fresh as the idiosyncrasies of human
+personality. There is no capacity of our nature, no
+element of human society which the gospel of Christ
+cannot sanctify and turn to good account.</p>
+
+<p>All this the apostle keeps in view and allows for in
+his doctrine of the Church. He does not merge man in
+humanity, nor sacrifice the individual to the community.
+He claims for each believer direct fellowship with Christ
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+and access to God. The earnestness with which in his
+earlier epistles St Paul insisted on the responsibilities
+of conscience and on the personal experience of salvation,
+leads him now to press the claims of the Church with
+equal vigour. He understands well that the person
+has no existence apart from the community, that our
+moral nature is essentially social and the religious life
+essentially fraternal. Its vital element is “the <i>communion</i>
+of the Holy Spirit.” Hence, to gather the real
+drift of this passage we must combine the first words
+of verse 7 with the last of verse 12: “To each single
+one of us was the grace given—in order to build up the
+body of Christ.” God’s grace is not bestowed upon us
+to diffuse and lose itself in our separate individualities;
+but that it may minister to one life and work towards
+one end and build up one great body in us all. The
+diversity subserves a higher unity. Through ten
+thousand channels, in ten thousand varied forms of
+personal influence and action, the stream of the grace
+of God flows on to the accomplishment of the eternal
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Like a wise master in his household and sovereign
+in his kingdom, the Lord of the Church distributes
+His manifold gifts. His bestowments and appointments
+are made with an eye to the furtherance of
+the state and house that He has in charge. As God
+dispenses His wisdom, so Christ His gifts “according
+to plan” (iii. 11). The purpose of the ages, God’s
+great plan for mankind, determines “the measure of
+the gift of Christ.” Now, it is to illustrate this <i>measure</i>,
+to set forth the style and scale of Christ’s bestowments
+within His Church, that the apostle brings in
+evidence the words of Psalm lxviii. 18. He interprets
+this ancient verse as he cites it, and weaves it into
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+the texture of his argument. In the original it reads
+thus:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led Thy captivity captive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast received gifts among men,—<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, among the rebellious also, that the
+<span class="smcap">Lord</span> God might dwell with them.” (R.V.)<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Let us go back for a moment to the occasion of
+the old Hebrew song. Psalm lxviii, is, as Ewald
+says, “the greatest, most splendid and artistic of the
+temple-songs of Restored Jerusalem.” It celebrates
+Jehovah’s entry into Zion. This culminating verse
+records, as the crowning event of Israel’s history, the
+capture of Zion from the rebel Jebusites and the
+Lord’s ascension in the person of His chosen to take
+His seat upon this holy hill. The previous verses, in
+which fragments of earlier songs are embedded, describe
+the course of the Divine Leader of Israel through
+former ages. In the beat and rhythm of the Hebrew
+lines one hears the footfall of the Conqueror’s march,
+as He “arises and His enemies are scattered” and
+“kings of armies flee apace,” while nature trembles
+at His step and bends her wild powers to serve His
+congregation. The sojourn in the wilderness, the
+scenes of Sinai, the occupancy of Canaan, the wars of
+the Judges were so many stages in the progress of
+Jehovah, which had Zion always for its goal. To
+Zion, the new and more glorious sanctuary, Sinai must
+now give place. Bashan and all mountains towering
+in their pride in vain “look askance at the hill which
+God has desired for His abode,” where “Jehovah will
+dwell for ever.” So the day of the Lord’s desire has
+come! From the Kidron valley David leads Jehovah’s
+triumph up the steep slopes of Mount Zion. A train
+of captives defiles before the Lord’s anointed, who
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+sits down on the throne that God gives him and
+receives in His name the submission of the heathen.
+The vanquished chiefs cast their spoil at his feet; it
+is laid up in treasure to build the future temple; while,
+upon this happy day of peace, “the rebellious also”
+share in Jehovah’s grace and become His subjects.</p>
+
+<p>In this conquest David “gave to men” rather than
+“received”—gave even to his stubborn enemies (witness
+his subsequent transaction with Araunah the Jebusite
+for the site of the temple); for that which he took from
+them served to build amongst them God’s habitation:
+“that,” as the Psalmist sings, “the Lord God might
+dwell with them.” St Paul’s adaptation of the verse
+is both bold and true. If he departs from the letter,
+he unfolds the spirit of the prophetic words. That
+David’s <i>giving</i> signified a higher <i>receiving</i>, Jewish
+interpreters themselves seem to have felt, for this
+paraphrase was current also amongst them.</p>
+
+<p>The author of this Hebrew song has in no way
+exaggerated the importance of David’s victory. The
+summits of the elect nation’s history shine with a
+supernatural and prophetic light. The spirit of the
+Christ in the unknown singer “testified beforehand
+of the glory that should follow” His warfare and
+sufferings. From this victorious height, so hardly
+won, the Psalmist’s verse flashes the light of promise
+across the space of a thousand years; and St. Paul
+has caught the light, and sends it on to us shining
+with a new and more spiritual brightness. David’s
+“going up on high” was, to the apostle’s mind, a
+picture of the ascent of Christ, his Son and Lord.
+David rose from deep humiliation to a high dominion;
+his exaltation brought blessing and enrichment to his
+people; and the spoil that he won with it went to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+build God’s house amongst rebellious men. All this
+was true in parable of the dispensation of grace to
+mankind through Jesus Christ; and His ascension
+disclosed the deeper import of the words of the ancient
+Scripture. “Wherefore God saith” (and St Paul takes
+the liberty of putting in his own words <i>what</i> He saith)—“wherefore
+He saith: He ascended on high; He led
+captivity captive; He gave gifts to men.”</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>The three short clauses of the citation supply, in
+effect, a threefold measure of the gifts of Christ to His
+Church. They are gifts <i>of the ascended Saviour</i>. They
+are gifts bestowed <i>from the fruit of His victory</i>. And
+they are gifts <i>to men</i>. Measure them, first, by the
+height to which He has risen—from what a depth!
+Measure them, again, by the spoils He has already
+won. Measure them, once more, by the wants of
+mankind, by the need He has undertaken to supply.—As
+He is, so He gives; as He has, so He gives; as
+He has given, so He will give till we are filled unto
+all the fulness of God.</p>
+
+<p>I. Think first, then, of Him. Think of what, and
+<i>where</i> He is! Consider “what is the height” of His
+exaltation; and then say, if you can, “what is the
+breadth” of His munificence.</p>
+
+<p>We know well how He gave as a poor and suffering
+man upon earth—gave, with what affluence, pity and
+delight, bread to the hungry thousands, wine to the
+wedding-feast, health to the sick, sight to the blind,
+pardon to the sinful, sometimes life to the dead! Has
+His elevation altered Him? Too often it is so with
+vain and weak men like ourselves. Their wealth increases,
+but their hearts contract. The more they
+have to give, the less they love to give. They go up
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+on high as men count it, and climb to places of power
+and eminence; and they forget the friends of youth
+and the ranks from which they sprang—low-minded
+men. Not so with our exalted Friend. “It is not
+one that went down, and another that went up,” says
+Theodoret. “He that descended, <i>it is He</i> also that
+ascended up far above all the heavens!” (ver. 10).
+Jesus of Nazareth is on the throne of God,—“the same
+yesterday and to-day!” But now the resources of the
+universe are at His disposal. Out of that treasure He
+can choose the best gifts for you and me.</p>
+
+<p>Mere authority, even Omnipotence, could not suffice
+to save and bless moral beings like ourselves; nor
+even the best will joined to Omnipotence. Christ
+gained by His humiliation, in some sense, a new fulness
+added to the fulness of the Godhead. This gain of
+His sufferings is implied in what the apostle writes
+in Colossians i. 19 concerning the risen and exalted
+Redeemer: “It was well-pleasing that <i>all</i> the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him.” His plenitude is
+that of the Ascended One <i>who had descended</i>. “If
+He ascended, what does it mean but that He also
+descended into the under regions of the earth?” (ver. 9).
+If He went up, why then He had been down!—down
+to the Virgin’s womb and the manger cradle, wrapping
+His Godhead within the frame and the brain of a little
+child; down to the home and the bench of the village
+carpenter; down to the contradiction of sinners and
+the level of their scorn; down to the death of the
+cross,—to the nether abyss, to that dim populous
+underworld into which we look shuddering over the
+grave’s edge! And from that lower gulf He mounted
+up again to the solid earth and the light of day and
+the world of breathing men; and up, and up again,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+through the rent clouds and the ranks of shouting
+angels, and under the lifted heads of the everlasting
+doors, until He took His seat at the right hand of the
+Majesty in the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>Think of the regions He has traversed, the range of
+being through which the Lord Jesus passed in descending
+and ascending, “that He might fill all things.” Heaven,
+earth, hades—hades, earth, heaven again are His; not
+in mere sovereignty of power, but in experience and
+communion of life. Each He has annexed to His
+dominion by inhabitation and the right of self-devoting
+love, as from sphere to sphere He “travelled in the
+greatness of His power, mighty to save.” He is Lord
+of angels; but still more of men,—Lord of the living, and
+of the dead. To them that sleep in the dust He has
+proclaimed His accomplished sacrifice and the right of
+universal judgement given Him by the Father.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Abraham alone and Moses and Elijah have
+the joy of “seeing His day,” but all the holy men of
+old, who had embraced its promise and “died in faith,”
+who looked forward through their imperfect sacrifices
+“which could never quite take away sins” to the better
+thing which God provided for us, and for their perfection
+along with us.<a name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>
+On the two side-posts of the
+gate of death our great High Priest sprinkled His
+atoning blood. He turned the abode of corruption
+into a sweet and quiet sleeping chamber for His saints.
+Then at His touch those cruel doors swung back upon
+their hinges, and He issued forth the Prince of life,
+with the keys of death and hades hanging from His
+girdle. From the depths of the grave to the heaven of
+heavens His Mastership extends. With the perfume
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+of His presence and the rich incense of His sacrifice
+Jesus Christ has “filled all things.” The universe is
+made for us one realm of redeeming grace, the kingdom
+of the Son of God’s love.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“So there crowns Him the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And His love fills infinitude wholly, nor leaves up nor down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One spot for the creature to stand
+in!”<a name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>So “Christ is all things, and in all.” And we are
+nothing; but we have everything in Him.</p>
+
+<p>How, pray, will He give who has thus given Himself,—who
+has thus endured and achieved on our behalf?
+Let our hearts consider; let our faith and our need
+be bold to ask. One promise from His lips is enough:
+“If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.”</p>
+
+<p>II. A second estimate of the gifts to be looked for
+from Christ, we derive from <i>His conquests already
+won</i>. David as he entered Zion’s gates “led captivity
+captive,”—led, that is in Hebrew phrase, a great, a
+notable captivity. Out of the gifts thus received he
+enriched his people. The resources that victory placed
+at his disposal, furnished the store from which to build
+God’s house. In like fashion Christ builds His Church,
+and blesses the human race. With the spoils of His
+battle He adorns His bride. The prey taken from the
+mighty becomes the strength and beauty of His sanctuary.
+The prisoners of His love He makes the
+servants of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>This “captivity” implies a warfare, even as the
+ascent of Christ a previous descending. The Son of
+God came not into His earthly kingdom as kings are
+said to have come sometimes disguised amongst their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+subjects, that they might learn better of their state and
+hear their true mind; nor as the Greeks fabled of their
+gods, who wandered unknown on earth seeking adventure
+and wearied haply of the cloying felicities of heaven,
+suffering contempt and doing to men hard service.
+He came, the Good Shepherd, to seek lost sheep. He
+came, the Mighty One of God, to destroy the works of
+the devil, to drive out “the strong one armed” who
+held the fortress of man’s soul. He had a war to wage
+with the usurping prince of the world. In the temptations
+of the wilderness, in the strife with disease and
+demoniac powers, in the debate with Scribes and
+Pharisees, in the anguish of Gethsemane and Calvary
+that conflict was fought out; and by death He abolished
+him who holds the power of death, by His blood He
+“bought us for God.” But with the spoils of victory,
+He bears the scars of battle,—tokens glorious for Him,
+humbling indeed to us, which will tell for ever how they
+pierced His hands and feet!</p>
+
+<p>For Him pain and conflict are gone by. It remains
+to gather in the spoil of His victory of love, the
+harvest sown in His tears and His blood. And what
+are the trophies of the Captain of our salvation? what
+the fruit of His dread passion? For one, there was
+the dying thief, whom with His nailed hands the
+Lord Jesus snatched from a felon’s doom and bore
+from Calvary to Paradise. There was Mary the
+Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons,
+the first to greet Him risen. There were the three
+thousand whom on one day, in the might of His
+Spirit, the ascended Lord and Christ took captive in
+rebel Jerusalem, “lifted from the earth” that He might
+draw all men unto Him. And there was the writer of
+this letter, once His blasphemer and persecutor. By
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+a look, by a word, Jesus arrested Saul at the height
+of his murderous enmity, and changed him from a
+Pharisee into an apostle to the Gentiles, from the
+destroyer into the wise master-builder of His Church.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s own case suggested, surely, the application
+he makes of this ancient text of the Psalter and
+lighted up its Messianic import. In the glory of His
+triumph Jesus Christ had appeared to make him
+captive, and put him at once to service. From that
+hour Paul was led along enthralled, the willing bond-slave
+of the Lord Jesus and celebrant of His victory.
+“Thanks be unto God,” he cries, “who ever triumphs
+over us in the Christ, and makes manifest through us
+the savour of His knowledge in every
+place.”<a name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p>
+
+<p>Such, and of such sort are the prisoners of the
+war of Jesus; such the gifts that through sinners
+pardoned and subdued He bestows upon mankind,—“patterns
+to those who should hereafter believe.”
+Time would fail to follow the train of the captives of
+the love of Christ, which stretches unbroken and ever
+multiplying through the centuries to this day. We,
+too, in our turn have laid our rebel selves at His feet;
+and all that we surrender to Him, by right of conquest
+He gives over to the service of mankind.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“His love the conquest more than wins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To all I shall proclaim:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jesus the King, the Conqueror reigns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bow down to Jesu’s name!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He gives out of the spoil of His war with evil,—gives
+what He receives. Yet He gives not <i>as</i> He receives.
+Everything laid in His hands is changed by their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+touch. Publicans and Pharisees become apostles.
+Magdalenes are made queens and mothers in His
+Israel. From the dregs of our streets He raises up
+a host of sons to Abraham. From the ranks of
+scepticism and anti-Christian hate the Lord Christ wins
+new champions and captains for His cause. He coins
+earth’s basest metal into heaven’s fine gold. He takes
+weak things of the earth and foolish, to strike the
+mightiest blows of battle.</p>
+
+<p>What may we not expect from Him who has led
+captive such a captivity! What surprises of blessing
+and miracles of grace there are awaiting us, that shall
+fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with singing—gifts
+and succours coming to the Church from unlooked-for
+quarters and reinforcements from the ranks
+of the enemy. And what discomfitures and captivities
+are preparing for the haters of the Lord,—if, at least,
+the future is to be as the past; and if we may judge
+from the apostle’s word, and from his example, of the
+measure of the gift of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the
+last word of verse 8, and is drawn out in verses
+11 and 12. “He gave gifts <i>to men</i>—He gave some
+apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some
+pastors and teachers, with a view to the full equipment
+of the saints for work of ministration, for
+building up of the body of Christ.” Yes, and some
+martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and
+Christian statesmen, some poets, some deep thinkers
+and theologians, some leaders of philanthropy and
+helpers of the poor; all given for the same end—to
+minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with
+the means for carrying on its mission, and to enable
+every saint to contribute his part to the commonwealth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+of Christ according to the measure of Christ’s gift to
+each.</p>
+
+<p>Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with
+verse 7 that precedes, seems to us to make it clear that
+we should read, without a comma, the second and third
+clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The
+“work of ministering” and the “building up of the
+body of Christ” are not assigned to special orders of
+ministry as their exclusive calling. Such honour have
+all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see that
+the laity do their duty, of “the ministry” to make
+each saint a minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and
+animate the entire membership of Christ’s body in
+the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the
+Christian fellowship was organized and officered in
+the apostolic times. Church government is a means
+to an end. Its primitive form was that best suited to
+the age; and even then varied under different circumstances.
+It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem
+and at Corinth; at Corinth in 58, and at Ephesus in
+66 <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> That is the best Church system, under any
+given conditions, which serves best to conserve and
+develope the spiritual energy of the body of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The distribution of Church office indicated in verse
+11 corresponds closely to what we find in the Pastoral
+epistles. The apostle does not profess to enumerate
+all grades of ministry. The “deacons” are wanting;
+although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order
+already existed in Pauline Churches. <i>Pastors</i> (shepherds)—a
+title only employed here by the apostle—is
+a fitting synonym for the “bishops” (<i>i.e.</i>, overseers) of
+whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and
+largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose
+functions were spiritual and disciplinary as well as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+administrative. Addressing the Ephesian elders at
+Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them “shepherd
+the Church of God.”</p>
+
+<p>In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the
+Jewish apostle upon his “fellow-elders,” that they
+should “shepherd the flock of God, making themselves
+examples” to it; Christ Himself he has previously
+called “Shepherd and Bishop of souls” (1 Pet. ii. 25).
+The expression is derived from the words of Jesus
+recorded in John x., concerning the true and false
+shepherd of God’s flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,—words
+familiar and dear to His disciples.</p>
+
+<p>The office of <i>teaching</i>, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined
+with that of shepherding. From that passage
+we infer that the freedom of teaching so conspicuous
+in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was
+still recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made
+identical, nor inseparable functions, any more than in
+Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently associated,
+and hence are coupled together here.—Of apostolic
+<i>evangelists</i> we have examples in Timothy and the
+second Philip;<a name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a>
+men outside the rank of the apostles,
+but who, like them, preached the gospel from place
+to place. The name apostles (equivalent to our <i>missionaries</i>)
+served, in its wider sense, to include ministers
+of this class along with those directly commissioned
+by the Lord Jesus.<a name="FNanchor_103" id="FNanchor_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p>The <i>prophets</i>,<a name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>
+like the apostles and evangelists,
+belonged to the Church at large, rather than to one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+locality. But their gift of inspiration did not carry
+with it the claim to rule in the Church. This was the
+function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops,
+or elders, locally appointed.</p>
+
+<p>The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists)
+linked Church to Church and served the entire body;
+the last two (pastors and teachers) had charge of local
+and congregational affairs. The apostles (the Twelve
+and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the
+Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the
+foundation was laid and the deposit of revealed truth
+was complete. The evangelistic and pastoral callings
+remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety
+of Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists,
+with apostles or missionaries, bring new souls to Christ
+and carry His message into new lands. Pastors and
+teachers follow in their train, tending the ingathered
+sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they
+shepherd and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>Marvellous were Christ’s “gifts for men” bestowed
+in the apostolic ministry. What a gift to the Christian
+community, for example, was Paul himself! In his
+natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in
+his training and early experience, in the supernatural
+mode of his conversion, everything wrought together
+to give to men in the apostle Paul a man supremely
+fitted to be Christ’s ambassador to the Pagan world,
+and for all ages the “teacher of the Gentiles in faith
+and truth.” “A <i>chosen vessel</i> unto me,” said the Lord
+Jesus, “to bear my name.”</p>
+
+<p>Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man
+of the most powerful intellect and will, master of the
+thought and life of his time. Long an alien from the
+household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the
+awful crisis of the fifth century, when the Roman
+empire was breaking up and the very foundations of
+life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this
+heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to
+re-establish faith in the Divine order of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the
+captive of justifying grace, won from the monastery and
+the bondage of Rome to set Germany and Europe free.
+What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to
+whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of
+the Reformation; and he blew a blast that waked the
+sleeping peoples of the North, and made the walls of
+Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift
+to Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul
+breathed the spirit of religion into the life of a nation,
+and gave it a body and organic form in which to dwell
+and work for centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Such a gift to England was John Wesley. Can we
+conceive a richer boon conferred by the Head of the
+Church upon the English race than the raising up of
+this great evangelist and pastor and teacher, at such
+a time as that of his appearance? Standing at the
+distance of a hundred years, we are able to measure
+in some degree the magnitude of this bestowment. In
+none of the leaders and commanders whom Christ has
+given to His people was there more signally manifest
+that combination of faculties, that concurrence of providences
+and adjustment to circumstances, and that
+transforming and attempering influence of grace in all—the
+“effectual working in the measure of each single
+part” of the man and his history, which marks those
+special gifts that Christ is wont to bestow upon His
+people in seasons of special emergency and need.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+We are passing into a new age, such as none of
+these great men dreamed of, an age as exigent and
+perilous as any that have gone before it. The
+ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement
+of the masses, the universal spread of education,
+the emancipation of critical thought, the gigantic growth
+of the press, the enormous increase and aggregation
+of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the world-wide
+facilities of intercourse,—these and other causes
+more subtle are rapidly transforming human society.
+Old barriers have disappeared; while new difficulties
+are being created, of a magnitude to overtask the faith
+of the strongest. The Church is confronted with
+problems larger far in their dimensions than those
+our fathers knew. Demands are being made on her
+resources such as she has never had to meet before.
+Shall we be equal to the needs of the coming times?—Nay,
+that is not the question; but will <i>He</i>?</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing new or surprising to the Lord
+Jesus in the progress of our times and the developments
+of modern thought, nothing for which He is
+not perfectly prepared. He has taken their measure
+long ere this, and holds them within His grasp. The
+government is upon His shoulders—“the weight of all
+this unintelligible world”—and He can bear it well.
+He has gifts in store for the twentieth century, when
+it arrives, as adequate as those He bestowed upon
+the first or fifth, upon the sixteenth or the eighteenth
+of our era. There are Augustines and Wesleys yet
+to come. Hidden in the Almighty’s quiver are shafts
+as polished and as keen as any He has used, which
+He will launch forth in the war of the ages at the
+appointed hour. The need, the peril, the greatness of
+the time will be the measure of the gift of Christ.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+There is a danger, however, in waiting for great
+leaders and in looking for signal displays of Christ’s
+power amongst men. His “kingdom comes not with
+observation,” so that men should say, Lo here! or
+Lo there! It steals upon us unforeseen; it is amongst
+us before we know. “We looked,” says Rutherford,
+“that He should take the higher way along the mountains;
+and lo, He came by the lower way of the valleys!”
+While men listen to the earthquake and the wind
+rending the mountains, a still, small voice speaks the
+message of God to prepared hearts. Rarely can we
+measure at the first the worth of Christ’s best gifts.
+When the fruit appears, after long patience, the world
+will haply discover when and how the seed was sown.
+But not always then.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“The sower, passing onward, was not known;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all men reaped the harvest as their own.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Those who are most ready to appraise their fellows
+are constantly at fault. Our last may prove Christ’s
+first; our first His last! “Each of us shall give
+account of himself to God”: each must answer for his
+own stewardship, and the grace that was given to each.
+“Let us not therefore judge one another any more.”
+But let every man see to it that his part in the building
+of God’s temple is well and faithfully done. Soon the
+fire will try every man’s work, of what sort it is.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99" id="Footnote_99"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a>
+Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10–14 with xi. 13–16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24;
+also vi. 12.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100" id="Footnote_100"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a>
+The words of David in Browning’s <i>Saul</i>, turned from the future
+tense into the present.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101" id="Footnote_101"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a>
+2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102" id="Footnote_102"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a>
+2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26–40, xxi. 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103" id="Footnote_103"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a>
+In Acts xiv. 4, 14, <i>Barnabas and Paul</i> are “apostles”; 1 Thess.
+ii. 6, <i>Paul and Silas and Timothy</i>. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii.
+23, xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104" id="Footnote_104"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a>
+Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association of <i>prophets</i> with <i>apostles</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge
+of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of
+the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more children,
+tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine in
+the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of error; but dealing
+truly, in love may grow up in all things into Him, which is the head,
+<i>even</i> Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together,
+through that which every juncture supplieth, according to the working
+in <i>due</i> measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body
+unto the building up of itself in love.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 13–16.</p></div>
+
+<p>We must spend a few moments in unravelling
+this knotty paragraph and determining the
+relation of its involved clauses to each other, before
+we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove
+St Paul’s hand in the letter. No writer of equal
+power was ever so little of a literary craftsman. His
+epistles read, as M. Renan says, like “a rapid conversation
+stenographed.” Sometimes, as in several
+places in Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed
+clauses, hardly more continuous than shorthand
+notes; often, as in this epistle, they pour in a
+full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and
+phrase heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that
+bewilders us. In his spoken address the interpretation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+of tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the
+syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul’s
+written composition.</p>
+
+<p>The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church
+were bestowed to promote its corporate efficiency and
+to further its general growth (vv. 11, 12). Now, the
+purpose of these endowments sets a <i>limit</i> to their use.
+“Christ gave apostles, prophets,” and the rest—“<i>till we
+all arrive</i> at our perfect manhood and reach the stature
+of His fulness.” Such is the connexion of verse 13
+with the foregoing context. The aim of the Christian
+ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men
+beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings,
+apostolates and pastorates, the missions of the evangelist
+and the schools of the teacher will one day cease;
+their work will be done, their end gained, when all
+believers are brought “to the unity of faith, to the
+full knowledge of the Son of God.” The work of
+Christ’s servants can have no grander aim, no further
+goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not
+disclose an ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed
+in the previous sentence; it restates the same purpose.
+To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent our
+being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for
+which apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers are called
+to office. The goal marked out for all believers in
+the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ (ver. 13),
+is set up that it may direct the Church’s course
+through dangers shunned and enemies vanquished
+(ver. 14) to the attainment of her corporate perfection
+(vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section
+turns upon the idea of “the perfecting of the saints”
+in verse 12. Verse 16 looks backward to this; verse 7
+looked forward to it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+So much for the general construction of the
+period. As to its particular words and phrases, we
+must observe:—</p>
+
+<p>(1) The “perfect [full-grown] man” of verse 13 is
+the <i>individual</i>, not the generic man, not “the one
+[collective] new man” of chapter ii. 15. The Greek
+words for <i>man</i> in these two places
+differ.<a name="FNanchor_105" id="FNanchor_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> The
+apostle proposes to the Christian ministry the end
+that he was himself pursuing, viz., to “present <i>every man</i> perfect in
+Christ.”<a name="FNanchor_106" id="FNanchor_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p>
+
+<p>(2) “<i>Sleight</i> of men” (A.V. and R.V.) does not
+seem to us to express the precise meaning of the
+word so translated in verse 14. <i>Kubeia</i> (from <i>kubos</i>,
+a cube, or die) occurs only here in the New Testament;
+in classical Greek it appears in its literal sense
+of <i>dice-play</i>, <i>gambling</i>. The interpreters have drawn
+from this the idea of <i>trickery</i>, <i>cheating</i>—the common
+accompaniment of gambling. But the kindred verb
+(<i>to play dice</i>, <i>to gamble</i>) has another well-established
+use in Greek, namely, <i>to hazard</i>: this supplies for St
+Paul’s noun the signification of <i>sport</i> or <i>hazarding</i>,
+preferred by Beza among the older expositors and by
+von Soden amongst the newest. <i>In the sport of men</i>,
+says von Soden: “conduct wanting in every kind of
+earnestness and clear purpose. These men <i>play</i> with
+religion, and with the welfare of Christian souls.”
+This metaphor accords admirably with that of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+restless waves and uncertain
+winds<a name="FNanchor_107" id="FNanchor_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> just preceding
+it; while it leads fittingly to the further qualification
+“in craftiness,” which is almost an idle synonym after
+“sleight.”</p>
+
+<p>(3) Another rare word is found in this verse, not
+very precisely rendered as “wiles”—a translation suiting
+it better in chapter vi. 11. Here the noun is
+singular in number: <i>methodeia</i>. It signifies <i>methodizing</i>,
+<i>reducing to a plan</i>; and then, in a bad sense,
+<i>scheming</i>, <i>plotting</i>. “Error” is thus personified: it
+“schemes,” just as in 2 Thessalonians ii. 7 it “works.”
+Amid the restless speculations and the unscrupulous
+perversions of the gospel now disturbing the infant
+faith of the Asian Churches, the apostle saw the outline
+of a great system of error shaping itself. There
+was a method in this madness. <i>Unto the scheme of
+error</i>—into the meshes of its net—those were being
+driven who yielded to the prevailing tendencies of
+speculative thought. With all its cross currents and
+capricious movements, it was bearing steadily in one
+direction. Reckless pilots steered ignorant souls this
+way and that over the wind-swept seas of religious
+doubt; but they brought them at last to the same
+rocks and quicksands.</p>
+
+<p>(4) As the contrast between manhood and childhood
+links verses 13 and 14, so it is by the contrast of error
+and craftiness with <i>truth</i> that we pass from verse 14 to
+verse 15. “<i>Speaking</i> truth” insufficiently renders the
+opening word of the latter verse. The “<i>dealing</i> truly”
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+of the Revised margin is preferable. In Galatians
+iv. 16 the apostle employs the same verb, signifying
+not truth of speech alone, but of deed and life (comp.
+Eph. v. 9). The expression resembles that of 1 John
+iii. 19: “We are <i>of the truth</i>, and shall assure our
+hearts before Him,” where truth and love are found in
+the like union.</p>
+
+<p>(5) The last difficulty of this kind we have to deal
+with, lies in the connexion of the clauses of verse 16.
+“Through every joint of supply” is an incongruous
+adjunct to the previous clause, “fitly framed and knit
+together,” although the rendering “joint” gives this
+connexion a superficial aptness. The apostle’s word
+means <i>juncture</i> rather than
+<i>joint</i>.<a name="FNanchor_108" id="FNanchor_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a>
+The <i>points of contact</i> between the members of Christ’s body form the channels
+of supply through which the entire frame receives
+nourishment. The clause “through every juncture of
+the supply”—an expression somewhat obscure at the
+best—points forwards, not backwards. It describes
+the means by which the Church of Christ, compacted
+in its general framework by those larger ligatures
+which its ministry furnishes (vv. 11, 12), builds up its
+inward life,—through a communion wherein “each
+single part” of the body shares, and every tie that
+binds one Christian soul to another serves to nourish
+the common life of grace. We may paraphrase the
+sentence thus: “Drawing its life from Christ, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+entire body knit together in a well-compacted frame,
+makes use of every link that unites its members and
+of each particular member in his place to contribute
+to its sustenance, thus building itself up in love evermore.”</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>These difficult verses unfold to us three main conceptions:
+<i>The goal of the Church’s life</i> (ver. 13), <i>the
+malady which arrests its development</i> (ver. 14), and <i>the
+means and conditions of its growth</i> (vv. 15, 16).</p>
+
+<p>I. The mark at which the Church has to arrive is
+set forth, in harmony with the tenor of the epistle,
+in a twofold way,—in its <i>collective</i> and its <i>individual</i>
+aspects. We must all “unitedly attain the oneness
+of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God”;
+and we must attain, each of us, “a perfect manhood,
+the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”</p>
+
+<p>The “one faith” of the Church’s foundation (ver. 5)
+is, at the same time, its end and goal. The final unity
+will be the unfolding of the primal unity; the implicit
+will become explicit; the germ will be reproduced in
+the developed organism. “The faith” is still, in St
+Paul, the <i>fides qua credimus</i>, not <i>quam credimus</i>; it is
+the living faith of all hearts in the same Christ and
+gospel.<a name="FNanchor_109" id="FNanchor_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a>
+When “we all” believe heartily and understandingly
+in “the word of truth, the gospel of our
+salvation,” the goal will be in sight. All our defects
+are, at the bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to
+apprehend and appropriate the fulness of God in Christ.
+Faith is the essence of the heart’s life: it forms the
+common consciousness of the body of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>While faith is the central organ of the Church’s life,
+<i>the Son of God</i> is its central object. The dangers
+assailing the Church and the divisions threatening its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+unity, touched His Person; and whatever touches the
+Head, vitally affects the health of the body and the
+well-being of every member in it. Many had believed
+in Jesus as the Christ and received blessing from Him,
+whose knowledge of Him as the Son of God was defective.
+This ignorance exposed their faith to perversion
+by the plausible errors circulating in the Churches
+of Asia Minor.<a name="FNanchor_110" id="FNanchor_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a>
+The haze of speculation dimmed
+His glory and distorted His image. Dazzled by the
+“philosophy and empty deceit” of specious talkers,
+these half-instructed believers formed erroneous or
+uncertain views of Christ. And a divided Christ
+makes a divided Church. We may hold divergent
+opinions upon many points of doctrine—in regard to
+Church order and the Sacraments, in regard to the
+nature of the future judgement, in regard to the mode
+and limits of inspiration, in regard to the dialect and
+expression of our spiritual life—and yet retain, notwithstanding,
+a large measure of cordial unity and find
+ourselves able to co-operate with each other for many
+Christian purposes. But when our difference concerns
+the Person of Christ, it is felt at once to be fundamental.
+There is a gulf between those who worship and those
+who do not worship the Son of God.</p>
+
+<p>“Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of
+God, God abideth in him and he in God” (1 John iv. 15).
+This is the touchstone of catholic truth that the apostles
+have laid down; and by this we must hold fast. The
+kingship of the Lord Jesus is the rallying-point of
+Christendom. In His name we set up our banners.
+There are a thousand differences we can afford to sink
+and quarrels we may well forget, if our hearts are one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+towards Him. Let me meet a man of any sect or
+country, who loves and worships my Lord Christ with
+all his mind and strength, he is my brother; and who
+shall forbid us “with one mind and one mouth to
+glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”?
+It is nothing but our ignorance of Him, and of each
+other, that prevents us doing this already. Let us set
+ourselves again to the study of Christ. Let us strive
+“all of us” to “attain to the full knowledge of the Son
+of God”; it is the way to reunion. As we approach
+the central revelation, and the glory of Christ who is
+the image of God shines in its original brightness upon
+our hearts, prejudices will melt away; the opinions and
+interests and sentiments that divide us will be lost
+in the transcendent and absorbing vision of the one
+Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Names and sects and parties fall:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou, O Christ, art all in all!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The second and third <i>unto</i> of verse 13 are parallel
+with the first, and with each other. A truer faith
+and better knowledge of Christ uniting believers to
+each other, at the same time develope in each of
+them a riper character. Jesus Christ was the “perfect
+man.” In Him our nature attained, without
+the least flaw or failure, its true end,—which is to
+glorify God. In His fulness the plenitude of God
+is embodied; it is made human, and attainable to
+faith. In Jesus Christ humanity rose to its ideal
+stature; and we see what is the proper level of our
+nature, the dignity and worth to which we have to rise.
+We are “predestinated to be conformed to the image
+of God’s Son.” All the many brethren of Jesus
+measure themselves against the stature of the Firstborn;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+and they will have to say to the end with St
+Paul: “Not as though I had attained, either were
+already perfect. I follow after; I press towards the
+mark.” A true heart that has seen perfection, will
+never rest short of it.</p>
+
+<p>“Till we arrive—till we <i>all</i> arrive” at this, the work
+of the Christian ministry is incomplete. Teachers
+must still school us, pastors shepherd us, evangelists
+mission us. There is work enough and to spare for
+them all—and will be, to all appearance, for many a
+generation to come. The goal of the regenerate life
+is never absolutely won; it is hid with Christ in God.
+But there is to be a constant approximation to it, both
+in the individual believer and in the body of Christ’s
+people. And a time is coming when that goal will be
+practically attained, so far as earthly conditions allow.
+The Church after long strife will be reunited, after long
+trial will be perfected; and Christ will “present her
+to Himself” a bride worthy of her Lord, “without
+spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” Then this world
+will have had its use, and will give place to the new
+heavens and earth.</p>
+
+<p>II. The goal that the apostle marked out, did not
+appear to him to be in immediate prospect. The
+childishness of so many Christian believers stood in
+the way of its attainment. In this condition they were
+exposed to the seductions of error, and ready to be
+driven this way and that by the evil influences active
+in the world of thought around them. So long as the
+Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long
+she will remain subject to strife and corruption.
+When he says in verse 14, “that we may be <i>no longer
+children</i> tossed to and fro,” etc., this implies that many
+Christian believers at that time were of this childish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+sort, and were being so distracted and misled. The
+apostle writes on purpose to instruct these “babes”
+and to raise them to a more manly style of Christian
+thought and life.<a name="FNanchor_111" id="FNanchor_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is a grievous thing to a minister of Christ to see
+those who for the time ought to be teachers, fit for
+the Church’s strong meat and the harder tasks of her
+service, remaining still infantile in their condition,
+needing to be nursed and humoured, narrow in their
+views of truth, petty and personal in their aims,
+wanting in all generous feeling and exalted thought.
+Some men, like St Paul himself, advance from the
+beginning to a settled faith, to a large intelligence and
+a full and manly consecration to God. Others remain
+“babes in Christ” to the end. Their souls live, but
+never thrive. They suffer from every change in the
+moral atmosphere, from every new wind of doctrine.
+These invalids are objects full of interest to the moral
+pathologist; they are marked not unfrequently by fine
+and delicate qualities. But they are a constant anxiety
+to the Church. Till they grow into something more
+robust they must remain to crowd the Church’s
+nursery, instead of taking part in her battle like brave
+and strenuous men.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of false doctrine in the Asian
+Churches made their undeveloped condition a matter for
+peculiar apprehension to the apostle. The Colossian
+heresy, for example, with which he is dealing at this
+present moment, would have no attraction for ripe and
+settled Christians. But such a “scheme of error” was
+exactly suited to catch men with a certain tincture of
+philosophy and in general sympathy with current
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+thought, who had embraced Christianity under some
+vague sense of its satisfaction for their spiritual needs,
+but without an intelligent grasp of its principles or
+a thorough experience of its power.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul speaks of “every wind of <i>the</i> doctrine,”
+having in his mind a more or less definite form of
+erroneous teaching, a certain “plan of error.” Reading
+this verse in the light of the companion letter to
+Colossæ and the letters addressed to Timothy when
+at Ephesus a few years later, we can understand its
+significance. We can watch the storm that was rising
+in the Græco-Asiatic Churches. The characteristics
+of early Gnosticism are well defined in the miniature
+picture of verse 14. We note, in the first place, its
+protean and capricious form, half Judaistic, half philosophical—ascetic
+in one direction, libertine in another:
+“tossed by the waves, and carried about with every
+wind.” In the next place, its intellectual spirit,—that
+of a loose and reckless speculation: “in the
+hazarding of men,”—not in the abiding truth of God.
+Morally, it was vitiated by “craftiness.” And in its
+issue and result, this new teaching was leading “to
+the scheme of error” which the apostle four years
+ago had sorrowfully predicted, in bidding farewell
+to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx.). This
+scheme was no other than the gigantic Gnostic system,
+which devastated the Eastern Churches and inflicted
+deep and lasting wounds upon them.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle with legalism was now over and past,
+at least in its critical phase. The apostle of the
+Gentiles had won the battle with Judaism and saved
+the Church in its first great conflict. But another
+strife is impending (comp. vi. 10); a most pernicious
+error has made its appearance within the Church
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+itself. St Paul was not to see more than the commencement
+of the new movement, which took two
+generations to gather its full force; but he had a
+true prophetic insight, and he saw that the strength
+of the Church in the coming day of trial lay in the
+depth and reality of her knowledge of the Son of
+God.</p>
+
+<p>At every crisis in human thought there emerges
+some prevailing method of truth, or of error, the
+resultant of current tendencies, which unites the
+suffrages of a large body of thinkers and claims to
+embody the spirit of the age. Such a method of error
+our own age has produced as the outcome of the
+anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the
+doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism,
+or Agnosticism. While the Gnosticism of the
+early ages asserted the infinite distance of God from
+the world and the intrinsic evil of matter, modern
+Agnosticism removes God still further from us, beyond
+the reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature
+as the one positive and accessible reality, as the basis
+of life and law. Faith and knowledge of the Son of
+God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. The
+supernatural, it tells us, is an illusion; and we must
+resign ourselves to be once more without God in the
+world and without hope beyond death.</p>
+
+<p>This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the
+unbelief of the century. It is the living antagonist of
+Divine revelation. It supplies the appointed trial of
+faith for educated men of our generation, and the test
+of the intellectual vigour and manhood of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>III. In the midst of the changing perils and long
+delays of her history, the Church is called evermore
+to press towards the mark of her calling. The conditions
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+on which her progress depends are summed up
+in verses 15 and 16.</p>
+
+<p>To the craft of false teachers St Paul would have his
+Churches oppose the weapons only of <i>truth and love</i>.
+“Holding the truth in love,” they will “grow up in all
+things into Christ.” Sincere believers, heartily devoted
+to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life
+instinctively repels disease. They “have an anointing
+from the Holy One” which is their protection (1 John
+ii. 20–29). In all that belongs to godliness and a noble
+manhood, such natures will expand; temptation and
+the assaults of error stimulate rather than arrest their
+growth. And with the growth and ripening in her
+fellowship of such men of God, the whole Church grows.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition
+of advancement,—viz., the full recognition of <i>the
+supremacy and sufficiency of Christ</i>. Christ assumes
+here two opposite relations to the members of His
+body. He is the Head <i>into</i> (or <i>unto</i>) which we grow
+in all things; but at the same time, <i>from</i> whom all the
+body derives its increase (ver. 16). He is the perfect
+ideal for us each; He is the common source of life and
+progress for us all. In our individual efforts after
+holiness and knowledge, in our personal aspirations and
+struggles, Jesus Christ is our model, our constant aim:
+we “grow into Him” (ver. 15). But as we learn to
+live for others, as we merge our own aims in the life
+of the Church and of humanity we feel, even more
+deeply than our personal needs had made us do, our
+dependence upon Him. We see that the forces which
+are at work to raise mankind, to stay the strifes and
+heal the wounds of humanity, emanate from the living
+Christ (ver. 16). He is the head of the Church and
+the heart of the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+The third, practical condition of Church growth is
+brought out by the closing words of the paragraph.
+It is <i>organization</i>: “all the body fitly framed [comp. ii.
+21] and knit together.” Each local <i>ecclesia</i>, or assembly
+of saints, will have its stated officers, its regulated and
+seemly order in worship and in work. And within this
+fit frame, there must be the warm union of hearts, the
+frank exchange of thought and feeling, the brotherly
+counsel in all things touching the kingdom of God, by
+which Christian men in each place of their assembling
+are “knit together.” From these local and congregational
+centres, the Christian fellowship spreads out its
+arms to embrace all that love our Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>A building or a machine is <i>fitted</i> together by the
+adjustment of its parts. A body needs, besides this
+mechanical construction, a pervasive life, a sympathetic
+force <i>knitting</i> it together: “knit together in love,” the
+apostle says in Colossians ii. 2; and so it is “in love”
+that this “body builds up itself.” The tense of the
+participles in the first part of verse 16 is present (continuous);
+we see a body in process of incorporation,
+whose several organs, imperfectly developed and imperfectly
+co-operant, are increasingly drawn to each other
+and bound more firmly in one as each becomes more
+complete in itself. The perfect Christian and the
+perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them
+requires the other for its due realization.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the sentence, following the comma that
+we place at “knit together,” has its parallel in Colossians
+ii. 19: “All the body, through its junctures and
+bands being supplied and knit together, increaseth with
+the increase of God.” According to St Paul’s physiology,
+the “bands” knit the body together, but the
+“junctures” are its means of supply. Each point of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+contact is a means of nourishment to the frame. In
+touch with each other, Christians communicate the life
+flowing from the common Head. The apostle would
+make <i>Christian intercourse a universal means of grace</i>.
+No two Christian men should meet anywhere, upon any
+business, without themselves and the whole Church
+being the better for it.</p>
+
+<p>“Wherever two or three are met together in my
+name,” said Jesus, “there am I in the midst.” In the
+multitude of these obscure and humble meetings of
+brethren who love each other for Christ’s sake, is the
+grace supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the
+Church lives and thrives. The vitality of the Church
+of Christ does not depend so much upon the large and
+visible features of its construction—upon Synods and
+Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the
+like, influential and venerable as these authorities may
+be; but upon the spiritual intercourse that goes on
+amongst the body of its people. “Each several part”
+of Christ’s great body, “according to the measure” of
+its capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the
+common grace.</p>
+
+<p>However defective in other points of organization,
+the society in which this takes place fulfils the office of
+an ecclesiastical body. It will grow into the fulness
+of Christ; it “builds up itself in love.” The primary
+condition of Church health and progress is that there
+shall be an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from
+point to point through the tissues and substance of
+the entire frame.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105" id="Footnote_105"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Eis hena kainon anthrôpon">Εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον</span>
+(<i>homo</i>), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv. 22,
+24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Here
+<span class="greek" title="eis andra teleion">εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον</span>
+(<i>vir</i>); comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Church
+<span class="greek" title="anêr">ἀνήρ</span>
+would be highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor.
+xi. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106" id="Footnote_106"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a>
+Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107" id="Footnote_107"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a>
+For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare: <i>Julius
+Cæsar</i>, Act V., Scene 1:—</p>
+<div class="poem foot">
+<span class="i0">“Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108" id="Footnote_108"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a>
+Vulgate: <i>per omnem juncturam ministrationis</i>. St Paul’s word
+here is <span class="greek" title="dia pasês haphês">διὰ πάσης ἁφῆς</span>,
+<i>through every touching</i>. See Lightfoot’s valuable
+note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek authors,
+in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109" id="Footnote_109"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a>
+Comp. ch. i. 13: “in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us
+Jews] found hope”; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, “my true child
+according to <i>a common faith</i>.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110" id="Footnote_110"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a>
+See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8–10, 18, 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111" id="Footnote_111"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a>
+Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1–3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19;
+Heb. v. 11–14.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3 class="section"><a name="ON_CHRISTIAN_MORALS" id="ON_CHRISTIAN_MORALS"></a>ON CHRISTIAN MORALS.</h3>
+
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> iv. 17—v. 21.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+<p class="center">
+<span class="greek" title="En kainotêti zôês peripatêsômen.">
+Ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν.</span>—<span class="smcap">Rom.</span> vi. 4.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE WALK OF THE GENTILES.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer
+walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being
+darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because
+of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their
+heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to
+work all uncleanness with greediness.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 17–19.</p></div>
+
+<p>Christ has called into existence and formed
+around Him already a new world. Those who
+are members of His body, are brought into another
+order of being from that to which they had formerly
+belonged. They have therefore to walk in quite
+another way—“no longer as the Gentiles.” St Paul
+does not say “as the other Gentiles” (A.V.); for his
+readers, though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of
+the household of faith and the city of God. They
+hold the franchise of the “commonwealth of Israel.”
+As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel,
+though a born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new
+Israel writes of “the Jews” as a distant and alien
+people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from “the
+Gentiles” who were their natural kindred.</p>
+
+<p>When he “testifies,” with a pointed emphasis, “that
+<i>you</i> no longer walk as do indeed the Gentiles,” and
+when in verse 20 he exclaims, “But <i>you</i> did not thus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+learn the Christ,” it appears that there were those
+bearing Christ’s name and professing to have learnt of
+Him who did thus walk. This, indeed, he expressly
+asserts in writing to the Philippians (ch. iii. 18, 19):
+“Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now
+tell you even weeping,—the enemies of the cross of
+Christ; whose god is their belly, and their glory in
+their shame, who mind earthly things.” We cannot
+but associate this warning with the apprehension
+expressed in verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous
+teachers against whose seductions the
+apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor,
+tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of
+their disciples, and were drawing them back insidiously
+to their former habits of
+life.<a name="FNanchor_112" id="FNanchor_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p>
+
+<p>The connexion between the foregoing part of this
+chapter and that on which we now enter, lies in the
+relation of the new life of the Christian believer to the
+new community which he has entered. The old world
+of Gentile society had formed the “old man” as he then
+existed, the product of centuries of debasing idolatry.
+But in Christ that world is abolished, and a “new man”
+is born. The world in which the Asian Christians once
+lived as “Gentiles in the flesh,” is dead to
+them.<a name="FNanchor_113" id="FNanchor_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a>
+They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted
+in Jesus Christ. From this idea the apostle
+deduces the ethical doctrine of the following paragraphs.
+His ideal “new man” is no mere ego, devoted to his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+personal perfection; he is part and parcel of the
+redeemed society of men; his virtues are those of a
+member of the Christian order and commonwealth.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>The representation given of Gentile life in the three
+verses before us is highly condensed and pungent. It
+is from the same hand as the lurid picture of Romans
+i. 18–32. While this delineation is comparatively brief
+and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects
+deeper than does that memorable passage. We may
+distinguish the main features of the description, as they
+bring into view in turn the <i>mental</i>, <i>spiritual</i>, and <i>moral</i>
+characteristics of the existing Paganism. Man’s intellect
+was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was
+flagrant and shameless.</p>
+
+<p>I. “The Gentiles walk,” the apostle says, “in <i>vanity
+of their mind</i>”—with reason frustrate and impotent;
+“being <i>darkened in their understanding</i>”—with no clear
+or settled principles, no sound theory of life. Similarly,
+he wrote in Romans i. 21: “They were frustrated
+in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was
+darkened.” But here he seems to trace the futility further
+back, beneath the “reasonings” to the “reason” (<i>nous</i>)
+itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its foundation.
+Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis.
+Man has forfeited his claim to be a rational creature,
+when he worships objects so degraded as the heathen
+gods, when he practises vices so detestable and
+ruinous.</p>
+
+<p>The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from
+popular beliefs, for the most part confessed that their
+philosophies were speculative and futile, that certainty
+in the greatest and most serious matters was unattainable.
+Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”—no jesting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+question surely—passed from lip to lip and from one
+school of thought to another, without an answer. Five
+centuries before this time the human intellect had a
+marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of
+Greece sprang into their glorious life, like Athené born
+from the head of Zeus, full-grown and in shining
+armour. With such leaders as Pericles and Phidias,
+as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing
+was impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius
+of our race had blossomed; rich and golden fruit would
+surely follow, to be gathered from the tree of life. But
+the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as rottenness.
+Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry
+was little more than a trick of words; philosophy, a
+wrangling of the schools. Rome towered in the majesty
+of her arms and laws above the faded glory of Greece.
+She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a rule
+of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty.
+But this dream vanished, like the other. The age of
+the Cæsars was an age of disillusion. Scepticism and
+cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of the future
+possessed men’s minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old
+and new Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans
+disputed the palm of wisdom in mere strife of words.
+Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their own
+systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned
+was “to hear some new thing,” for of the old things
+all thinking men were weary. Only rhetoric and
+scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest
+constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again.
+“On the whole, this last period of Greek philosophy,
+extending into the Christian era, bore the marks of
+intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of
+despair in the solution of its high problem” (Döllinger).
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+The world itself admitted the apostle’s reproach that
+“by wisdom it knew not God.” It knew nothing,
+therefore, to sure purpose, nothing that availed to
+satisfy or save it.</p>
+
+<p>Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic
+method unknown to the ancient world. The
+old metaphysical systems failed; but we have relaid
+the foundations of life and thought upon the solid
+ground of nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis
+of positive and demonstrated knowledge, whose value
+is independent of religious belief. Scientific discovery
+has put us in command of material forces that secure
+the race against any such relapse as that which took
+place in the overthrow of the Græco-Roman civilization.
+<i>Pessimism</i> answers these pretensions made for
+physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the
+nemesis of irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow
+palsy over the highest and ablest minds that reject the
+Christian hope. What avails it to yoke steam to our
+chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to
+wing our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts
+are no happier or worthier than before?</p>
+
+<p>“Civilization contains within itself the elements of a
+fresh servitude. Man conquers the powers of nature,
+and becomes in turn their slave” (F. W. Robertson).
+Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of
+lavish wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what
+science grimly calls the <i>proletariate</i>, a barbarism more
+vicious and dangerous than the old, that is generated
+by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing
+regime of industrial science.</p>
+
+<p>Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity
+for evil or good; culture makes him more sensitive;
+refinement more delicate in his virtues or his vices.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+But there is no tendency in these forces as we see them
+now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline,
+to make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge
+supplies nothing to bind society together, no force
+to tame the selfish passions, to guard the moral interests
+of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to
+the forces acting on civilized men; it cannot change or
+elevate their character. It puts new and potent instruments
+into our hands; but whether those instruments
+shall be tools to build the city of God or weapons for
+its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the
+wielders. In the midst of his splendid machinery,
+master of the planet’s wealth and lord of nature’s forces,
+the civilized man at the end of this boastful century
+stands with a dull and empty heart—without God.
+Poor creature, he wants to know whether “life is
+worth living”! He has gained the world, but lost his
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men
+stumble onwards to the end of life, to the end of time.
+The world’s wisdom and the lessons of its history give
+no hope of any real advance from darkness to light
+until, as Plato said, “We are able more safely and
+securely to make our journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine
+word.”<a name="FNanchor_114" id="FNanchor_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a>
+Such a vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching. The
+moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its
+guidance. And that moral progress has created the
+conditions and given the stimulus to which our material
+and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives
+permanence and value to all man’s acquisitions. Both
+of this world and of that to come “godliness holds the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+promise.” We are only beginning to learn how much
+was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as
+“the light of the world.” He brought into the world
+a light which was to shine through all the realms of
+human life.</p>
+
+<p>II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked,
+resulted in a settled state of <i>estrangement from God</i>.
+They were “alienated from the life of God.”</p>
+
+<p>“Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” St
+Paul said in chapter ii. 12,<a name="FNanchor_115" id="FNanchor_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a>
+using, as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which denotes an abiding fact.
+These two alienations generally coincide. Outside the
+religious community, we are outside the religious life.
+This expression gathers to a point what was said in
+verses 11, 12 of chapter ii., and further back in verses
+1–3; it discloses the spring of the soul’s malady and
+decay in its separation from the living God. When
+shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may
+exist without God, as a tree cast out in the desert, or
+a body wasting in the grave; but that is not <i>life</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who
+seemed to him dead—joyless, empty-hearted, weary of
+an idle learning or lost in sullen ignorance, caring only
+to eat and drink till they should die like the beasts.
+Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in
+which the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to
+believe. The ancient natural pieties—not wholly untouched
+by the Spirit of God, despite their idolatry—that
+peopled with fair fancies the Grecian shores and
+skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his manfulness and
+hallowed his love of home and city, were all but extinguished.
+Death was at the heart of Pagan religion;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who
+believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power
+behind the veil of sense. The Roman augurs laughed
+at their own auspices; the priests made a traffic of their
+temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was rife, as
+rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the
+day were the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported
+from Egypt and Syria. A hundred years before, the
+Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his burning
+indignation, the disposition of earnest and high-minded
+men towards the creeds of the later classic times:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Humana ante oculos fœde cum vita jaceret,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quæ caput e cœli regionibus ostendebat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere
+contra.”<a name="FNanchor_116" id="FNanchor_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i16"><i>De Rerum Natura</i>: Bk. I., 62–67.<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>How alienated from the life of God were those who
+conceived such sentiments, and those whose creed
+excited this repugnance. And when amongst ourselves,
+as it occurs in some unhappy instances, a similar bitterness
+is cherished, it is matter of double sorrow,—of
+grief at once for the alienation prompting thoughts so
+dark and unjust towards our God and Father, and for
+the misshapen guise in which our holy religion has
+been presented to make this aversion possible.</p>
+
+<p>The phrase “alienated from the life of God” denotes
+an objective position rather than a subjective disposition,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+the state and place of the man who is far from God and
+and his true life. God exiles sinners from His presence.
+By a necessary law, their sin acts as a sentence of
+deprivation. Under its ban they go forth, like Cain,
+from the presence of the Lord. They can no longer
+partake of the light of life which streams forth evermore
+from God and fills the souls that abide in His love.</p>
+
+<p>And this banishment was due to the cause already
+described,—to the radical perversion of the Gentile mind,
+which is re-affirmed in the double prepositional clause
+of verse 18: “because of the ignorance that is in them,
+because of the hardening of their heart.” The repeated
+preposition (<i>because of</i>) attaches the two parallel clauses
+to the same predicate. Together they serve to explain
+this sad estrangement from the Divine life; the second
+<i>because</i> supplements the first. It is the ingrained
+“ignorance” of men that excludes them from the life of
+God; and this ignorance is no misfortune or unavoidable
+fate, it is due to a positive “hardening of the
+heart.”</p>
+
+<p>Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of
+indevotion. If men knew God, they would certainly
+love and serve Him. St Paul agreed with Socrates
+and Plato in holding that virtue is knowledge. The
+debasement of the heathen world, he declares again and
+again, was due to the fact that it “knew not
+God.”<a name="FNanchor_117" id="FNanchor_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a>
+The Corinthian Church was corrupted and its Christian
+life imperilled by the presence in it of some who “had
+not the knowledge of God” (1 Cor. xv. 33, 34). At
+Athens, the centre of heathen wisdom, he spoke of the
+Pagan ages as “the times of ignorance” (Acts xvii. 30);
+and found in this want of knowledge a measure of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+excuse. But the ignorance he censures is not of the
+understanding alone; nor is it curable by philosophy
+and science. It has an intrinsic ground,—“existing <i>in</i>
+them.”</p>
+
+<p>Since the world’s creation, the apostle says, God’s
+unseen presence has been clearly visible (Rom. i. 20).
+Yet multitudes of men have always held false and
+corrupting views of the Divine nature. At this present
+time, in the full light of Christianity, men of high
+intellect and wide knowledge of nature are found proclaiming
+in the most positive terms that God, if He
+exists, is unknowable. This ignorance it is not for us
+to censure; every man must give account of himself to
+God. There may be in individual cases, amongst the
+enlightened deniers of God in our own days, causes
+of misunderstanding beyond the will, obstructing and
+darkening circumstances, on the ground of which in
+His merciful and wise judgement God may “overlook”
+that ignorance, even as He did the ignorance of earlier
+ages. But it is manifest that while this veil remains,
+those on whose heart it lies cannot partake in the life
+of God. Living in unbelief, they walk in darkness to
+the end, knowing not whither they go.</p>
+
+<p>The Gentile ignorance of God was attended, as St
+Paul saw it, with an <i>induration of heart</i>, of which it
+was at once the cause and the effect. There is a wilful
+stupidity, a studied misconstruction of God’s will, which
+has played a large part in the history of unbelief. The
+Israelitish people presented at this time a terrible
+example of such guilty callousness (Rom. xi. 7–10, 25).
+They professed a mighty zeal for God; but it was a
+passion for the deity of their partial and corrupt imagination,
+which turned to hatred of the true God and
+Father of men when He appeared in the person of His
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+Son. Behind their pride of knowledge lay the ignorance
+of a hard and impenitent heart.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the heathen, hardness of heart and
+religious ignorance plainly went together. The knowledge
+of God was not altogether wanting amongst them;
+He “left Himself not without witness,” as the apostle
+told them (Acts xiv. 17). Where there is, amid whatever
+darkness, a mind seeking after truth and right,
+some ray of light is given, some gleam of a better hope
+by which the soul may draw nigh to God,—coming
+whence or how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of
+Christ finds in every new land souls waiting for God’s
+salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in hearts
+touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its
+first messengers discovered everywhere,—a remnant in
+Israel and a great multitude amongst the heathen.</p>
+
+<p>But the Jewish nation as a whole, and the mass of
+the pagans, remained at present obstinately disbelieving.
+They had no perception of the life of God, and felt no
+need of it; and when offered, they thrust it from them.
+Theirs was another god, “the god of this world,” who
+“blinds the minds of the unbelieving” (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4).
+And their “ungodliness and unrighteousness” were
+not to be pitied more than blamed. They might have
+known better; they were “holding down the truth in
+unrighteousness,” putting out the light that was in
+them and contradicting their better instincts. The
+wickedness of that generation was the outcome of a
+hardening of heart and blinding of conscience that had
+been going on for generations past.</p>
+
+<p>III. By two conspicuous features the decaying
+Paganism of the Christian era was distinguished,—its
+unbelief and its <i>licentiousness</i>. In his letter to the
+Romans St Paul declares that the second of these
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+deplorable characteristics was the consequence of the
+former, and a punishment for it inflicted by God.
+Here he points to it as a manifestation of the hardening
+of heart which caused their ignorance of God:
+“Having lost all feeling, they gave themselves up to
+lasciviousness, so as to commit every kind of uncleanness
+in greediness.”</p>
+
+<p>Upon that brilliant classic civilization there lies a
+shocking stain of impurity. St Paul stamps upon it
+the burning word <i>Aselgeia (lasciviousness)</i>, like a brand
+on the harlot’s brow. The habits of daily life, the
+literature and art of the Greek world, the atmosphere
+of society in the great cities was laden with corruption.
+Sexual vice was no longer counted vice. It was
+provided for by public law; it was incorporated into
+the worship of the gods. It was cultivated in every
+luxurious and monstrous excess. It was eating out
+the manhood of the Greek and Latin races. From the
+imperial Cæsar down to the horde of slaves, it seemed
+as though every class of society had abandoned itself
+to the horrid practices of lust.</p>
+
+<p>The “greediness” with which debauchery was then
+pursued, is at the bottom self-idolatry, self-deification;
+it is the absorption of the God-given passion and will
+of man’s nature in the gratification of his appetites.
+Here lies the reservoir and spring of sin, the burning
+deep within the soul of him who knows no God but
+his own will, no law above his own desire. He plunges
+into sensual indulgence, or he grasps covetously at
+wealth or office; he wrecks the purity, or tramples on
+the rights of others; he robs the weak, he corrupts the
+innocent, he deceives and mocks the simple—to feed
+the gluttonous idol of self that sits upon God’s seat
+within him. The military hero wading to a throne
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+through seas of blood, the politician who wins power
+and office by the sleights of a supple tongue, the dealer
+on the exchange who supplants every competitor by
+his shrewd foresight and unscrupulous daring, and
+absorbs the fruit of the labour of thousands of his
+fellow-men, the sensualist devising some new and
+more voluptuous refinement of vice,—these are all the
+miserable slaves of their own lust, driven on by the
+insatiate craving of the false god that they carry within
+their breast.</p>
+
+<p>For the light-hearted Greeks, lovers of beauty and
+of laughter, self was deified as Aphrodité, goddess of
+fleshly desire, who was turned by their worship into
+<i>Aselgeia</i>,—she of whom of old it was said, “Her house
+is the way to Sheol.” Not such as the chaste wife and
+house-keeping mother of Hebrew praise, but Laïs with
+her venal charms was the subject of Greek song and
+art. Pure ideals of womanhood the classic nations had
+once known—or never would those nations have become
+great and famous—a Greek Alcestis and Antigoné,
+Roman Cornelias and Lucretias, noble maids and
+matrons. But these, in the dissolution of manners, had
+given place to other models. The wives and daughters
+of the Greek citizens were shut up to contempt and
+ignorance, while the priestesses of vice—<i>hetæræ</i> they
+were called, or <i>companions</i> of men—queened it in their
+voluptuous beauty, until their bloom faded and poison
+or madness ended their fatal days.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the Jews whom our Lord addressed, the
+choice lay between “God and Mammon”; in Corinth
+and Ephesus, it was “Christ or Belial.” These ancient
+gods of the world—“mud-gods,” as Thomas Carlyle
+called them—are set up in the high places of our populous
+cities. To the slavery of business and the pride of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+wealth men sacrifice health and leisure, improvement
+of mind, religion, charity, love of country, family affection.
+How many of the evils of English society come
+from this root of all evil!</p>
+
+<p>Hard by the temple of Mammon stands that of Belial.
+Their votaries mingle in the crowded amusements of the
+day and rub shoulders with each other. Aselgeia flaunts
+herself, wise observers tell us, with increasing boldness
+in the European capitals. Theatre and picture-gallery
+and novel pander to the desire of the eye and the lust of
+the flesh. The daily newspapers retail cases of divorce
+and hideous criminal trials with greater exactness than
+the debates of Parliament; and the appetite for this
+garbage grows by what it feeds upon. It is plain to
+see whereunto the decay of public decency and the
+revival of the animalism of pagan art and manners will
+grow, if it be not checked by a deepened Christian faith
+and feeling.</p>
+
+<p><i>Past feeling</i> says the apostle of the brazen impudicity
+of his time. The loss of the religious sense blunted
+all moral sensibility. The Greeks, by an early instinct
+of their language, had one word for <i>modesty</i> and <i>reverence</i>,
+for self-respect and awe before the Divine. There
+is nothing more terrible than the loss of shame. When
+immodesty is no longer felt as an affront, when there
+fails to rise in the blood and burn upon the cheek the
+hot resentment of a wholesome nature against things
+that are foul, when we grow tolerant and familiar
+with their presence, we are far down the slopes of hell.
+It needs only the kindling of passion, or the removal
+of the checks of circumstance, to complete the descent.
+The pain that the sight of evil gives is a divine shield
+against it. Wearing this shield, the sinless Christ
+fought our battle, and bore the anguish of our sin.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112" id="Footnote_112"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a>
+“The persons here denounced,” says Lightfoot on Phil. iii. 18,
+“are not the Judaizing teachers, but the antinomian reactionists....
+The stress of Paul’s grief lies in the fact that they degraded the true
+doctrine of liberty, so as to minister to their profligate and worldly
+living.” Comp. 1 Peter iv. 3, 4; 2 Peter ii. 18–22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113" id="Footnote_113"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a>
+Comp. Col. ii. 20–iii. 4; Gal. vi. 14, 15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114" id="Footnote_114"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a>
+<i>Phæao</i>: § xxxv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115" id="Footnote_115"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a>
+See p. 129.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116" id="Footnote_116"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a>
+“When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed
+down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the
+quarters of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of
+Greece ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to
+withstand her to her face” (Munro).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117" id="Footnote_117"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a>
+1 Thess. iv. 5; 2 Thess. i. 8; Gal. iv. 8, 9.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“But ye did not so learn the Christ; if so be that ye heard Him,
+and were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away,
+as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth
+corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of
+your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath been created
+in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 20–24.</p></div>
+
+<p><i>But as for you!</i>—The apostle points us from
+heathendom to Christendom. From the men of
+blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the
+cleansed and instructed. “Not thus did <i>you</i> learn
+the Christ”—not to remain in the darkness and filth
+of your Gentile state.</p>
+
+<p>The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in
+this letter so exuberant in expression, yet on occasion
+is as concise as in Galatians. One is tempted, as Beza
+suggested<a name="FNanchor_118" id="FNanchor_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a>
+and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at this
+point and to read: “But with you it is not
+so:<a name="FNanchor_119" id="FNanchor_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> you
+learned the Christ!” In spite of its abruptness, this
+construction would be necessary, if it were only “the
+Gentiles” of verse 17 with whose “walk” St Paul
+means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+have seen, he has before his eye a third class of men,
+unprincipled Christian teachers (ver. 14), men who
+had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in
+Gentile ways and were leading others back to
+them.<a name="FNanchor_120" id="FNanchor_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a>
+Verse 20, after all, forms a coherent clause. It points
+an antithesis of solemn import. There are genuine,
+and there are supposed conversions; there are true
+and false ways of learning Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Strictly speaking, it is not <i>Christ</i>, but <i>the Christ</i>
+whom St Paul presumes his readers to have duly
+learnt.<a name="FNanchor_121" id="FNanchor_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a>
+The words imply a comprehending faith, that
+knows who and what Christ is and what believing in
+Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To
+such a faith, which views Christ in the scope and
+breadth of His redemption, this epistle throughout
+appeals; for its impartation and increase St Paul
+prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter.
+When he writes not simply, “You have believed in
+Christ,” but “You have <i>learned the Christ</i>,” he puts
+their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of approved
+disciples in Christ’s school. For such men the “philosophy
+and vain deceit” of Colossæ and the plausibilities
+of the new “scheme of error” will have no charm.
+They have found the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
+that are hidden in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle’s confidence in the Christian knowledge
+of his readers is, however, qualified in verse 21 in a
+somewhat remarkable way: “If verily it is He whom
+you heard, and in Him that you were taught, as truth
+is in Jesus.” We noted at the outset the bearing of
+this sentence on the destination of the letter. It would
+never occur to St Paul to question whether the <i>Ephesian</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+Christians were taught Christ’s true doctrine. If there
+were any believers in the world who, beyond a doubt, had
+heard the truth as in Jesus in its certainty and fulness,
+it was those amongst whom the apostle had “taught
+publicly and from house to house,” “not shunning to
+declare all the counsel of God” and “for three years
+night and day unceasingly with tears admonishing each
+single one” (Acts xx. 18–35). To suppose these words
+written in irony, or in a modest affectation, is to credit
+St Paul with something like an ineptitude. Doubt was
+really possible as to whether all his readers had heard
+of Christ aright, and understood the obligations of their
+faith. Supposing, as we have done, that the epistle
+was designed for the Christians of the province of Asia
+generally, this qualification is natural and intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>There are several considerations which help to
+account for it. When St Paul first arrived at Ephesus,
+eight years before this time, he “found certain disciples”
+there who had been “baptized into John’s
+baptism,” but had not “received the Holy Spirit” nor
+even heard of such a thing (Acts xix. 1–7). Apollos
+formerly belonged to this company, having preached
+and “taught carefully the things about Jesus,” while
+he “knew only the baptism of John” (Acts xviii. 25).
+One very much desires to know more about this Church
+of the Baptist’s disciples in Asia Minor. Its existence
+so far away from Palestine testifies to the power of
+John’s ministry and the deep impression that his witness
+to the Messiahship of Jesus made on his disciples.
+The ready reception of Paul’s fuller gospel by this little
+circle indicates that their knowledge of Jesus Christ
+erred only by defect; they had received it from Judæa
+by a source dating earlier than the day of Pentecost.
+The partial knowledge of Jesus current for so long at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+Ephesus, may have extended to other parts of the
+province, where St Paul had not been able to correct
+it as he had done in the metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>Judaistic Christians, such as those who at Rome
+“preached Christ of envy and strife,” were also disseminating
+an imperfect Christian doctrine. They
+limited the rights of uncircumcised believers; they
+misrepresented the Gentile apostle and undermined his
+influence. A third and still more lamentable cause of
+uncertainty in regard to the Christian belief of Asian
+Churches, was introduced by the rise of Gnosticizing
+error in this quarter. Some who read the epistle had,
+it might be, received their first knowledge of Christ
+through channels tainted with error similar to that
+which was propagated at Colossæ. With the seed of
+the kingdom the enemy was mingling vicious tares.
+The apostle has reason to fear that there were those
+within the wide circle to which his letter is addressed,
+who had in one form or other heard a different gospel
+and a Christ other than the true Christ of apostolic
+teaching.</p>
+
+<p>Where does he find the test and touchstone of the
+true Christian doctrine?—In the historical Jesus: “as
+there is truth <i>in Jesus</i>.” Not often, nor without distinct
+meaning, does St Paul use the birth-name of the
+Saviour by itself. Where he does, it is most significant.
+He has in mind the facts of the gospel history; he
+speaks of “the Jesus”<a name="FNanchor_122" id="FNanchor_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a>
+of Nazareth and Calvary. The Christ whom St Paul feared that some of his
+readers might have heard of was not the veritable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+<i>Jesus</i> Christ, but a shadowy and notional Christ, lost
+amongst the crowd of angels, such as was now being
+taught to the Colossians. This Christ was neither
+the image of God, nor the true Son of man. He
+supplied no sufficient redemption from sin, no ideal
+of character, no sure guidance and authority to direct
+the daily walk. Those who followed such a Christ
+would fall back unchecked into Gentile vice. Instead
+of the light of life shining in the character and words
+of Jesus, they must resort to “the doctrines and commandments
+of men” (Col. ii. 8–23).</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the Gnostics of the second century there
+was held a distinction between the human (fleshly and
+imperfect) <i>Jesus</i> and the Divine <i>Christ</i>, who were
+regarded as distinct beings, united to each other
+from the time of the baptism of Jesus to His death.
+The critics who assert the late and non-Pauline authorship
+of the epistle, assert that this peculiar doctrine
+is aimed at in the words before us, and that the
+identification of Christ with Jesus has a polemical
+reference to this advanced Gnostic error. The verses
+that follow show that the writer has a different and
+entirely practical aim. The apostle points us to our
+true ideal, to “the Christ” of all revelation manifest in
+“the Jesus” of the gospel. Here we see “the new man
+created after God,” whose nature we must embody in
+ourselves. The counteractive of a false spiritualism
+is found in the incarnate life of the Son of God. The
+dualism which separated God from the world and
+man’s spirit from his flesh, had its refutation in “the
+Jesus” of Paul’s preaching, whom we see in the Four
+Gospels. Those who persisted in the attempt to graft
+the dualistic theosophy upon the Christian faith, were
+in the end compelled to divide and destroy the Christ
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+Himself. They broke up into <i>Jesus and Christ</i> the
+unity of His incarnate Person.</p>
+
+<p>It is an entire mistake to suppose that the apostle
+Paul was indifferent to the historical tradition of Jesus;
+that the Christ he taught was a product of his personal
+inspiration, of his inward experience and theological
+reflection. This preaching of an abstract Christ, distinct
+from the actual Jesus, is the very thing that he condemns.
+Although his explicit references in the epistles
+to the teaching of Jesus and the events of His earthly
+life are not numerous, they are such as to prove that
+the Churches St Paul taught were well instructed in
+that history. From the beginning the apostle made
+himself well acquainted with the facts concerning Jesus,
+and had become possessor of all that the earlier
+witnesses could relate. His conception of the Lord
+Jesus Christ is living and realistic in the highest
+degree. Its germ was in the visible appearance of the
+glorified Jesus to himself on the Damascus road; but
+that expanding germ struck down its roots into the
+rich soil of the Church’s recollections of the incarnate
+Redeemer as He lived and taught and laboured, as He
+died and rose again amongst men. Paul’s Christ was
+the Jesus of Peter and of John and of our own
+Evangelists; there was no other. He warns the
+Church against all unhistorical, subjective Christs, the
+product of human speculation.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>The Asian Christians who held a true faith, had
+received Jesus as the Christ. So accepting Him,
+they accepted a fixed standard and ideal of life for
+themselves. With Jesus Christ evidently set forth
+before their eyes, let them look back upon their past
+life; let them contrast what they had been with what
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+they are to be. Let them consider what things they
+must “put off” and what “put on,” so that they may
+“be found in Him.”</p>
+
+<p>Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan
+world; keenly its light smote on that gross darkness.
+There stood the Word made flesh—purity immaculate,
+love in its very self—shaped forth in no dream of
+fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man Christ
+Jesus, born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate,—truth
+expressed</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">“In loveliness of perfect deeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More strong than all poetic thought.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And this life of Jesus, living in those who loved Him
+(2 Cor. iv. 11), ended not when He passed from earth;
+it passed from land to land, speaking many tongues,
+raising up new witnesses at every step as it moved
+along. It was not a new system, a new creed, but <i>new
+men</i> that it gave the world in Christ’s disciples, men
+redeemed from all iniquity, noble and pure as sons of
+God. It was the sight of Jesus, and of men like Jesus,
+that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and
+hardened in its sin. In vain she summoned the gates
+of death to silence the witnesses of Jesus. At last</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And laid her sceptre down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her stately purple she abhorred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And her imperial crown.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her artists could not please;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She tore her books, she shut her courts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She fled her palaces;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lust of the eye and pride of life—<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She left it all behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hurried, torn with inward strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wilderness to find” (<i>Obermann once more</i>).<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+The Galilean conquered! The new man was destined
+to convict and destroy the old. “God sending His
+Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned
+sin in the flesh” (Rom. viii. 3). When Jesus
+lived, died, and rose again, an inconceivable revolution
+in human affairs had been effected. The cross was
+planted on the territory of the god of this world; its
+victory was inevitable. The “grain of wheat” fell into
+the ground to die: there might be still a long, cruel
+winter; many a storm and blight would delay its
+growth; but the harvest was secure. Jesus Christ was
+the type and the head of a new moral order, destined
+to control the universe.</p>
+
+<p>To see the new and the old man side by side was
+enough to assure one that the future lay with Jesus.
+Corruption and decrepitude marked every feature of
+Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice,—“wasting
+away in its deceitful lusts.”</p>
+
+<p>St Paul had before his eyes, as he wrote, a conspicuous
+type of the decaying Pagan order. He had
+appealed as a citizen of the empire to <i>Cæsar</i> as his
+judge. He was in durance as <i>Nero’s</i> prisoner, and was
+acquainted with the life of the palace (Phil. i. 13).
+Never, perhaps, has any line of rulers dominated mankind
+so absolutely or held in their single hand so completely
+the resources of the world as did the Cæsars of
+St Paul’s time. Their name has ever since served to
+mark the summit of autocratic power. It was, surely,
+the vision of Tiberius sitting at Rome that Jesus saw
+in the wilderness, when “the devil showed Him all
+the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and said,
+All this hath been delivered to me, and to whomsoever
+I will I give it.” The Emperor was the topstone of
+the splendid edifice of Pagan civilization, that had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+rearing for so many ages. And Nero was the final
+product and paragon of the Cæsarean house!</p>
+
+<p>At this epoch, writes M.
+Renan,<a name="FNanchor_123" id="FNanchor_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a>
+“<i>Nero and Jesus</i>, Christ and Antichrist, stand opposed, confronting
+each other, if I may dare to say so, like heaven and
+hell.... In face of Jesus there presents itself a
+monster, who is the ideal of evil as Jesus of goodness....
+Nero’s was an evil nature, hypocritical, vain,
+frivolous, prodigiously given to declamation and display;
+a blending of false intellect, profound wickedness, cruel
+and artful egotism carried to an incredible degree of
+refinement and subtlety.... He is a monster who has
+no second in history, and whose equal we can only find
+in the pathological annals of the scaffold.... The
+school of crime in which he had grown up, the execrable
+influence of his mother, the stroke of parricide forced
+upon him, as one might say, by this abominable woman,
+by which he had entered on the stage of public life,
+made the world take to his eyes the form of a horrible
+comedy, with himself for the chief actor in it. At the
+moment we have now reached [when St Paul entered
+Rome], Nero had detached himself completely from the
+philosophers who had been his tutors. He had killed
+nearly all his relations. He had made the most shameful
+follies the common fashion. A large part of Roman
+society, following his example, had descended to the
+lowest level of debasement. The cruelty of the ancient
+world had reached its consummation.... The world
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+had touched the bottom of the abyss of evil; it could
+only reascend.”</p>
+
+<p>Such was the man who occupied at this time the
+summit of human power and glory,—the man who
+lighted the torch of Christian martyrdom and at whose
+sentence St Paul’s head was destined to fall, the Wild
+Beast of John’s awful vision. Nero of Rome, the son
+of Agrippina, embodied the triumph of Satan as the
+god of this world. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
+Mary, reigned only in a few loving and pure hearts.
+Future history, as the scroll of the Apocalypse unfolded
+it, was to be the battle-field of these confronting powers,
+the war of Christ with Antichrist.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be doubtful, to any one who had measured
+the rival forces, on which side victory must fall? St
+Paul pronounces the fate of the whole kingdom of evil
+in this world, when he declares that “the old man” is
+“perishing, according to the lusts of deceit.” It is an
+application of the maxim he gave us in Galatians vi. 8:
+“He that soweth to his own flesh, shall of the flesh
+reap corruption.” In its mad sensuality and prodigal
+lusts, the vile Roman world he saw around him was
+speeding to its ruin. That ruin was delayed; there
+were moral forces left in the fabric of the Roman State,
+which in the following generations re-asserted themselves
+and held back for a time the tide of disaster;
+but in the end Rome fell, as the ancient world-empires
+of the East had fallen, through her own corruption,
+and by “the wrath” which is “revealed from heaven
+against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”
+For the solitary man, for the household, for the body
+politic and the family of nations the rule is the same.
+“Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”</p>
+
+<p>The passions which carry men and nations to their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+ruin are “lusts <i>of deceit</i>.” The tempter is the liar.
+Sin is an enormous fraud. “You shall not die,” said
+the serpent in the garden; “Your eyes will be opened,
+and you will be as God!” So forbidden desire was
+born, and “the woman <i>being deceived</i> fell into transgression.”</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of prohibition, root of all our woe.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>By its baits of sensuous pleasure, and still more by
+its show of freedom and power to stir our pride, sin
+cheats us of our manhood; it sows life with misery,
+and makes us self-despising slaves. It knows how
+to use God’s law as an incitement to transgression,
+turning the very prohibition into a challenge to our
+bold desires. “Sin taking occasion by the commandment
+deceived me, and by it slew me.” Over the
+pit of destruction play the same dancing lights that
+have lured countless generations,—the glitter of gold;
+the purple robe and jewelled coronet; the wine moving
+in the cup; fair, soft faces lit with laughter. The
+straying foot and hot desires give chase, till the inevitable
+moment comes when the treacherous soil yields,
+and the pursuer plunges beyond escape into sin’s
+reeking gulfs. Then the illusion is over. The gay
+faces grow foul; the glittering prize proves dust; the
+sweet fruit turns to ashes; the cup of pleasure burns
+with the fire of hell. And the sinner knows at last
+that his greed has cheated him, that he is as foolish as
+he is wicked.</p>
+
+<p>Let us remember that there is but one way of escape
+from the all-encompassing deceit of sin. It is in
+“learning Christ.” Not in learning <i>about</i> Christ, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+in learning <i>Him</i>. It is a common artifice of the great
+deceit to “wash the outside of cup and platter.” The
+old man is improved and civilized; he is baptized in
+infancy and called a Christian. He puts off many of
+his old ways, he dresses himself in a decorous garb and
+style; and so deceives himself into thinking that he
+is new, while his heart is unchanged. He may turn
+ascetic, and deny this or that <i>to</i> himself; and yet never
+deny <i>himself</i>. He observes religious forms and makes
+charitable benefactions, as though he would compound
+with God for his unforsaken sin. But all this is only
+a plausible and hateful manifestation of the lusts of
+deceit. To learn the Christ, is to learn the way of the
+cross. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me,”
+He bids us; “for I am meek and lowly in heart.” Till
+we have done this, we are not even at the beginning
+of our lesson.</p>
+
+<p>From the perishing old man the apostle turns, in
+verses 23, 24, to the new. These two clauses differ
+in their form of expression more than the English
+rendering indicates.<a name="FNanchor_124" id="FNanchor_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a>
+When he writes, “that ye be
+renewed in the spirit of your mind,” it is a <i>continual
+rejuvenation</i> that he describes; the verb is present in
+tense, and the newness implied is that of recency and
+youth, newness in point of age. But the “new
+man” to be “put on” (ver. 24) is of a <i>new kind and
+order</i>; and in this instance the verb is of the aorist
+tense signifying an event, not a continuous act. The
+new man is put on when the Christian way of life is
+adopted, when we enter personally into the new
+humanity founded in Christ. We “put on the Lord
+Jesus Christ” (Rom. xiii. 14), who covers and absorbs
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+the old self, even as those who await in the flesh His
+second advent will “put on the house from heaven,”
+when “the mortal” in them will be “swallowed up of
+life” (2 Cor. v. 2–4). Thus two distinct conceptions of
+the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists,
+on the one hand, of a quickening, constantly
+renewed, in the springs of our individual thought and
+will; and it is at the same time the assumption of
+another nature, the investiture of the soul with the
+Divine character and form of its being.</p>
+
+<p>Borne on the stream of his evil passions, we saw “the
+old man” in his “former manner of life,” hastening to
+the gulf of ruin. For the man renewed in Christ the
+stream of life flows steadily in the opposite direction,
+and with a swelling tide moves upward to God. His
+knowledge and love are always growing in depth, in
+refinement, in energy and joy. Thus it was with the
+apostle in his advancing age. The fresh impulses of
+the Holy Spirit, the unfolding to his spirit of the
+mystery of God, the fellowship of Christian brethren
+and the interests of the work of the Church renewed
+Paul’s youth like the eagle’s. If in years and toil he is
+old, his soul is full of ardour, his intellect keen and
+eager; the “outward man decays, but the inward man
+is renewed day by day.”</p>
+
+<p>This new nature had a new birth. The soul reanimating
+itself perpetually from the fresh springs that are in
+God, had in God the beginning of its renovated life.
+We have not to create or fashion for ourselves the
+perfect life, but to <i>adopt</i> it,—to realize the Christian
+ideal (ver. 24). We are called to put on the new type
+of manhood as completely as we renounce the old
+(ver. 22). The new man is there before our eyes,
+manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+live henceforth. When we “learn the Christ,” when we
+have become His true disciples, we “put on” His nature
+and “walk in Him.” The inward reception of His Spirit
+is attended by the outward assumption of His character
+as our calling amongst men.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the character of Jesus is human nature as
+God first formed it. It existed in His thoughts from
+eternity. If it be asked whether St Paul refers, in
+verse 24, to the creation of Adam in God’s likeness, or
+to the image of God appearing in Jesus Christ, or to the
+Christian nature formed in the regenerate, we should
+say that, to the apostle’s mind, the first and last of
+these creations are merged in the second. The Son of
+God’s love is His primeval image. The race of Adam
+was created in Christ (Col. i. 15, 16). The first model
+of that image, in the natural father of mankind, was
+marred by sin and has become “the old man” corrupt
+and perishing. The new pattern replacing this broken
+type is the original ideal, displayed “in the likeness of
+sinful flesh”—wearing no longer the charm of childish
+innocence, but the glory of sin vanquished and sacrifice
+endured—in the Son of God made perfect through
+suffering. Through all there has been only one image
+of God, one ideal humanity. The Adam of Paradise
+was, within his limits, what the Image of God had been
+in perfectness from eternity. And Jesus in His human
+personality represented, under the changed circumstances
+brought about by sin, what Adam might have
+grown to be as a complete and disciplined man.</p>
+
+<p>The qualities which the apostle insists upon in the
+new man are two: “<i>righteousness</i> and <i>holiness</i> [or <i>piety</i>]
+of the truth.” This is the Old Testament conception
+of a perfect life, whose realization the devout Zacharias
+anticipates when he sings how God has “shown mercy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+to our fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, ...
+that we being delivered from the hand of our
+enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and
+righteousness before Him all the days of our life.”
+Enchanting vision, still to be fulfilled! “Righteousness”
+is the sum of all that should be in a man’s
+relations towards God’s law; “holiness” is a right
+disposition and bearing towards God Himself. This
+is not St Paul’s ordinary word for holiness (<i>sanctification</i>,
+<i>sanctity</i>), which he puts so often at the head of his
+letters, addressing his readers as “saints” in Christ
+Jesus. That other term designates Christian believers
+as devoted persons, claimed by God for His
+own;<a name="FNanchor_125" id="FNanchor_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a>
+it signifies holiness as a calling. The word of our
+text denotes specifically the holiness of temper and
+behaviour—“that becometh saints.” The two words
+differ very much as <i>devotedness</i> from
+<i>devoutness</i>.<a name="FNanchor_126" id="FNanchor_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a></p>
+
+<p>A religious temper, a reverent mind marks the true
+child of grace. His soul is full of the loving fear of
+God. In the new humanity, in the type of man that
+will prevail in the latter days when the truth as in
+Jesus has been learnt by mankind, justice and piety
+will hold a balanced sway. The man of the coming
+times will not be atheistic or agnostic: he will be
+devout. He will not be narrow and self-seeking;
+he will not be pharisaic and pretentious, practising the
+world’s ethics with the Christian’s creed: he will be
+upright and generous, manly and godlike.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118" id="Footnote_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118">
+<span class="label">[118]</span></a>
+Quid si post <span class="greek" title="houtôs">οὕτως</span>
+distinctionem ascribas? <i>Vos autem non ita</i> (subaudi
+<i>facere convenit</i>), <i>qui didicistis</i>, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119" id="Footnote_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119">
+<span class="label">[119]</span></a>
+Comp. Numb. xii. 7; Ps. i. 4; Luke xxii. 26, for this Hebraistic
+turn of expression.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120" id="Footnote_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120">
+<span class="label">[120]</span></a>
+Comp. Phil. iii. 2, 18; Titus i. 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121" id="Footnote_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121">
+<span class="label">[121]</span></a>
+See pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122" id="Footnote_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122">
+<span class="label">[122]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Estin alêtheia en tô Iêsou.">Ἐστὶν ἀληθεία ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ.</span>
+The article with the proper name is
+most significant. It points to the definite image of Jesus, in His actual
+person, that was made familiar by the preaching of Paul and the other
+apostles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123" id="Footnote_123"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a>
+<i>L’Antéchrist</i>, pp. i. ii. 1, 2. This is a powerful and impressive
+work, of whose value those who know only the <i>Vie de Jésus</i> can have
+little conception. Renan’s faults are many and deplorable; but he is a
+writer of genius and of candour. His rationalism teems with precious
+inconsistencies. One hears in him always the Church bells ringing under
+the sea, the witness of a faith buried in the heart and never silenced,
+to which he confesses touchingly in the Preface to his <i>Souvenirs</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124" id="Footnote_124"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="ananeousthai de tô pneumati tou noos hymôn,
+kai endysasthai ton kainon anthrôpon, ton kata Theon ktisthenta.">
+ἀνανεοῦσθαι δὲ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς ὑμῶν,
+καὶ ἐνδυσασθαι τὸν καίνον ἄνθρωπον,
+τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125" id="Footnote_125"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a>
+Comp. pp. 29, 30.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126" id="Footnote_126"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a>
+It is important to distinguish the Greek adjectives <span class="greek" title="hagios">ἅγιος</span>
+and <span class="greek" title="hosios">ὅσιος</span>,
+with their derivatives. See Cremer’s <i>N. T. Lexicon</i> on these words, and
+Trench’s <i>N. T. Synonyms</i>, § lxxxviii. Of the latter word, 1 Thess.
+ii. 10; 1 Tim. i. 9, ii. 8; 2 Tim. iii. 3; Tit. i. 8 are the only examples in
+St Paul.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h4>DISCARDED VICES.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Wherefore, having put away falsehood, ‘speak ye truth each one
+with his neighbour’: for we are members one of another.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Be ye angry, and sin not’: let not the sun go down upon your
+provocation: neither give place to the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour, working
+with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof
+to give to him that hath need.</p>
+
+<p>“Let no worthless speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is
+good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that
+hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed
+unto the day of redemption.</p>
+
+<p>“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing
+be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another,
+tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave
+you. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and
+walk in love, even as the Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up
+for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odour of a sweet
+smell.</p>
+
+<p>“But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not
+even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor
+foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not befitting: but rather giving of
+thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator, nor unclean
+person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any inheritance
+in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you with empty
+words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the
+sons of disobedience.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iv. 25—v. 6.</p></div>
+
+<p>The transformation described in the last paragraph
+(vv. 17–24) has now to be carried into detail.
+The vices of the old heathen self must be each of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new
+man in Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiarity of the instructions given by the
+apostle for this purpose does not lie in the virtues
+enjoined, but in the light in which they are set and the
+motives by which they are inculcated. The common
+conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness;
+they were denounced with eloquence by
+heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New Testament
+differed in many respects from the best moral
+philosophy: in its direct appeal to the conscience, in
+its vigour and decision, in the clearness with which it
+traced our maladies to the heart’s alienation from God;
+but most of all, in the remedy which it applied, the
+new principle of faith in Christ. The surgeon’s knife
+lays bare the root of the disease; and the physician’s
+hand pours in the healing balm.</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe at the outset that St Paul deals with
+the actual and pressing temptations of his readers.
+He recalls what they had been, and forbids them to be
+such again. The associations and habits of former life,
+the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile
+society, and added to all this, as we discover from
+chapter v. 6, the persuasions of the sophistical teachers
+now beginning to infest the Church, tended to draw
+the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break
+down the moral distinctions that separated them from
+the pagan world.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile
+life, the following are here distinguished: <i>lying</i>, <i>theft</i>,
+<i>anger</i>, <i>idle speech</i>, <i>malice</i>, <i>impurity</i>, <i>greed</i>. These may
+be reduced to sins of temper, of word, and of act.
+Let us discuss them in the order in which they are
+brought before us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+1. “The falsehood”<a name="FNanchor_127" id="FNanchor_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a>
+of verse 25 is the antithesis
+of “the truth” from which righteousness and holiness
+spring (ver. 24). In accepting the one, Paul’s Gentile
+readers “had put off” the other. When these heathen
+converts became Christians, they renounced the great
+lie of idolatry, the system of error and deceit on which
+their lives were built. They have passed from the
+realm of illusion to that of truth. “Now,” the apostle
+says, “let your daily speech accord with this fact: you
+have bidden farewell to falsehood; <i>speak</i> truth each
+with his neighbour.” The true religion breeds truthful
+men; a sound faith makes an honest tongue. Hence
+there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing
+more shocking than the conduct of those who defend
+what they call “the truth” by disingenuous arts, by
+tricks of rhetoric and the shifts of an unscrupulous
+partizanship. “Will you speak unrighteously for God,
+and talk deceitfully for Him?” <i>As Christ’s truth is in
+me</i> cries the apostle, when he would give the strongest
+possible assurance of the fact he wishes to
+assert.<a name="FNanchor_128" id="FNanchor_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a>
+The social conventions and make-believes, the countless
+simulations and dissimulations by which the game of
+life is carried on belong to the old man with his lusts
+of deceit, to the universal lie that runs through all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+ungodliness and unrighteousness, which is in the last
+analysis the denial of God.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16,
+in which the prophet promises to restored Israel better
+days on the condition that they should “speak truth
+each with his neighbour, and judge truth and the
+judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you,”
+he continues, “imagine evil in his heart against his
+neighbour; and love no false oath. For all these things
+do I hate, saith the Lord.” Such is the law of the New
+Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the
+intercourse of Christians with each other when he
+quotes this command and adds the reason, “For we
+are <i>members one of another</i>.” But the word <i>neighbour</i>, as
+Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited
+import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and
+publican. When the apostle bids his converts “Follow
+what is good towards one another, and towards all”
+(1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly
+obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.</p>
+
+<p>Believers in Christ represent a communion which in
+principle embraces all men. The human race is one
+family in Christ. For any man to lie to his fellow is,
+virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should
+conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play
+false to the other. Truth is the right which each man
+claims instinctively from his neighbour; it is the tacit
+compact that binds together all intelligences. Without
+neighbourly and brotherly love perfect truthfulness is
+scarcely possible. “Self-respect will never destroy
+self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest
+a side accessible to the temptations of falsehood”
+(Harless).</p>
+
+<p>2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+from the Old Testament and shaped to the uses of the
+New. “<i>Be ye angry</i>, and sin not”: so the words of
+Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the
+margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read,
+“Stand in awe, and sin not. Commune with your own
+heart upon your bed, and be still.” The apostle’s
+further injunction, that anger should be stayed before
+nightfall, accords with the Psalmist’s words; the calming
+effect of the night’s quiet the apostle anticipates in the
+approach of evening. As the day’s heat cools and its
+strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should die down.
+With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day
+began at evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen
+moralist contemporary with St Paul, gives this as an
+ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: “If at any time they
+happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language,
+before the sun set they would take each other’s hands
+and embracing make up their quarrel.” If Paul had
+heard of this admirable prescription, he would be
+delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those
+many facts of Gentile life which “show the work of the
+law written in their hearts” (Rom. ii. 15). The passion
+which outlives the day, on which the angry man sleeps
+and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in
+his breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill
+thoughts and deeds.</p>
+
+<p>There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt
+us than to brood over our wrongs. Every cherished
+grudge is a “place given” to the tempter, a new
+entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the
+soul, from which he may shoot his “fire-tipped darts”
+(vi. 16). Let us dismiss with each day the day’s vexations,
+commending as evening falls our cares and griefs
+to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for ourselves,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness
+and a better mind. We shall rise with the coming light
+armed with new patience and charity, to bring into the
+world’s turmoil a calm and generous wisdom that will
+earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall
+be called sons of God.</p>
+
+<p>Still the apostle says: “<i>Be angry</i>, and sin not.” He
+does not condemn anger in itself, nor wholly forbid
+it a place within the breast of the saint. Wrath is
+a glorious attribute of God,—perilous, indeed, for the
+best of men; but he who cannot be angry has no
+strength for good. The apostle knew this holy
+passion, the flame of Jehovah that burns unceasingly
+against the false and foul and cruel. But he knew
+its dangers—how easily an ardent soul kindled to
+exasperation forgets the bounds of wisdom and love;
+how strong and jealous a curb the temper needs, lest
+just indignation turn to sin, and Satan gain over us a
+double advantage, first by the wicked provocation and
+then by the uncontrolled resentment it excites.</p>
+
+<p>3. From anger we pass to <i>theft</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The eighth commandment is put here in a form
+indicating that some of the apostle’s readers had been
+habitual sinners against it. Literally his words read:
+“Let him <i>that steals</i> play the thief no more.” The
+Greek present participle does not, however, necessarily
+imply a pursuit now going on, but an habitual or
+characteristic pursuit, that by which the agent was
+known and designated: “Let the thief no longer steal!”
+From the lowest dregs of the Greek cities—from its
+profligate and criminal classes—the gospel had drawn
+its converts (comp. 1 Cor. vi. 9–11). In the Ephesian
+Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity
+had to make of them honest workmen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+The words of verse 28, addressed to a company of
+thieves, vividly show the transforming effect of the
+gospel of Christ: “Let him toil, working with his hands
+what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to
+him that is in need.” The apostle brings the loftiest
+motives to bear instantly upon the basest natures, and
+is sure of a response. He makes no appeal to self-interest,
+he says nothing of the fear of punishment,
+nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for
+their fellows, the spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity
+is to set those pilfering and violent hands to unaccustomed
+toil. The appeal was as wise as it was bold.
+Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded.
+Preach to them thrift and self-improvement, show them
+the pleasures of an ordered home and the advantages
+of respectability, they will still feel that their own way
+of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine
+spark of charity be kindled in their breast—let the man
+have love and pity and not self to work for, and he is
+a new creature. His indolence is conquered; his meanness
+changed to the noble sense of a common manhood.
+Love never faileth.</p>
+
+<p>4. We have passed from speech to temper, and from
+temper to act; in the warning of verses 29, 30 we
+come back to speech again.</p>
+
+<p>We doubt whether <i>corrupt talk</i> is here intended. That
+comes in for condemnation in verses 2 and 3 of the next
+chapter. The Greek adjective is the same that is used
+of the “<i>worthless</i> fruit” of the “<i>worthless</i> [<i>good-for-nothing</i>]
+tree” in Matthew xii. 33; and again of the
+“<i>bad</i> fish” of Matthew xiii. 48, which the fisherman
+throws away not because they are corrupt or offensive,
+but because they are useless for food. So it is against
+<i>inane</i>, inept and useless talk that St Paul sets his face.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+Jesus said that “for <i>every idle word</i> men must give
+account to God” (Matt. xii. 36).</p>
+
+<p>Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of
+the gift of speech. “By thy words,” He said to His
+disciples, “thou shalt be justified, and by thy words
+condemned.” The possession of a human tongue is an
+immense responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies
+in its power. (With the tongue we should include the
+pen, as being the tongue’s deputy.) Who shall say
+how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the
+irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of
+spirit, the destruction of Christian fellowship that is due
+to thoughtless speech and writing? The apostle does
+not simply forbid injurious words, he puts an embargo
+on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough
+to say: “My chatter does nobody harm; if there is no
+good in it, there is no evil.” He replies: “If you cannot
+speak to profit, be silent till you can.”</p>
+
+<p>Not that St Paul requires all Christian speech to be
+grave and serious. Many a true word is spoken in jest;
+and “grace” may be “given to the hearers” by words
+clothed in the grace of a genial fancy and playful wit,
+as well as in the direct enforcement of solemn themes.
+It is the mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous—spoken
+from the pulpit or the easy chair—the incontinence
+of tongue, the flux of senseless, graceless, unprofitable
+utterance that St Paul desires to arrest: “let
+it not proceed out of your mouth.” Such speech must
+not “escape the fence of the teeth.” It is an oppression
+to every serious listener; it is an injury to the utterer
+himself. Above all, it “grieves the Holy Spirit.”</p>
+
+<p>The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of God’s
+possession in us;<a name="FNanchor_129" id="FNanchor_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a>
+it is the assurance to ourselves that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+we are His sons in Christ and heirs of life eternal.
+From the day it is affixed to the heart, this seal need
+never be broken nor the witness withheld, “until the
+day of redemption.” Dwelling within the Church as
+the guard of its communion, and loving us with the
+love of God, the Spirit of grace is hurt and grieved by
+foolish words coming from lips that He has sanctified.
+As Israel in its ancient rebellions “vexed His Holy
+Spirit” (Isai. lxiii. 10), so do those who burden Christian
+fellowship and who enervate their own inward life
+by speech without worth and purpose. As His fire is
+quenched by distrust (1 Thess. v. 19), so His love is
+vexed by folly. His witness grows faint and silent;
+the soul loses its joyous assurance, its sense of the
+peace of God. When our inward life thus declines,
+the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless
+speech. Or we have listened willingly and without
+reproof to “words that may do hurt,” words of foolish
+jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and backbiting. The
+Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated
+temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is
+purged and the wilful tongue bends to the yoke of
+Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy Spirit, that He
+be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray
+evermore: “Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth;
+keep the door of my lips.”</p>
+
+<p>5. In his previous reproofs the apostle has glanced
+in various ways at love as the remedy of our moral disorders
+and defects. Falsehood, anger, theft, misuse of
+the tongue involve disregard of the welfare of others; if
+they do not spring from positive ill-will, they foster and
+aggravate it. It is now time to deal directly with this
+evil that assumes so many forms, the most various of
+our sins and companion to every other: “Let all bitterness,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be
+put away from you, with all malice.”</p>
+
+<p>The last of these terms is the most typical. <i>Malice</i>
+is badness of disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred,
+which apart from any special occasion is always ready
+to break out in bitterness and wrath. <i>Bitterness</i> is
+malice sharpened to a point and directed against the
+exasperating object. <i>Wrath</i> and <i>anger</i> are synonymous,
+the former being the passionate outburst of resentment
+in rage, the latter the settled indignation of the aggrieved
+soul: this passion was put under restraint already in
+verses 26, 27. <i>Clamour</i> and <i>railing</i> give audible expression
+to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is
+the loud self-assertion of the angry man, who will make
+every one hear his grievance; while the railer carries
+the war of the tongue into his enemy’s camp, and vents
+his displeasure in abuse and insult.</p>
+
+<p>These sins of speech were rife in heathen society;
+and there were some amongst Paul’s readers, doubtless,
+who found it hard to forgo their indulgence. Especially
+difficult was this when Christians suffered all
+manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and
+former friends; it cost a severe struggle to be silent
+and “keep the mouth as with a bridle” under fierce
+and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and
+railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing,—this was
+one of the lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kindness</i> in act, <i>tenderheartedness</i> of feeling are to
+take the place of malice with its brood of bitter
+passions. Where injury used to be met with reviling
+and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the
+new life will be found “forgiving one another, even
+as God in Christ forgave” them. Here we touch the
+spring of Christian virtue, the master motive in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+apostle’s theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is
+the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology.
+The sacrifice of Calvary, while it is the ground of our
+salvation, supplies the standard and incentive of moral
+attainment. It makes life <i>an imitation of God</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The commencement of the new chapter at this point
+makes an unfortunate division; for its first two verses
+are in close consecution with the last verse of chapter iv.
+By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by readiness to
+forgive, God’s “beloved children” will “show themselves
+imitators” of their Father. The apostle echoes
+the saying of his Master, in which the law of His
+kingdom was laid down: “Love your enemies, and
+do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward
+shall be great, and you shall be called children of the
+Highest: for He is kind to the thankless and evil.
+Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful”
+(Luke vi. 35, 36). Before the cross of Jesus was set
+up, men could not know how much God loved the
+world and how far He was ready to go in the way
+of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love
+displayed in the Father’s daily providence. He bids
+us imitate Him who makes His sun shine and His
+rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the
+good. To the insight of Jesus, nature’s impartial
+bounties in which unbelief sees only moral indifference,
+spoke of God’s compassion; they proceed from
+the same love that gave His Son to taste death for
+every man.</p>
+
+<p>In chapter iv. 32–v. 2 the Father’s love and the
+Son’s self-sacrifice are spoken of in terms precisely
+parallel. They are altogether one in quality. Christ
+does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father
+to love His children; it is the Divine compassion in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+Christ that dictates and carries into effect the sacrifice.
+At the same time it was “an <i>offering</i> and a <i>sacrifice</i>
+to God.” God is love; but love is not everything in
+God. Justice is also Divine, and absolute in its own
+realm. Law can no more forgo its rights than love
+forget its compassions. Love must fulfil all righteousness;
+it must suffer law to mark out its path of
+obedience, or it remains an effusive, ineffectual sentiment,
+helpless to bless and save. Christ’s feet followed
+the stern and strait path of self-devotion; “He humbled
+Himself and became obedient,” He was “born under
+law.” And the law of God imposing death as the
+penalty for sin, which shaped Christ’s sacrifice, made
+it acceptable to God. Thus it was “an odour of a
+sweet smell.”</p>
+
+<p>Hence the love which follows Christ’s example, is
+love wedded with duty. It finds in an ordered devotion
+to the good of men the means to fulfil the all-holy
+Will and to present in turn its “offering to God.”
+Such love will be above the mere pleasing of men,
+above sentimentalism and indulgence; it will aim
+higher than secular ideals and temporal contentment.
+It regards men in their kinship to God and obligation
+to His law, and seeks to make them worthy of their
+calling. All human duties, for those who love God,
+are subordinate to this; all commands are summed
+up in one: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
+The apostle pronounced the first and last word of his
+teaching when he said: <i>Walk in love, as the Christ
+also loved us.</i></p>
+
+<p>6. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile
+world of that time with infamy,—its <i>uncleanness</i>.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul has stigmatized this already in the burning
+words of verse 19. There we saw this vice in its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set in the light
+of Christ’s love on the one hand (ver. 2), and of the
+final judgement on the other (vv. 5, 6). Thus it is
+banished from the Christian fellowship in every form—even
+in the lightest, where it glances from the lips
+in words of jest: “Fornication and all uncleanness,
+let it not even be named among you.” Along with
+“filthiness, foolish talk and jesting” are to be heard
+no more. Passing from verse 2 to verse 3 by the
+contrastive <i>But</i>, one feels how repugnant are these
+things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the
+sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens
+our life on earth; its grace drives wanton and selfish
+passions from the heart, and destroys the pestilence
+of evil in the social atmosphere. Lust cannot breathe
+in the sight of the cross.</p>
+
+<p>The “good-for-nothing speech” of chapter iv. 29
+comes up once more for condemnation in the <i>foolish
+speech</i> and <i>jesting</i> of this passage. The former is
+the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man.
+Both, under the conditions of heathen society, were
+tainted with foulness. Loose speech easily becomes
+low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence, finds a
+tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations
+of life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and
+jests that desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid
+open grossness.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s word for “jesting” is one of the singular
+terms of this epistle. By etymology it denotes
+a <i>well-turned</i> style of expression, the versatile speech
+of one who can touch lightly on many themes and
+aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was
+prized amongst the polished Greeks. But it was a
+faculty so commonly abused, that the word describing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and
+persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here
+indicated,—the wit whose zest lies in its flavour of
+impurity. “The very profligate old man in the <i>Miles
+Gloriosus</i> of Plautus (iii. I. 42–52), who prides himself,
+and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance
+and refinement [<i>cavillator lepidus</i>, <i>facetus</i>], is exactly
+the <span class="greek" title="eutrapelos">εὐτράπελος</span>.
+And keeping in mind that <span class="greek" title="eutrapelia">εὐτραπελία</span>,
+being only once expressly and by name forbidden in
+Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians, it is not a little
+notable to find him urging that all this was to be
+expected from him, being as he was an Ephesian by
+birth:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">Post <i>Ephesi sum natus</i>; non enim in Apulia, non
+Animulæ.”<a name="FNanchor_130" id="FNanchor_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a><br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In place of senseless prating and wanton jests—things
+unbefitting to a rational creature, much more
+to a saint—the Asian Greeks are to find in <i>thanksgiving</i>
+employment for their ready tongue. St Paul’s rule
+is not one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue
+that disported itself in unhallowed and frivolous utterance,
+may be turned into a precious instrument for
+God’s service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the
+jester’s lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise
+which once poured out dishonour to its Maker and
+shame to His image in man.</p>
+
+<p>7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices,
+as at the beginning (iv. 19), uncleanness is joined
+with <i>covetousness</i>, or <i>greed</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This, too, is “not even to be named amongst you,
+as becometh saints.” <i>Money! property!</i> these are the
+words dearest and most familiar in the mouths of a
+large class of men of the world, the only themes on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+which they speak with lively interest. But Christian
+lips are cleansed from the service both of Belial and
+of Mammon. When his business follows the trader
+from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and
+even into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject
+of his conversation, it is clear that he has fallen into
+the low vice of covetousness. He is becoming, instead
+of a man, a money-making machine, an “idolater” of</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From heaven.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator
+and the unclean, amongst those who by their
+worship of the shameful idols of the god of this world
+exclude themselves from their “inheritance in the
+kingdom of Christ and of God.”</p>
+
+<p>A serious warning this for all who handle the world’s
+wealth. They have a perilous war to wage, and an
+enemy who lurks for them at every step in their path.
+Will they prove themselves masters of their business,
+or its slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,—the
+passion for accumulation, the lust of property?
+None are found more dead to the claims of humanity
+and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ
+and God, none more “closely wrapped” within their
+“sensual fleece” than rich men who have prospered
+by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen and won
+his kingdom. He “receives in his lifetime his good
+things”; afterwards he must look for “torments.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127" id="Footnote_127"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Dio apothemenoi to pseudos.">Διὸ ἀποθέμενοι τὸ ψεῦδος.</span> Despite the commentators, we must
+hold to it that <i>the lie</i>, <i>the falsehood</i> is objective and concrete; not <i>lying</i>,
+or <i>falsehood</i> as a subjective act, habit, or quality,—which would have
+been rather <span class="greek" title="pseudologia">ψευδολογία</span>
+(comp. <span class="greek" title="môrologia">μωρολογία</span>, v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv. 2,
+<span class="greek" title="pseudologôn">ψευδολόγων</span>), or
+<span class="greek" title="to pseudes">τὸ ψευδές</span>.
+So in Rom. i. 25, <span class="greek" title="to pseudos">τὸ ψεῦδος</span> is “the [one
+great] lie” which runs through all idolatry; and in 2 Thess. ii. 11 it
+denotes “the lie” which Antichrist imposes on those ready to believe
+it,—viz., that he himself is God. Accordingly, we take the participle
+<span class="greek" title="apothemenoi">ἀποθέμενοι</span>
+to signify not what the readers are to do, but what they <i>had
+done</i> in renouncing heathenism. The apostle requires consistency:
+“Since you are now of the truth, be truth-speaking men.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128" id="Footnote_128"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a>
+2 Cor. i. 18, 19, xi. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129" id="Footnote_129"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a>
+See ch. i. 13, 14, and 18 (last clause).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130" id="Footnote_130"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a>
+Trench: <i>N. T. Synonyms</i>, § xxxiv.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h4>DOCTRINE AND ETHICS.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“We are members one of another....</p>
+
+<p>“Let the thief labour ... that he may have whereof to give to him
+that hath need....</p>
+
+<p>“Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto
+the day of redemption....</p>
+
+<p>“Forgive each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be
+ye imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as
+the Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and
+a sacrifice to God....</p>
+
+<p>“No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an
+idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+iv. 25–v. 6.</p></div>
+
+<p>The homily that we have briefly reviewed in the
+last Chapter demands further consideration. It
+affords a striking and instructive example of St Paul’s
+method as a teacher of morals, and makes an important
+contribution to evangelical ethics. The common vices
+are here prohibited on specifically Christian grounds.
+The new nature formed in Christ casts them off as
+alien and dead things; they are the sloughed skin of
+the old life, the discarded dress of the old man who
+was slain by the cross of Christ and lies buried in His
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle does not condemn these sins as being
+contrary to God’s law: that is taken for granted. But
+the legal condemnation was ineffectual (Rom. viii. 3).
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+The wrath revealed from heaven against man’s unrighteousness
+had left that unrighteousness unchastened
+and defiant. The revelation of law, approved and
+echoed by conscience, taught man his guilt; it could
+do no more. All this St Paul assumes; he builds on
+the ground of law and its acknowledged findings.</p>
+
+<p>Nor does the apostle make use of the principles of
+philosophical ethics, which in their general form were
+familiar to him as to all educated men of the day. He
+says nothing of the rule of nature and right reason, of
+the intrinsic fitness, the harmony and beauty of virtue;
+nothing of expediency as the guide of life, of the
+inward contentment that comes from well-doing, of
+the wise calculation by which happiness is determined
+and the lower is subordinated to the higher good. St
+Paul nowhere discountenances motives and sanctions
+of this sort; he contravenes none of the lines of argument
+by which reason is brought to the aid of duty,
+and conscience vindicates itself against passion and
+false self-interest. Indeed, there are maxims in his
+teaching which remind us of each of the two great
+schools of ethics, and that make room in the Christian
+theory of life both for the philosophy of experience and
+that of intuition. The true theory recognizes, indeed,
+the experimental and evolutional as well as the fixed
+and intrinsic in morality, and supplies their synthesis.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not the apostle’s business to adjust his
+position to that of Stoics and Epicureans, or to unfold
+a new philosophy; but to teach the way of the new
+life. His Gentile disciples had been untruthful, passionate
+in temper, covetous, licentious: the gospel
+which he preached had turned them from these sins
+to God; from the same gospel he draws the motives
+and convictions which are to shape their future life and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+to give to the new spirit within them its fit expression.
+St Paul has no quarrel with ethical science, much less
+with the inspired law of his fathers; but both had
+proved ineffectual to keep men from iniquity, or to
+redeem them fallen into it. Above them both, above
+all theories and all external rules he sets the law of
+the Spirit of life in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does
+not lie in its detailed precepts. There is not one, it
+may be, even of the noblest maxims of Jesus that had
+not been uttered by some previous moralist. With
+the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible
+to collect from non-Christian sources—from Greek
+philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud, from Egyptian
+sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius—a
+moral anthology which thus sifted out of the
+refuse of antiquity, like particles of iron drawn by the
+magnet, may bear comparison with the ethics of Christianity.
+If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we
+should expect Him to gather into one all that is
+highest in the thoughts and aspirations of mankind.
+Addressing the Athenians on Mars’ Hill, the apostle
+could appeal to “certain of your own poets” in support
+of his doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The noblest
+minds in all ages witness to Jesus Christ and prove
+themselves to be, in some sort, of His kindred.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i2">“They are but broken lights of Thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Thou, O Lord, art more than they!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the
+soul with Him and with the living God through Him,
+that forms the vital and constitutive factor of Christianity.
+Here is the secret of its moral efficacy. The
+Christ is the centre root and of the race; He is the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+image of God in which we were made. The life-blood
+of mankind flowed in Him as in its heart, and poured
+forth from Him as from its fountain in sacrifice for
+the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and
+restored the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand
+fragments; but He did much more than this. While
+He re-created in His personal character our lost manhood,
+by His death and resurrection He has gained for
+that ideal a transcendent power that seizes upon men
+and regenerates and transforms them. “With unveiled
+face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord, we
+are changed into the same image, [receiving the glory
+that we see] as from the Lord of the Spirit” (2 Cor.
+iii. 18).</p>
+
+<p>There is, therefore, an evangelical ethics, a Christian
+science of life. “The law of the Spirit of life in
+Christ Jesus” has a system and method of its own.
+It has a rational solution and explanation to render
+for our moral problems. But its solution is given,
+as St Paul and as his Master loved to give it, in
+practice, not in theory. It teaches the art of living to
+multitudes to whom the names of ethics and moral
+science are unknown. Those who understand the
+method of Christ best are commonly too busy in its
+practice to theorize about it. They are physicians
+tending the sick and the dying, not professors in some
+school of medicine. Yet professors have their use, as
+well as practitioners. The task of developing a Christian
+science of life, of exhibiting the truth of revelation in
+its theoretical bearings and its relations to the thought
+of the age, forms a part of the practical duties of the
+Church and touches deeply the welfare of souls. For
+other times this work has been nobly accomplished
+by Christian thinkers. Shall we not pray the Lord of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+the harvest that He will thrust forth into this field fit
+labourers; that He will raise up men mighty through
+God to overthrow every high thing that exalts itself
+against His knowledge, and wise to build up to the
+level of the times the great fabric of Christian ethics
+and discipline?</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>There emerge in this exhortation four distinct principles,
+which lay at the basis of St Paul’s views of
+life and conduct.</p>
+
+<p>I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of <i>the
+Fatherhood of God</i>, “Be imitators of God,” he writes,
+“as beloved children.” And in chapter iv. 24: “Put
+on the new man, which <i>was created after God</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Man’s life has its law, for it has its source, in the
+nature of the Eternal. Behind our race-instincts and
+the laws imposed on us in the long struggle for
+existence, behind those imperatives of practical reason
+involved in the structure of our intelligence, is the
+presence and the active will of Almighty God our
+heavenly Father. His image we see in the Son of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the fountainhead of truth, from which the
+two great streams of philosophical thought upon morals
+have diverged. If man is the child of a Being
+absolutely good, then moral goodness belongs to the
+essence of his nature; it is discoverable in the instincts
+of his reason and will. Were not our nature warped
+by sin, such reasoning must have commanded immediate
+assent and led to consistent and self-evident
+results. Again, if man is the <i>child</i> of God, the finite
+of the Infinite, his moral character must, presumably,
+have been in the beginning germinal rather than complete,
+needing—even apart from sin and its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+malformations—development and education, the discipline of a
+fatherly providence, inculcating the lessons and forming
+the habits which belong to his ripe manhood and
+full-grown stature. Intuitional morals bear witness
+to the God of creation; experimental morals to the
+God of providence and history. The Divine Fatherhood
+is the keystone of the arch in which they meet.</p>
+
+<p>The command to “be imitators of God” makes
+<i>personality</i> the sovereign element in life. If consciousness
+is a finite and passing phenomenon, if God be
+but a name for the sum of the impersonal laws that
+regulate the universe, for the “stream of tendency”
+in the worlds, <i>Father</i> and <i>love</i> are meaningless terms
+applied to the Supreme and religion dissolves into
+an impalpable mist. Is the universe governed by
+personal will, or by impersonal force? Is reason, or
+is gravitation the index to the nature of the Absolute?
+This is the vital question of modern thought. The
+latter is the answer given by a large, if not a preponderant
+body of philosophical opinion in our own
+day,—as it was given, virtually, by the natural philosophers
+of Greece in the dawn of science. Man’s
+triumphs over nature and the splendour of his discoveries
+in the physical realm bewilder his reason.
+The scientists, like other conquerors, have been
+intoxicated with victory. The universe, it seemed,
+was about to yield to them its last secrets; they were
+prepared to analyze the human soul and resolve the
+conception of God into its material elements. Religion
+and conscience, however, prove to be intractable
+subjects in the physical laboratory; they are coming
+out of the crucible unchanged and refined. We are
+able by this time to take a more sober measure of the
+possibilities of the scientific method, and to see what
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+inductive logic and natural selection can do for us,
+and what they cannot do. We can walk in the light
+of the new revelation, without being dazzled by it.
+Things are less altered than we thought. The old
+boundaries reappear. The spirit resumes its place,
+and rules a wider realm than before. Reason refuses
+to be the victim of its own success, and to immolate
+itself for the deification of material law. “Forasmuch
+as we are God’s offspring,” we ought not to think,
+and we will not think that the Godhead is like to blind
+forces and reasonless properties of matter. Love,
+thought, will in us raise our being above the realm of
+the impersonal; and these faculties point us upward
+to Him from whom they came, the Father of the spirits
+of all flesh.</p>
+
+<p>The great tide of joy, the victorious energy which
+the sense of God’s love brings into the life of a
+Christian, is evidence of its reality. The believer is
+a child walking in the light of his Father’s smile—dependent,
+ignorant, but the object of an Almighty
+love. A thousand tokens speak to him of the Divine
+care; his tasks and trials are sweetened by the confidence
+that they are appointed for wise ends beyond
+his present knowledge. To another in that same
+house there is no heavenly Father, no unseen hand
+that guides, no gleam of a brighter and purer day
+lighting up its dull chambers. There are human
+companions, weak, erring and wearying like oneself.
+There is work to do, with the night coming swiftly;
+and the brave heart girds itself to duty, finding in the
+service of man its motive and employment—but, alas,
+with how poor success and how faint a hope!</p>
+
+<p>It is not the loss of strength for human service,
+nor the dying out of joy which unbelief entails, that is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+its chief calamity; but the unbelief itself. The sun
+in the soul’s heaven is put out. The personal relationship
+to the Supreme which gave dignity and worth to
+our individual being, which imparted sacredness and
+enduring power to all other ties, is destroyed. The
+heart is orphaned; the temple of the spirit desolate.
+The mainspring of life is broken.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Hide not Thy face from me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>II. <i>The solidarity of mankind in Christ</i> furnishes the
+apostle with a powerful lever for raising the ethical
+standard of his readers. The thought that “we are
+members one of another” forbids deceit. That he
+may “have whereof to give to the needy” is the
+purpose that provokes the thief to industry. The
+desire to “give grace” to the hearers and to “build
+them up” in truth and goodness imparts seriousness
+and elevation to social intercourse. The irritations
+and injuries we inflict on each other, with or without
+purpose, furnish occasion for us to “be kind one to
+another, good-hearted, <i>forgiving yourselves</i>”—for this
+is the expression the apostle uses in chapter iv. 32,
+and in Colossians iii. 13. Self is so merged in the
+community, that in dealing censure or forgiveness to an
+offending brother the Christian man feels as though
+he were dealing with himself—as though it were the
+hand that forgave the foot for tripping, or the ear
+that pardoned some blunder of the eye.</p>
+
+<p><i>Showing-grace</i> is what the apostle literally says here,
+speaking both of human and Divine
+forgiveness.<a name="FNanchor_131" id="FNanchor_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+In this lies the charm and power of true forgiveness.
+The forgiver after the order of grace does not pardon
+like a judge moved by magnanimity or pity for transgressors,
+but in love to his own kind and desire for
+their amendment. He identifies himself with the
+wrong-doer, weighs his temptation and all that drew
+him into error. Such forgiveness, while it never ignores
+the wrong, admits every qualifying circumstance and
+just extenuation. This is the kind of pardon that
+touches the sinner’s heart; for it goes to the heart of
+the sin, isolating it from all other feelings and conditions
+that are not sin; it takes the wrong upon itself
+in understanding and perception; it puts its finger
+upon the aching, festering spot where the criminality
+lies and applies to that its healing balm.</p>
+
+<p>“Even as God in Christ forgave you.” And how
+did God forgive? Not by a grand imperial decree, as
+of some monarch too exalted to resent the injuries of
+men or to inquire into their futile proceedings. Had
+such forgiveness been possible to Divine justice, it
+could have wrought in us no real salvation. Our
+forgiveness is that of God in Christ. The Forgiver
+has sat down by the prisoner’s side, has felt his misery
+and the force of his temptations, and in everything but
+the actual sin has made Himself one with the sinner,
+even to bearing the extreme penalty of his guilt. In
+the act of making sacrifice, Jesus prayed for those
+that slew Him: “Father, forgive them; they know
+not what they do!” This intercession breathed the
+spirit of the new forgiveness. There is a real remission
+of sins, a release granted justly and upon
+due satisfaction; but it is the act of justice charged
+with love, of a justice as tender and considerate as it
+is strong, and which eagerly takes account of all that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+bespeaks in the offender a possibility of better things.
+It is a forgiveness that does justice to the humanity
+as well as the criminality in the sinner.</p>
+
+<p>To proclaim by word and deed this forgiveness of
+God to the sinful world is the vocation of the Church.
+And where she does thus declare it, by whatever means
+or ministry, Christ’s promise to her is verified: “Whose-soever
+sins ye remit, they are remitted to them.” We
+may so reconcile men to ourselves, as to bring them
+back to God. Has some one done you a wrong? there
+is your opportunity of saving a soul from death and
+hiding a multitude of sins. Thus Christ used the
+great wrong we all did Him. It is your privilege to
+show the wrong-doer that you and he are made one
+by the blood of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>“Walk in love,” St Paul says, “as the Christ also
+loved us and gave up Himself for us a sacrifice.”
+When the apostle writes <i>the Christ</i>, he points us along
+the whole line of the revelation of the
+cross.<a name="FNanchor_132" id="FNanchor_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> We
+think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness
+of such love as this. Christ’s was a representative
+and exemplary love, with its forerunners and its
+followers all walking in one path. “The Christ
+loved <i>and gave</i>”; for love that does not give, that
+prompts to no effort and puts itself to no sacrifice, is
+but a luxury of the heart,—useless and even selfish.
+And He “gave up <i>Himself</i>”—the only gift that could
+suffice. The rich who bestow many gifts in furtherance
+of humanitarian and religious work and still do not
+bestow themselves, their sympathetic thought, their
+presence and personal aid, are withholding the best
+thing, the one thing required to make their bounties
+efficacious. In what we give and forgive, it is the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+accent of sympathy, the giving of the heart with it that
+adds grace to the act. “Though I dole out all my
+goods, though I give my body to be burned, and have
+not love, it profiteth me nothing.” We do a thousand
+things to serve and benefit our fellow-men, and yet
+evade the real sacrifice,—which is simply to love them.</p>
+
+<p>In studying this epistle, we have felt increasingly
+that the Church is the centre of humanity. The love
+born and nourished in the household of faith goes out
+into the world with a universal mission. The solidarity
+of moral interests that is realized there, embraces all
+the kindreds of the earth. The incarnation of Christ
+knits all flesh into one redeemed family. The continents
+and races of mankind are members one of another,
+with Jesus Christ for head. We are brothers and sisters
+of humanity: He our elder brother, and God our
+common Father in heaven,—His Father and ours.</p>
+
+<p>Auguste Comte writes in his <i>System of Positive
+Polity</i>: “The promises of supernatural religion appealed
+exclusively to man’s selfish instincts.... The sympathetic
+instincts found no place in the theological
+synthesis.”<a name="FNanchor_133" id="FNanchor_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a>
+It would be impossible to affirm anything more completely
+at variance with the truth, anything more
+absolutely opposed to the doctrine of Christ and the
+theological synthesis of the apostles. And yet it was
+upon this ground that the great French thinker renounced
+Christianity, proposing his new religion of
+humanity as a substitute for a selfish and effete supernaturalism!
+Why did he not go to the New Testament
+itself to find out what Christianity means? “To combine
+permanently concert with independence,” Comte
+excellently says, “is the capital problem of society,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+a problem which religion alone can solve, by love
+primarily, then by faith on a basis of
+love.”<a name="FNanchor_134" id="FNanchor_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> Precisely
+so; and this is the solution offered by Jesus Christ.
+His self-sacrificing love is the basis on which our faith
+rests; and that faith works by love in all those who
+truly possess it. This is the evangelical theory. The
+morale of the Church, it is true, has fallen shamefully
+below its doctrine; but this doctrine is, after all, the
+one fruitful and progressive moral force in the world;
+and it is certain to be carried into effect.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkest hour of Israel’s oppression and of
+international hate, one of her great prophets thus
+described the triumph of supernatural religion: “In
+that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and
+Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that
+the <span class="smcap">Lord</span> of hosts hath blessed them, saying, Blessed
+be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my
+hands, and Israel my inheritance” (Isai. xix. 24, 25).
+This is our programme still.</p>
+
+<p>III. Another of St Paul’s ruling ideas lying at the
+basis of Christian ethics, is his conception of <i>man’s
+future destiny</i>. The apostle warns his readers that
+they “grieve not the Holy Spirit, in whom they were
+sealed till the day of redemption.” He tells them that
+“the impure and the covetous have no inheritance in
+the kingdom of Christ and God.”</p>
+
+<p>There is thus disclosed a world beyond the world,
+a life growing out of life, an eternal and invisible
+kingdom of whose possession the Spirit that lives in
+Christian men is the earnest and firstfruits. This
+kingdom is the joint inheritance of the sons of God,
+brethren with Christ and in Christ, who are conformed
+to His image and found worthy to “stand before the
+Son of man.” Those are excluded from the inheritance,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+who by their moral nature are alien to it: “Without
+are dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, idolaters, and every
+one that loveth and maketh a lie.” This revelation has
+had a most powerful influence on the progress of ethics.
+It has given a momentous importance to individual
+conduct, a new grandeur to the moral issues of the
+present life. “Man’s life,” viewed in the light of the
+Christian gospel, “has duties that are alone great, that
+go up to Heaven, and down to Hell.” The tangled
+skein is at last to be unravelled, the mysterious problem
+of mortal life will have its solution at the judgement-seat
+of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the wicked flourish and spread themselves
+like green trees in the sunshine; and the
+covetous boast of their hearts’ desire. To see this
+was the trial of ancient faith; and the good man had
+to charge himself constantly that he should not fret
+because of evil-doers. It required an heroic faith
+to believe in God’s kingdom and righteousness, when
+the visible course of things made all against them,
+and there was no clear light beyond. God’s saints
+had to learn first that God is Himself the sufficient
+good, and must be trusted to do right. But this
+was the faith of defence rather than of victory,—of
+endurance, not enthusiasm. In the knowledge of
+Christ’s victory over death and entrance on our behalf
+into the heavenly world, “in hope of life eternal
+which God who cannot lie hath promised,” men have
+fought against their own sins, have struggled for
+the right and spent themselves to save their fellows
+with a vigour and success never witnessed before, and
+in numbers far exceeding those that all other creeds
+and systems have enlisted in the holy cause of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Human reason had guessed and hope had dreamed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+of the soul’s immortality. Christianity gives this hope
+certainty, and adds to it the assurance of the resurrection
+of the body. Man’s entire nature is thus redeemed.
+Chastity takes its due place amongst the virtues, and
+becomes the mark of a Christian as distinguished from
+a pagan life. “The body is not for fornication, but for
+the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God who raised
+up the Lord Jesus, will raise us also through His
+power. Your bodies are limbs of Christ, ... a temple
+of the Holy Spirit which you have from God.... Glorify
+God in your body.” So St Paul exhorts the Christians
+of Corinth (1 Ep. vi.), living in the centre and shrine
+of heathen vice. This doctrine of the sanctity of the
+body has been the salvation of the family. It has saved
+civilization from perishing through sexual corruption,
+and is still our chief defence against this fearful evil.</p>
+
+<p>Our bodily dress, we now learn, is one with the spirit
+that it infolds. We shall lay it aside only to resume
+it,—transfigured, but with a form and impress continuous
+with its present being. This identical self, the
+same both in its outward and inward personality, will
+appear before the tribunal of Christ, that it may “receive
+the things done in the body.” This announcement
+gives reasonableness and distinctness to the expectation
+of future judgement. The judgement assumes, with its
+solemn grandeur, a matter-of-fact reality, an immediate
+bearing on the daily conduct of life, which lends
+a powerful reinforcement to the conscience, while it
+supplies a fitting and glorious conclusion to our course
+as moral beings.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Finally, <i>the atonement of the cross</i> stamps its
+own character and spirit on the entire ethics of
+Christianity. The Fatherhood of God, the unity and
+solidarity of mankind, the issues of eternal life or death
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+awaiting us in the unseen world—all the great factors
+and fundamentals of revealed religion gather about the
+cross of Christ; they lend to it their august significance,
+and gain from it new import and impressiveness.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Christ “gave Himself up for us an
+offering and sacrifice to God”—gave Himself, as it is
+put elsewhere, “for our sins”—throws an awful light
+upon the nature of human transgression. The blood
+spilt in the strife with our sin and shed to wash out
+its stain, reveals its foulness and malignity. All that
+inspired men had taught, that good men had believed
+and felt and penitent men confessed in regard to the
+evil of human sin, is more than verified by the sacrifice
+which the Holy One of God has undergone in order to
+put it away. It was felt that “the blood of bulls and
+goats could never take away sins,” that the sacrifices
+man could offer for himself, or the creatures on his
+behalf, were ineffectual; the guilt was too real to be
+expiated in this fashion, the wound too deep to be
+healed by those poor appliances. But who had suspected
+that such a remedy as this was needed, and
+forthcoming? How deep the resentment of eternal
+Justice against the transgressions of men, if the blood
+of God’s own Son alone could make propitiation! How
+rank the offence against the Divine holiness, if to purge
+its abomination the vessel containing the most sweet
+fragrance of His sinless nature must be broken! What
+tears of contrition, what cleansing fires of hate against
+our own sins, what scorn of their baseness, what stern
+resolves against them are awakened by the sight of
+the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!</p>
+
+<p>This negative side of the ethical bearing of Christ’s
+sacrifice is implied in the words of the apostle in the
+second verse, and in the contrast indicated between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+its sweet savour and those unclean things whose very
+names it should banish from our midst (ver. 3). On
+its positive effects—the love and self-devotion it inspires,
+the conformity of our lives to its example—we have
+dwelt already. Let us add, however, that the sacrifice
+of Christ demands from us, above all, <i>devotion to Christ
+Himself</i>. Our first duty as Christians is to love Christ,
+to serve and follow Christ. “He died for all,” says
+the apostle, “that the living should live no longer to
+themselves, but to Him that died for them and rose
+again.” When Mary of Bethany poured on the Saviour’s
+head her box of precious ointment, the Master accepted
+the tribute and approved the act; and the poor have
+been gainers by it a thousand times the pence which
+Judas deemed wasted on the head he was watching to
+betray. There is no conflict between the claims of
+Christ and those of philanthropy, between the needs
+of His worship and the needs of the destitute and
+suffering in our streets. Every new subject won to
+the kingdom of Christ is another helper won for His
+poor. Every act of love rendered to Him deepens the
+channel of sympathy by which relief and blessing come
+to sorrowful humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Let the gospel of Christ’s kingdom be preached in
+word and deed to all nations, let the love of Christ be
+brought to bear upon the great masses of mankind,
+and the time of the world’s salvation will be come. Its
+sin will be hated, forsaken, forgiven. Its social evils
+will be banished; its weapons of war turned to ploughshares
+and pruning hooks. Its scattered races and
+nations will be reunited in the obedience of faith, and
+formed into one Christian confederacy and commonwealth
+of the peoples, a peaceful kingdom of the Son
+of God’s love.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131" id="Footnote_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131">
+<span class="label">[131]</span></a>
+<span class="greek"
+title="Charizomenoi eautois, kathôs kai ho Theos en Christô echarisato hymin.">Χαριζόμενοι ἐαυτοῖς,
+καθὼς καὶ ὁ Θεὸς ἐν Χριστῷ ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν.</span>
+So in Col. ii. 13, iii. 13; Rom. viii. 32; 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10; Luke vii.
+42, 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132" id="Footnote_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132">
+<span class="label">[132]</span></a>
+Comp. pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133" id="Footnote_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133">
+<span class="label">[133]</span></a>
+Vol. iv., pp. 22, 41 (Eng. Trans.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134" id="Footnote_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134">
+<span class="label">[134]</span></a>
+Comte, vol. iv., p. 30.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem">“Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness,
+but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the
+fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), proving
+what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship with the
+unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them. For the
+things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of;
+but all things when they are reproved are made manifest by the light:
+for everything that is made manifest is light. Wherefore He saith:—<br />
+<span class="i8">‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">And the Christ shall shine upon thee.’”<br /></span>
+<span class="ref"><span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 7–14.<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The contrast between the Christian and heathen
+way of life is now, finally, to be set forth under
+St Paul’s familiar figure of <i>the light and the darkness</i>.
+He bids his Gentile readers not to be “joint-partakers
+with them”—with the sons of disobedience upon whom
+God’s wrath is coming (ver. 6)—for he has hailed
+them already, in chapter iii. 6, as “joint-partakers of
+the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
+“Once” indeed they shared in the lot of the disobedient;
+but for them the darkness has past, and the
+true light now shineth.</p>
+
+<p>In wrath or promise, in hope of life eternal or in
+the fearful looking for of judgement they, and we, must
+partake. This future participation depends upon present
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+character. “Do not,” the apostle entreats, “cast in
+your lot again with the unclean and covetous. Their
+ways you have renounced, and their doom you have
+exchanged for the heritage of the saints. Let no
+vain words deceive you into supposing that you may
+keep your new inheritance, and yet return to your
+old sins. Show yourselves worthy of your calling.
+Walk as children of the light, and you will possess the
+eternal kingdom.” Each man carries with him into
+the next state of being the entail of his past life. That
+heritage depends on his own choice; yet not upon his
+individual will working by itself, but on the grace and
+will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted
+or rejected. He has light: he must walk in it; and
+he will reach the realm of light. Thus the apostle,
+in verses 7 and 8, concludes his warning against
+relapse into heathen sin.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>Verses 9 and 10 delineate <i>the character of the children
+of the light</i>: verses 11–14 set forth <i>their influence upon
+the surrounding darkness</i>. Into these two divisions the
+exposition of this paragraph naturally falls.</p>
+
+<p>I. “The fruit <i>of the light</i>” (not <i>of the Spirit</i>) is the
+true text of verse 9, as it stands in the older Greek
+copies, Versions, and Fathers. Calvin showed his
+judgement and independence in preferring this reading
+to that of the received Greek text. Similarly
+Bengel,<a name="FNanchor_135" id="FNanchor_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a>
+and most of the later critics. The sentence is parenthetical,
+and contains a singular and instructive figure.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+It is one of those sparks from the anvil, in which
+great writers not unfrequently give us their finest utterances,—sentences
+that get a peculiar point from the
+eagerness with which they are struck off in the heat
+and clash of thought, as the mind reaches forward to
+some thought lying beyond. The clause is an epitome,
+in five words, of Christian virtue, whose qualities, origin
+and method are all defined. It sums up exquisitely
+the moral teaching of the epistle. Galatians v. 22, 23
+(<i>the fruit of the Spirit</i>) and Philippians iv. 8 (<i>Whatsoever
+things are true</i>, etc.) are parallel to this passage, as
+Pauline definitions, equally perfect, of the virtues of a
+Christian man. This has the advantage of the others
+in brevity and epigrammatic point.</p>
+
+<p>“You are light in the Lord,” the apostle said; “walk
+as children of the light.” But his readers might ask:
+“What does this mean? It is poetry: let us have
+it translated into plain prose. How shall we walk as
+children of the light? Show us the path.”—“I will tell
+you,” the apostle answers: “the fruit of the light is in
+all goodness and righteousness and truth. Walk in
+these ways; let your life bear this fruit; and you will
+be true children of the light of God. So living, you
+will find out what it is that pleases God, and how
+joyful a thing it is to please Him (ver. 10). Your life
+will then be free from all complicity with the works of
+darkness. It will shine with a brightness clear and
+penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness
+and transform the darkness itself. It will speak
+with a voice that all must hear, bidding them awake
+from the sleep of sin to see in Christ their light of
+life.” Such is the setting in which this delightful
+definition stands.</p>
+
+<p>But it is more than a definition. While this sentence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+declares what Christian virtue is, it signifies also
+whence it comes, how it is generated and maintained.
+It asserts the connexion that exists between Christian
+character and Christian faith. The fruit cannot be
+grown without the tree, any more than the tree can
+grow soundly without yielding its proper fruit. <i>Right
+is the fruit of light.</i></p>
+
+<p>The principle that religion is the basis of moral
+virtue, is one that many moralists disputed in St Paul’s
+time; and it has fallen into some discredit in our
+own. In philosophical theory, and to a large extent
+in popular maxim and belief, it is assumed that faith
+and morals, character and creed, are not only distinct
+but independent things and that there is no necessary
+connexion between the two. Christians are themselves
+to blame for this fallacy, through the discrepancy not
+seldom visible between their creed and life. Our
+narrowness of view and the harshness of our ethical
+judgements have helped to foster this grave error.</p>
+
+<p>Great Christian teachers have spoken of the virtues
+of the heathen as “splendid sins.” But Christ and
+His apostles never said so. He said: “Other sheep
+I have, which are not of this fold.” And they said:
+“In every nation he that feareth God and worketh
+righteousness, is accepted of Him.” The Christian
+creed has no jealousy in regard to human excellence.
+“Whatsoever things are true and honourable and just
+and pure,” wherever and in whomsoever they are
+found, our faith honours and delights in them, and
+accepts them to the utmost of their worth. But then
+it claims them all for its own,—as the fruit of the one
+“true light which lighteth every man.” Wherever
+this fruit appears, we know that that light has been,
+though its ways are past finding out. Through secret
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+crevices, by subtle refractions and multiplied reflections,
+the true light reaches many a life lying far outside its
+visible course.</p>
+
+<p>All goodness has one source; for, said Jesus, “there
+is none good but one, that is God.” The channels
+may be tortuous, obstructed and obscure: the stream
+is always one. There is nothing more touching, and
+nothing more encouraging to our faith in God’s universal
+love and His will that all men should be saved, than to
+see, as we do sometimes under conditions most adverse
+and in spots the most unlikely, features of moral beauty
+and Christlike goodness appearing like springs in the
+desert or flowers blooming in Alpine snows,—signs of
+the universal light,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Which yet in the absolutest drench of dark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ne’er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the despair of hell!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The action of God’s grace in Christ is by no means
+limited to the sphere of its recognized working. All
+the more earnestly on this account do we vindicate
+this grace against those who deny its necessity or
+the permanence of its moral influence. The fruit,
+in the main, they approve. But they would cut down
+the plant from which it came; they seek to quench
+the light under which it grew. They are like men
+who should take you to some lofty tree that has
+flourished for ages rooted in the rock, and who should
+say: “See how wide its branches and how stout its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+stem, how firmly it stands upon its native soil! Let
+us cut it loose from those dark and ugly roots—that
+mysterious theology, those superstitions of the past.
+The human mind has outgrown them. Virtue can
+support itself on its own proper basis. It is time to
+assert the dignity of man, and to proclaim the independence
+of morality.” If these men have their way,
+and if European society renounces the authority of
+God, how quickly will that tree of the Lord’s planting,
+the vast growth of Christian virtue and beneficence,
+wither to its topmost bough; and the next storm will
+bring it to the ground, with all its stately strength and
+summer beauty. Unbelief in God lays the axe at the
+root of human society. Our life—the life of individuals,
+of families and nations—is rooted in the unseen and
+hid with Christ in God. Thence it draws its vitality
+and virtue, through those spiritual fibres by which we
+are linked to God and lay hold on eternal life. Since
+Christ Jesus our forerunner entered the heavenly places,
+the anchor of human hopes has been cast within the
+veil; if that anchor drags, there is no other that will
+hold. The rocks are plain to see on which our richly
+freighted ship of life will founder. Without the
+religion of Jesus Christ, our civilization is not worth a
+hundred years’ purchase.</p>
+
+<p>Moral effects do not follow upon their causes as
+rapidly as physical effects: they follow as certainly.
+We live largely upon the accumulated ethical capital
+of our forefathers. When that is spent, we are left to
+our intrinsic poverty of soul, to our faithlessness and
+feebleness. The scepticism of one generation bears
+fruit in the immorality of the next, or the next after
+that; the unbelief and cynicism of the teacher in the
+vice of his disciple. Such fruit of blasting and mildew
+the decay of faith has never failed to bear.</p>
+
+<p>The corresponding truth will be at once acknowledged.
+There is no real religion without virtue. If the godly
+man is not a good man, if he is not a sincere and pure-hearted
+man, “that man’s religion is vain”: no matter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+what his professions or his emotions, no matter what
+his services to the Church. He is one of those to
+whom Jesus Christ will say: “I know you not; depart
+from me, all ye that work iniquity.” There is a flaw
+in him somewhere, a rift within the lute that spoils all
+its music. “A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt
+fruit.”</p>
+
+<p>In Christ’s garden there forms in clustered beauty
+and perfectness the ripe growth of virtue, which in the
+sunshine of His love and under the freshening breath
+of His Spirit sends forth its spices and “yieldeth its
+fruit every month.” In it there abide <i>goodness</i>, <i>righteousness</i>,
+<i>truth</i>—these three; and who shall say which
+of them is greatest?</p>
+
+<p>I. <i>Goodness</i> stands first, as the most visible and
+obvious form of Christian excellence,—that which every
+one looks for in a religious man, and which every one
+admires when it is to be seen. Righteousness, regarded
+by itself, is not so readily appreciated. There is something
+austere and forbidding in it. “For a righteous
+man scarcely would one die”—you respect, even revere
+him; but you do not love him: “but for the good man
+peradventure, one would even dare to die.”</p>
+
+<p>Christian goodness is the sanctification of the heart
+and its affections, renewed and governed by the love
+of God in Christ. It is, notwithstanding, but seldom
+inculcated in the New
+Testament;<a name="FNanchor_136" id="FNanchor_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a>
+because it is referred to its spring and principle in <i>love</i>. Goodness is love
+embodied. Now love, as the Christian knows it, is of
+God. “We love,” says the apostle John, “because He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+first loved us.... He loved us, and sent His Son to
+be the propitiation for our sins.” This is the faith that
+makes good men,—the best the world has ever known,
+the best that it holds now. Vanity, selfishness, evil
+temper and desire are shamed and burnt out of the soul
+by the holy fire of the love of God in Jesus Christ our
+Lord. In the warm, tender light of the cross the heart
+is softened and cleansed, and expanded to the widest
+charity. It becomes the home of all generous instincts
+and pure affections. So “the fruit of the light is in
+all goodness.”</p>
+
+<p>2. And <i>righteousness</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This second and central definition applies a searching
+test to all spurious forms of goodness, superficial or
+sentimental,—to the goodness of mere good manners,
+or good nature. The principle of righteousness, fully
+understood, includes everything in moral worth, and
+is often used to denote in one word the entire fruit of
+God’s grace in man. For righteousness is the sanctification
+of the conscience. It is loyalty to God’s
+holy and perfect law. It is no mere outward keeping
+of formal rules, such as the legal righteousness of
+Judaism, no submission to necessity or calculation of
+advantages: it is a love of the law in a man’s inmost
+spirit; it is the quality of a heart one with that law,
+reconciled to it as it is reconciled to God Himself in
+Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom, therefore, righteousness and goodness
+are one. Each is the counterface and complement of
+the other. Righteousness is to goodness as the strong
+backbone of principle, the firm hand and the vigorous
+grasp of duty, the steadfast foot that plants itself on the
+eternal ground of the right and true and stands against
+a world’s assault. Goodness without righteousness is
+a weak and fitful sentiment: righteousness without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+goodness is a dead formality. He cannot love God
+or his neighbour truly, who does not love God’s law;
+and he knows nothing aright of that law, who does
+not know that it is the law of love.</p>
+
+<p>This also, this above all is “the fruit of the light.”
+Two watchwords we have from the lips of Jesus, two
+mottoes of His own life and mission,—the one given
+at the end, the other at the beginning of His course:
+“Greater <i>love</i> hath none than this, that one lay down
+his life for his friends”; and, “Thus it becometh us to
+fulfil all <i>righteousness</i>.” By a double flame was He
+consumed a sacrifice upon the cross,—by the passion
+of His zeal for God’s righteousness, and by the passion
+of His pity for mankind. In that twofold light we see
+light, and become “light in the Lord.” Therefore the
+fruit of the light, the moral product of a true faith in the
+gospel, is in all <i>goodness and righteousness</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is a danger of merging the latter in the former
+of these attributes. Evangelical piety is credited with
+an excess of the sentimental and emotional disposition,
+cultivated at the expense of the more sterling elements
+of character. High principle, scrupulous honour, stern
+fidelity to duty are no less essential to the image of
+Christ in the soul than are warm feeling and zealous
+devotion to His service. <i>Jesus Christ the righteous</i>, as
+His apostles loved to call Him, is the pattern of a manly
+faith, up to which we must grow in all things. “<i>He</i> is
+the propitiation for our sins.” Never was there an act of
+such unswerving integrity and absolute loyalty to the
+law of right as the sacrifice of Calvary. God forbid
+that we should magnify love at the expense of law, or
+make good feeling a substitute for duty.</p>
+
+<p>3. <i>Truth</i> comes last in this enumeration, for it signifies
+the inward reality and depth of the other two.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of
+the lips. Heathen honesty goes as far as this. Men of
+the world expect as much from each other, and brand
+the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires
+a reality behind itself. The acted falsehood is excluded,
+the hinted and intended lie no less than that expressly
+uttered. Beyond all this, it is the truth of the man that
+God requires—speech, action, thought, all consistent,
+harmonious and transparent, with the light of God’s
+truth shining through them. Truth is the harmony
+of the inward and the outward, the correspondence of
+what the man is in himself with that which he appears
+and wishes to appear to be.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is only children of the light, only men
+thoroughly good and upright who can, in this strict
+sense, be men of truth. So long as any malice or
+iniquity is left in our nature, we have something to
+conceal. We cannot afford to be sincere. We are
+compelled to pay, by very shame, the degrading tribute
+which vice renders to virtue, the homage of hypocrisy.
+But find a man whose intellect, whose heart and will,
+tried at whatever point, ring sound and true, in whom
+there is no affectation, no make-believe, no pretence or
+exaggeration, no discrepancy, no discord in the music
+of his life and thought, “an Israelite indeed, in whom
+is no guile”—there is a saint for you, and a man of
+God; there is one whom you may “grapple to your
+soul with hoops of steel.”</p>
+
+<p>Truth is the hall-mark of entire sanctification; it is
+the highest and rarest attainment of the Christian life.
+It is equally the charm of an innocent, unspoilt childhood,
+and of a ripe and purified old age. The apostle
+John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” is the most
+perfect embodiment, after his Master, of this consummating
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+grace. In him righteousness and love were
+blended in the translucence of an utter simplicity and
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>We must beware of giving a subjective and merely
+personal aspect to this divine quality. While truth is
+the unity of the outward and inward, of heart and act
+and word in the man, it is at the same time the agreement
+of the man with the reality of things as they exist
+in God. The former kind of truth rests upon the
+latter; the subjective upon the objective order. The
+truth of God makes us true. We magnify our own
+sincerity, until it becomes vitiated and pretentious. In
+our eagerness to realize and express our own convictions,
+we give too little pains to form them upon a
+sound basis; we make a great virtue of <i>speaking out</i>
+what is in our hearts, but take small heed of what
+<i>comes in</i> to the heart, and speak out of a loose self-confidence
+and idolatry of our own opinions. So the
+Pharisees were true, who called Christ an impostor.
+So every careless slanderer, and scandalmonger credulous
+of evil, who believes the lies he propagates.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+“Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in which
+every one who enters should be compelled to speak
+only what he thought, and pleased itself by calling such
+domain the Palace of Truth. A palace of veracity, if
+you will; but no temple of the truth. A place where
+each one would be at liberty to utter his own crude
+unrealities, to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half-formed,
+hasty judgements; where the depraved ear would
+reckon discord harmony, and the depraved eye mistake
+colour; the depraved moral taste take Herod or
+Tiberius for a king, and shout beneath the Redeemer’s
+cross, ‘Himself He cannot save!’ A temple of the
+truth? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious
+falsehoods, a Babel of confused sounds, in which
+egotism would rival egotism, and truth would be each
+man’s own lie.”<a name="FNanchor_137" id="FNanchor_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a>
+In the pride of our veracity, we miss
+the verity of things; we are true only to our blind self,
+false to the light of God. “Every one that is of the
+truth heareth my voice:” so said He who was Truth
+incarnate, making His word a law for all true men.</p>
+
+<p>“In <i>all</i> goodness and righteousness and truth,” says
+the apostle. Let us seek them all. We are apt to
+become specialists in virtue, as in other departments of
+life. Men will endeavour even to compensate by extreme
+efforts in one direction for deficiencies in some other
+direction, which they scarcely desire to make good. So
+they grow out of shape, into oddities and moral malformations.
+There is a want of balance and of finish
+about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who
+have long and steadily pursued the way of faith. We
+have sweetness without strength, and strength without
+gentleness, and truth spoken without love, and words
+of passionate zeal without accuracy and heedfulness.</p>
+
+<p>All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to
+the cause of our religion.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“It is the little rift within the lute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That by-and-by will make the music mute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And ever widening slowly silence all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little rift within the lover’s lute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That rotting inward slowly moulders all.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the
+Lord. Let us count no wrong a trifle. Let us never
+imagine that our defects in one kind will be atoned for
+by excellencies in another. Our friends may say this,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+in charity, for us; it is a fatal thing when a man begins
+to say so to himself. “May the God of peace sanctify
+you fully. May your whole spirit, soul, and body in
+blameless integrity be preserved to the coming of the
+Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. v. 23).</p>
+
+<p>II. The <i>effect</i> upon surrounding darkness of the light
+of God in Christian lives is described in verses 11–14,
+in words which it remains for us briefly to examine.</p>
+
+<p>Verse 12 distinguishes “the things secretly done” by
+the Gentiles, “of which it is a shame even to speak,”
+from the open and manifest forms of evil in which they
+invite their Christian neighbours to join (ver. 11). Instead
+of doing this and “having fellowship with the
+unfruitful works of darkness,” they must “rather reprove
+them.” Silent absence, or abstinence is not enough.
+Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all hazards
+be rebuked. On the other hand, St Paul does not
+warrant Christians in prying into the hidden sins of
+the world around them and playing the moral detective.
+Publicity is not a remedy for all evils, but a great aggravation
+of some, and the surest means of disseminating
+them. “It is a shame”—a disgrace to our common
+nature, and a grievous peril to the young and innocent—to
+fill the public prints with the nauseous details of
+crime and to taint the air with its putridities.</p>
+
+<p>“But all things,” the apostle says—whether it be
+those open works of darkness, profitless of good, which
+expose themselves to direct conviction, or the depths of
+Satan that hide their infamy from the light of day—“all
+things being reproved by the light, are made
+manifest” (ver. 13). The fruit of the light convicts
+the unfruitful works of darkness. The daily life of a
+Christian man amongst men of the world is a perpetual
+reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+is spoken, of which the reprover never guesses, as well
+as against open and unblushing vices.</p>
+
+<p>“This is the condemnation,” said Jesus, “that light is
+come into the world.” And this condemnation every
+one who walks in Christ’s steps, and breathes His
+Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on,
+more frequently in silence than by spoken argument.
+Our unconscious and spontaneous influence is the
+most real and effective part of it. Life is the light
+of men—words only as the index of the life from which
+they spring. Just so far as our lives touch the conscience
+of others and reveal the difference between
+darkness and light, so far do we hold forth the word
+of life and carry on the Holy Spirit’s work in convincing
+the world of sin. “Let your light so shine.”</p>
+
+<p>This manifestation leads to a transformation: “For
+everything that is made manifest <i>is light</i>” (ver. 13).
+“You are light in the Lord,” St Paul says to his converted
+Gentile readers,—you who were “once darkness,”
+once wandering in the lusts and pleasures of the
+heathen around you, without hope and without God.
+The light of the gospel disclosed, and then dispelled the
+darkness of that former time; and so it may be with
+your still heathen kindred, through the light you bring
+to them. So it will be with the night of sin that is
+spread over the world. The light which shines upon
+sin-laden and sorrowful hearts, shines on them to change
+them into its own nature. <i>The manifested is light</i>: in
+other words, if men can be made to see the true nature
+of their sin, they will forsake it. If the light can but
+penetrate their conscience, it will save them. “Wherefore
+He saith:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">Awake, O sleeper; and arise from out of the dead!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the Christ shall dawn upon thee!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+The speaker of this verse can be no other than God,
+or the Spirit of God in Scripture. The sentence is no
+mere quotation. It re-utters, in the style of Mary’s
+or Zechariah’s song, the promise of the Old Covenant
+from the lips of the New. It gathers up the import of
+the prophecies concerning the salvation of Christ, as
+they sounded in the apostle’s ears and as he conveyed
+them to the world. Isaiah lx. 1–3 supplies the basis
+of our passage, where the prophet awakens Zion from
+the sleep of the Exile and bids her shine once more in
+the glory of her God and show forth His light to the
+nations: “Arise,” he cries, “shine, for thy light is
+come!” There are echoes in the verse, besides, of Isaiah
+li. 17, xxvi. 19; perhaps even of Jonah i. 6: “What
+meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, and call upon thy
+God!” We seem to have here, as in chapter iv. 4–6,
+a snatch of the earliest Christian hymns. The lines
+are a free paraphrase from the Old Testament, formed
+by weaving together Messianic passages—belonging to
+such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in the
+Pauline Churches. Certainly those Churches did not
+wait until the second century to compose their hymns
+and spiritual songs (comp. ver. 19). Our Lord’s
+sublime announcement (John v. 25), already verified,
+that “the hour had come when the dead should hear
+the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard should
+live,” gave the key to the prophetic sayings which
+promised through Israel the light of life to all nations.</p>
+
+<p>With this song on her lips the Church went forth,
+clad in the armour of light, strong in the joy of salvation;
+and darkness and the works of darkness fled
+before her.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135" id="Footnote_135"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a>
+Mr. Wesley adopted this and other emendations from Bengel,
+“that great light of the Christian world,” in the translation accompanying
+his <i>Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament</i>. He there
+supplied the Methodist preachers with many of the most valuable
+improvements made in the Revised Version, a hundred years before
+the time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136" id="Footnote_136"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a>
+The word belongs to Paul’s vocabulary; it is found besides in
+2 Thess. i. 11; Rom. xv. 14; and Gal. v. 22. See the Commentary
+on this last epistle in the <i>Expositor’s Bible</i>, pp. 384, 385.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137" id="Footnote_137"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a>
+F. W. Robertson: <i>Sermons</i> (First Series), xix., on “The Kingdom
+of the Truth.”</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
+redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not
+foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.</p>
+
+<p>“And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with
+the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual
+songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; giving
+thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to
+God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear
+of Christ.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 15–21.</p></div>
+
+<p>Very solemnly did the moral homily to the Asian
+Christians begin in chapter iv. 17: “This therefore
+I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no
+longer walk as the Gentiles walk.” So much has now
+been said and testified in the intervening paragraphs,
+by way both of dehortation and exhortation. Here the
+apostle pauses; and casting his eye over the whole
+pathway of life he has marked out in this discourse, he
+bids his readers: “Look then carefully how you walk.
+Show that you are not fools, but wise to observe your
+steps and to seize your opportunities in these evil
+times,—days so perilous that you need your best
+wisdom and knowledge of God’s will to save you from
+fatal stumbling.”</p>
+
+<p>So far St Paul’s renewed exhortation, in verses
+15–17, inculcates care and wary discretion,—the skill
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>
+that in the strategy of life finds its vantage in unequal
+ground, that makes opposing winds help forward the
+seafarer. In this sober wisdom it is likely the Asian
+Christians were deficient. In many ways, both directly
+and indirectly, the need of increased thoughtfulness
+on the readers’ part has been indicated. But there is
+another side to the Christian nature: it has its moods
+of exhilaration, as well as of caution and reflection;
+ardent emotion, eager speech and exultant song are
+things proper to a high religious life. For these the
+apostle makes room in verses 18–20, while the three
+foregoing verses enjoin the circumspection and vigilance
+that become the good soldier of Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>A striking contrast thus arises between the <i>sobriety</i>
+and the <i>excitement</i> that mark the life of grace. We see
+with what strictness we must watch over ourselves,
+and guard the character and interests of the Church;
+and with what joyousness and holy freedom we may
+take our part in its communion. Temperament and
+constitution modify these injunctions in their personal
+application. The Holy Spirit does not enable us all
+to speak with equal fervour and freedom, nor to sing
+with the same tunefulness. His power operates in the
+limbs of Christ’s body “according to the measure of
+each single part.” But the self-same Spirit works in
+both these contrasted ways,—in the sanguine and the
+melancholic disposition, in the demonstrative and in
+the reserved, in the quick play of fancy and the brightness
+and impulsiveness of youth no less than in the
+sober gait and solid sense of riper age. Let us see
+how the two opposite aspects of Christian experience
+are set out in the apostle’s words.</p>
+
+<p>I. First of all, upon the one side, <i>heedfulness</i> is
+enjoined. The children of light must use the light to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+see their way. To “stumble at noonday” is a proof
+of folly or blindness. So misusing our light, we shall
+quickly lose it and return to the paths of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>According to the preferable (Revised) order of
+the words, the qualifying adverb “carefully” belongs
+to the “look,” not to the “walk.” The circumspect
+<i>look</i> precedes the wise step. The spot is marked on
+which the foot is to be planted; the eye ranges right
+and left and takes in the bearings of the new position,
+forecasting its possibilities. “Look before you
+leap,” our sage proverb says. According to the carefulness
+of the look, the success of the leap is likely
+to be.</p>
+
+<p>There is no word in the epistle more apposite than
+this to</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i16">“our day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of haste, half-work, and disarray.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We are too restless to think, too impatient to learn.
+Everything is sacrificed to speed. The telegraph and
+the daily newspaper symbolize the age. The public
+ear loves to be caught quickly and with new sensations:
+a premium is set on carelessness and hurry. Earnest
+men, eager for the triumph of a good cause, push
+forward with unsifted statements and unweighed denunciations,
+that discredit Christian advocacy and
+wound the cause of truth and charity. Time, thus
+wronged and driven beyond her pace, has her revenge;
+she deals hardly with these light judgements of the
+hour. They are as the chaff which the wind carrieth
+away. After all, it is still truth that lives; thorough
+work that lasts; accuracy that hits the mark. And
+the time-servers are “unwise,” both intellectually and
+morally. They are most unwise who think to succeed
+in life’s high calling without self-distrust, and without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span>
+scrupulous care and pains in all work they do for the
+kingdom of God.</p>
+
+<p>In the evil of his own times St Paul sees a special
+reason for heedfulness: “Walk not as unwise, but as
+wise, buying up the opportunity, <i>because the days are
+evil</i>.” In Colossians iv. 5 the parallel sentence shows
+that in giving this caution he is thinking of the relation
+of Christians to the world outside: “Walk in wisdom
+toward those without, buying up the opportunity.”
+Evil days they were, when Paul lay in Nero’s prison;
+when that wild beast was raging against everything
+that resisted his mad will or reproved his monstrous
+vices. With supreme power in the hands of such a
+creature of Satan, who could tell what fires of persecution
+were kindling for the people of Christ, or
+what terrible revelation of God’s anger against the
+present evil world might be impending. At Ephesus
+the spirit of heathenism had shown itself peculiarly
+menacing. Here, too, in the rich and cultivated province
+of Asia where the currents of Eastern and
+Western thought met, heresy and its corruptions made
+their first decided appearance in the Churches of the
+Gentiles. Conflicts are approaching which will try to
+the uttermost the strength of the Christian faith and
+the temper of its weapons (vi. 10–16).</p>
+
+<p>As wise men, reading thoughtfully the signs of the
+times, the Asian Christians will “redeem the [present]
+season.” They will use to the utmost the light given
+them. They will employ every means to increase their
+knowledge of Christ, to confirm their faith and the
+habits of their spiritual life. They are like men expecting
+a siege, who strengthen their fortifications and
+furbish their weapons and practise their drill and lay
+up store of supplies, that they may “stand in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>
+evil day.” Such wisdom Ecclesiastes preaches to the
+young man: “Remember now thy Creator in the days
+of thy youth, or ever the evil days come.”</p>
+
+<p>Within a year after this epistle was penned, Rome
+was burnt and the crime of its burning washed out,
+at Nero’s caprice, in Christian blood. In four years
+more St Paul and St Peter had died a martyr’s death
+at Rome; and Nero had fallen by the assassin’s hand.
+At once the Empire was convulsed with civil war;
+and the year 68–69 was known as that of the Four
+Emperors. Amid the storms threatening the ruin of
+the Roman State, the Jewish war against Rome was
+carried on, ending in the year 70 with the capture of
+Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple
+and nationality. These were the days of tribulation
+of which our Lord spoke, “such as had not been since
+the beginning of the world” (Matt. xxiv. 21, 22). The
+entire fabric of life was shaken; and in the midst of
+earthquake and tempest, blood and fire, Israel met its
+day of judgement and the former age passed away. In
+the year 63, when the apostle wrote, the sky was everywhere
+red and lowering with signs of coming storm.
+None knew where or how the tempest might break, or
+what would be its issue.</p>
+
+<p>When men amid evil days and portents of danger
+must be told not to be “foolish” nor “drunken with
+wine,” one is disposed to tax them with levity. It was
+difficult for these Asian Greeks to take life seriously,
+and to realize the gravity of their situation. St Paul
+appeals to them by their duty, still more than by their
+danger: “Be not foolish, but understand what <i>the will
+of the Lord</i> is.” As he bade the Thessalonians consider
+that chastity was not matter of choice and of their own
+advantage only, it was “God’s will” (1 Ep. iv. 3), so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+the Ephesians must understand that Christ is no mere
+adviser, nor the Christian life an optional system that
+men may adopt when and so far as it suits them. He
+is our Lord; and it is our business to understand, in
+order that we may execute, His designs. For this
+Christ’s servants require a watchful eye and an alert
+intelligence. They must be no dullards nor simpletons,
+who would enter into the Divine Master’s plans; no
+triflers, no creatures of sentiment and impulse, who are
+to be the agents of His will. He can and does employ
+every sincere heart that gives itself in love to Him.
+But His nobler tasks are for the wise taught by His
+Spirit, for those who can “understand,” with penetrating
+sympathy and breadth of comprehension,
+“what the will of the Lord is.” Hence the distinction
+of St Paul himself, and of John the beloved disciple,
+amongst His ministers and witnesses,—men great in
+mind as they were in heart, whose thoughts about
+Christ were as grand as their love to Him was fervent.</p>
+
+<p>Nowhere does the apostle say so much of “the will
+of God” in regard to the dispensation of grace as he
+does in this epistle.<a name="FNanchor_138" id="FNanchor_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a>
+For he sees life and salvation
+here in their largest bearings and proportions. He
+prayed at the outset that the Gentile readers might
+realize the value that God puts upon them, and the
+mighty forces He has set at work for their salvation
+(i. 18–20); and again, that they might comprehend
+the vast dimensions of His plan for the building of the
+Church (iii. 18). Now that he has shown the relation
+of this eternal purpose to the character and everyday
+life of the converted Gentiles, “the will of God”
+becomes matter of immediate import; it is revealed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
+in its bearing upon conduct, upon the affairs of
+business and society. It is not the purpose, the
+promises, the doctrine of the Lord alone, but “the
+<i>will</i> of the Lord” that they have to understand,
+as it touches their spirit and behaviour day by day.
+They must realize the practical demands of their
+religion,—how it is to make them truthful, gracious,
+pure and wise. They must translate creed into life
+and act. Such is the wisdom which their apostle
+strives to instil into the Asian Christians. Their first
+need was spiritual enlightenment; their second need
+was moral intelligence. Might they only have sense
+to understand and loyalty to obey the will of Christ.—And
+oh may we!</p>
+
+<p>II. There were converted thieves in the Ephesian
+Church, who still needed to be warned against their
+old propensities (iv. 28); there were men who had
+been sorcerers and fortune-tellers (Acts xix. 18, 19).
+It appears that there were in this circle converted
+<i>drunkards</i> also, men to whom the apostle is obliged
+to say: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is riot.”</p>
+
+<p>In view of the following context (vv. 19–21), and
+remembering how the Lord’s table was defiled by excess
+at Corinth (1 Cor. xi. 17–34), it seems to us probable
+that the warning of verse 18 had special reference to the
+Christian assemblies. The institution of the common
+meal, the <i>Agapé</i> or Lovefeast accompanying the Lord’s
+Supper, suited the manners of the early Christians,
+and was long continued. The cities of Asia Minor
+were full of trade-guilds and clubs for various social
+and religious purposes, in which the common supper, or
+club-feast, furnished usually by each member bringing
+his contribution to the table, was a familiar bond of
+fellowship. This afforded to the Church a natural and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+pleasant means of intercourse; but it must be purified
+from sensual indulgence. <i>Wine</i> was its chief danger.</p>
+
+<p>The eastern coast of the Ægean is an ancient home
+of the vine. And the Greeks of the Asian towns, on
+those bright shores and under their genial sky, were a
+light-hearted, sociable race. They sought the wine-cup
+not for animal indulgence, but as a zest to good-fellowship
+and to give a freer flow to social joys. This was
+the influence that ruled their feasts, that loosened their
+tongues and inspired their gaiety. Hence their wit
+was prone to become ribaldry (ver. 4); and their
+songs were the opposite of the “spiritual songs” that
+gladden the feasts of the Church (ver. 19). The
+quick imagination and the social instincts of the
+Ionian Greeks, the aptness for speech and song native
+to the land of Homer and Sappho, were gifts not to
+be repressed but sanctified. The lyre is to be tuned
+to other strains; and poetry must draw its inspiration
+from a higher source. Dionysus and his reeling
+Fauns give place to the pure Spirit of Jesus and the
+Father. “The Aonian mount” must now pay tribute
+to “Sion hill”; and the fountain of Castalia yields its
+honours to</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">“Siloa’s brook that flowed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fast by the oracle of God.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our nature craves excitement,—some stimulus that
+shall set the pulses dancing and thrill the jaded frame,
+and lift the spirit above the taskwork of life and the
+dreary and hard conditions which make up the daily lot
+of multitudes. It is this craving that gives to strong
+drink its cruel fascination. Alcohol is a mighty
+magician. The tired labouring man, the household
+drudge shut up in city courts refreshed by no pleasant
+sight or cheering voice, by its aid can leave fretted
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>
+nerves and aching limbs and dull care behind, and
+taste, if it be only for a feverish moment, of the joy
+of bounding life. Can such cravings be hindered from
+seeking their relief? The removal of temptation will
+accomplish little, unless higher tastes are formed and
+springs of purer pleasure opened to the masses for
+whom our civilization makes life so drab and colourless.
+“One finds traces of the primitive greatness of our
+nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as
+impurity proceeds at the bottom from an abuse of the
+craving for love, so drunkenness betrays a certain
+demand for ardour and enthusiasm, which in itself is
+natural and even noble.... Man loves to <i>feel</i> himself
+alive; he would fain live twice his life at once; and he
+would rather draw excitement from horrible things than
+have no excitement at all” (Monod).</p>
+
+<p>For the drunkards of Ephesus the apostle finds a cure
+in the joys of the Holy Ghost. The mightiest and
+most moving spring of feeling is in the spirit of man
+kindred to God. There is a deep excitement and
+refreshment, a “joy that human thought transcends,”
+in the love of God shed abroad in the heart and the
+communion of true saints, which makes sensuous
+delights cheap and poor. Toil and care are forgotten,
+sickness and trouble seem as nothing; we can glory in
+tribulation and laugh in the face of death, when the
+strong wine of God’s consolations is poured into the soul.</p>
+
+<p>“Be filled with the Spirit,” says the apostle—or
+more strictly, “filled <i>in</i> the Spirit”; since the Holy
+Spirit of God is the element of the believer’s life, surrounding
+while it penetrates his nature: it is the
+atmosphere that he breathes, the ocean in which he
+is immersed. As a flood fills up the river-banks, as
+the drunkard is filled with the wine that he drains
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
+without limit, so the apostle would have his readers
+yield themselves to the tide of the Spirit’s coming and
+steep their nature in His influence. The Greek imperative,
+moreover, is present, and “describes this
+influence as ever going forth from the Spirit” (Beet).
+This is to be a continual replenishment. Paul has
+prayed that we may “be filled unto all the fulness of
+God” (iii. 19), and has bidden us grow “to the measure
+of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (iv. 13) in
+whom we “are made full” (Col. ii. 9): in the replenishment
+of the Spirit the fulness of God in Christ is
+sensibly imparted. God’s fulness is the hidden and
+eternal spring of all that can fill our nature; Christ’s
+fulness is its revelation and renewed communication
+to the race; the Holy Spirit’s fulness is its abiding
+energy within the soul and within the Church. Thus
+possessed, the Church is truly the body of Christ (iv. 4),
+and the habitation of God (ii. 21, 22).</p>
+
+<p>The words of verses 19, 20 show that St Paul is
+thinking of that presence of the Spirit in the Christian
+community, which is the spring of its affections and
+activities. The Spirit of Jesus, the Son of man, is
+a kindly and gracious Spirit, the guardian of brotherhood
+and friendship, the inspirer of pure social joys
+and genial converse. The joy in the Holy Ghost
+that in its warmth and freshness filled the hearts of
+the first Christians, soared upward on the wings of
+song. Their very talk was music: they “spoke to
+each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
+singing and making melody with their heart to the
+Lord.” Love loves to sing. Its joys</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i8">“from out our hearts arise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And speak and sparkle in our eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And vibrate on our tongue.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>
+All exalted sentiment tends to rhythmical expression.
+There is a mystical alliance, which is amongst the
+most significant facts in our constitution, between
+emotion and art. The rudest natures, touched by
+high feeling, will shape themselves to some sort of
+beauty, to some grace and refinement of expression.
+Each new stirring of the pulse of man’s common life
+has been marked by a re-birth of poetry and art. The
+songs of Mary and Zechariah were the parents and
+patterns of a multitude of holy canticles. In the
+Psalms of Scripture the New Testament Church found
+already an instrument of wide compass strung and
+tuned for her use. We can imagine the delight with
+which the Gentile Christians would take up the Psalter
+and draw out one and another of its pearls, and would
+in turn recite them at their meetings, and adapt them
+to their native measures and modes of song. After
+a while, they began to mix with the praise-songs
+of Israel newer strains—“hymns” to the glory of
+Christ and the Father, such as that with which this
+epistle opens, needing but little change in form to make
+it a true poem, and such as those which break in upon
+the dread visions of the Apocalypse; and added to
+these, “spiritual songs” of a more personal and incidental
+character, like Simeon’s <i>Nunc dimittis</i> or Paul’s
+swan-song in his last letter to Timothy. In verse 14
+above we detected, as we thought, an early Church
+paraphrase of the Old Testament. In later epistles
+addressed to Ephesus, there are fragments of just such
+artless chants as the Asian Christians, exhorted and
+taught by their apostle, were wont to sing in their
+assemblies: see 1 Timothy iii. 16, and 2 Timothy ii.
+11–13.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this congenial soil, we trace the beginnings of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span>
+Christian psalmody. The parallel text of Colossians
+(iii. 16) discloses in the songs of the Pauline Churches
+a didactic as well as a lyric character. The apostle bids
+his readers “<i>teach and admonish</i> one another by psalms,
+hymns, spiritual songs.” The form of the sentence
+of chapter iv. 4–6 in this letter, and of 1 Timothy iii. 16,
+suggests that these passages were destined for use as
+a chanted rehearsal of Christian belief. Thus “the
+word of Christ dwelling richly” in the heart, poured
+itself freely from the lips, and added to its grave
+discourse the charms of gladdening and spirit-stirring
+song.</p>
+
+<p>As in their heathen days they were used to “speak
+to each other,” in festive or solemn hours, with hymns
+to Artemis of the Ephesians, or Dionysus giver of the
+vine, or to Persephoné sad queen of the dead—in
+songs merry and gay, too often loose and wanton;
+in songs of the dark underworld and the grim Furies
+and inexorable Fate, that told how life fleets fast and
+we must pluck its pleasures while we may;—so now
+the Christians of Ephesus and Colossæ, of Pergamum
+and of Smyrna would sing of the universal Father
+whose presence fills earth and sky, of the Son of His
+love, His image amongst men, who died in sacrifice
+for their sins and asked grace for His murderers, of
+the joys of forgiveness and the cleansed heart, of life
+eternal and the treasure laid up for the just in the
+heavenly places, of Christ’s return in glory and the
+judgement of the nations and the world quickly to
+dissolve and perish, of a brotherhood dearer than
+earthly kindred, of the saints who sleep in Jesus and
+in peace await His coming, of the Good Shepherd who
+feeds His sheep and leads them to fountains of living
+water calling each by his name, of creation redeemed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>
+and glorified by His love, of pain and sorrow sanctified
+and the trials that make perfect in Christ’s discipline,
+of the joy that fills the heart in suffering for
+Him, and the vision of His face awaiting us beyond
+the grave. So reciting and chanting—now in single
+voice, now in full chorus—singing the Psalms of David
+to their Greek music, or hymns composed by their
+leaders, or sometimes improvised in the rapture of the
+moment, the Churches of Ephesus and of the Asian
+cities lauded and glorified “the name of our Lord
+Jesus Christ” and the counsels of redeeming love.
+So their worship and fellowship were filled with gladness.
+Thus in their great Church meetings, and in
+smaller companies, many a joyous hour passed; and
+all hearts were cheered and strengthened in the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>“Singing and <i>playing</i>,” says the apostle. For music
+aided song; voice and instrument blended in His
+praise whose glory claims the tribute of all creatures.
+But it was “with the heart,” even more than with
+voice or tuneful strings, that melody was made. For
+this inward music the Lord listens. Where other skill
+is wanting and neither voice nor hand can take its
+part in the concert of praise, He hears the silent
+gratitude, the humble joy that wells upward when the
+lips are still or the full heart cannot find expression.</p>
+
+<p>But the Spirit who dwelt in the praises of the new
+Israel, was not confined to its public assemblings. The
+people of Christ should be “<i>always giving thanks</i>, for
+all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It
+is one of St Paul’s commonest injunctions. “In <i>everything</i>
+give thanks,” he wrote to the Thessalonians in
+his earliest extant letter (1 Ep. v. 18). “For all
+things,” he says to the Ephesians,—“though fallen on
+evil days.” Do we not “know that to them that love
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>
+God all things work together for good”—evil days as
+well as good days? Nothing comes altogether amiss
+to the child of God. In the heaviest loss, the severest
+pain, the sharpest sting of injury—“in everything” the
+ingenuity of love and the sweetness of patience will
+find some token of mercy. If the evil is to our eyes
+all evil and we can see in it no reason for thanksgiving,
+then faith will give thanks for that which we “know not
+now, but shall know hereafter.”</p>
+
+<p><i>Always</i>, the apostle says,—<i>for all things</i>! No room
+for a moment’s discontent. In this perfecting of praise
+he had himself undergone a long schooling in his four
+years’ imprisonment. Now, he tells us, he “has learnt
+the secret of contentment, in whatsoever state” (Phil.
+iv. 12). Let us try to learn it from him. These words,
+which we treat, almost unconsciously, as the exaggeration
+of homiletical appeal, state no more than the sober
+possibility, the experience attained by many a Christian
+in circumstances of the greatest suffering and deprivation.
+The love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord suffices
+for the life and joy of man’s spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The twenty-first verse, which seems to belong to a
+different line of thought, in reality completes the foregoing
+paragraph. In the Corinthian Church, as we
+remember, with its affluence of spiritual gifts, there
+were so many ready to prophesy, so many to sing and
+recite, that confusion arose and the Church meetings
+fell into disedifying uproar (1 Cor. xiv. 26–34). The
+apostle would not have such scenes occur again. Hence
+when he urges the Asian Christians to seek the full
+inspiration of the Spirit and to give free utterance in
+song to the impulses of their new life, he adds this word
+of caution: “being subject to one another in fear of
+Christ.” He reminds them that “God is not the author
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
+of confusion.” His Spirit is a spirit of seemliness and
+reverence. “In fear of Christ,” the unseen witness and
+president of its assemblies, the Church will comport
+herself with the decorum that befits His bride. The
+spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets.
+The voices of the singers and the hands of them that
+play upon the strings of the harp or the keys of
+the organ, will keep tune with the worship of Christ’s
+congregation. Each must consider that it is his part
+to serve and not rule in the service of God’s house.</p>
+
+<p>In our common work and worship, in all the offices
+of life this is the Christian law. No man within
+Christ’s Church, however commanding his powers, may
+set himself above the duty of submitting his judgement
+and will to that of his fellows. In mutual subjection
+lies our freedom, with our strength and peace.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_138" id="Footnote_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a>
+See ch. i. 5–11, ii. 21, iii. 11, v. 10, vi. 6; comp. Col. i. 9, 27,
+iv. 12; Phil. ii. 13,—epistles of the same group.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3 class="section"><a name="ON_FAMILY_LIFE" id="ON_FAMILY_LIFE"></a><i>ON FAMILY LIFE.</i></h3>
+
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> v. 22–vi. 9.</h4>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><span class="greek" title="Thelô de hymas eidenai hoti pantos andros hê kephalê ho Christos estin,
+kephalê de gynaikos ho anêr, kephalê de tou Christou ho Theos.">
+Θέλω δὲ ὑμᾶς εἰδέναι ὅτι παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν,
+κεφαλὴ δὲ γυναικὸς ὁ ἀνήρ, κεφαλὴ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ Θεός.</span>—1 <span class="smcap">Cor.</span> xi. 3.
+</p>
+
+<p class="gaptop center">“And pure Religion breathing household laws.”</p>
+<p class="ref"><span class="smcap">W. Wordsworth.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h4>CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Wives, <i>be in subjection</i> to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
+For the husband is the head of the wife, as the Christ also is the head of
+the Church, <i>being</i> Himself the saviour of the body. But as the Church
+is subject to the Christ, so let the wives also <i>be</i> to their husbands in
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>“Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church,
+and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having
+cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might
+present the Church to Himself a glorious <i>Church</i>, not having spot or
+wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and without
+blemish.</p>
+
+<p>“Even so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own bodies.
+He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever hated his own
+flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Christ also the
+Church; because we are members of His body. ‘For this cause shall
+a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and
+the twain shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is great: but I speak
+in regard of Christ and of the Church. Nevertheless do ye also severally
+love each one his own wife even as himself; and <i>let</i> the wife <i>see</i> that she
+fear her husband.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> v. 22–33.</p></div>
+
+<p>In mutual subjection the Christian spirit has its
+sharpest trials and attains its finest temper. “Be
+subject one to another,” was the last word of the
+apostle’s instructions respecting the “walk” of the
+Asian Churches. By its order and subjection the gifts
+of all the members of Christ’s body are made available
+for the upbuilding of God’s temple. The inward fellowship
+of the Spirit becomes a constructive and organizing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span>
+force, reconstituting human life and framing the world
+into the kingdom of Christ and God. “In fear of
+Christ” the loyal Christian man submits himself to the
+community; not from the dread of human displeasure,
+but knowing that he must give account to the Head of
+the Church and the Judge of the last day, if his self-will
+should weaken the Church’s strength and interrupt her
+holy work. “For the Lord’s sake” His freemen submit
+to every ordinance of men. This is such a fear as
+the servant has of a good master (vi. 5), or the true
+wife for a loving husband (ver. 33),—not that which
+“perfect love casts out,” but which it deepens and
+sanctifies.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>Of this subjection to Christ the relationship of
+marriage furnishes an example and a mirror. St Paul
+passes on to the new topic without any grammatical
+pause, verse 22 being simply an extension of the
+participial clause that forms verse 21: “Being in subjection
+to one another in fear of Christ—ye wives to
+your own husbands, as to the Lord.” The relation
+of the two verses is not that of the particular to
+the general, so much as that of image and object, of
+type and antitype. Submission to Christ in the Church
+suggests by analogy that of the wife to her husband in
+the house. Both have their origin in Christ, in whom
+all things were created, the Lord of life in its natural
+as well as in its spiritual and regenerate sphere
+(Col. i. 15–17). The bond that links husband and wife,
+lying at the basis of collective human existence, has in
+turn its ground in the relation of Christ to humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The race springs not from a unit, but from a united
+pair. The history of mankind began in wedlock. The
+family is the first institution of society, and the mother
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span>
+of all the rest. It is the life-basis, the primitive cell
+of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic. In the
+health and purity of household life lies the moral
+wealth, the vigour and durability of all civil institutions.
+The mighty upgrowth of nations and the great achievements
+of history germinated in the nursery of home
+and at the mother’s breast. Christian marriage is not
+an expedient—the last of many that have been tried—for
+the satisfaction of desire and the continuance of
+the human species. The Institutor of human life laid
+down its principle in the first frame of things. Its
+establishment was a great prophetic mystery (ver. 32).
+Its law stands registered in the eternal statutes. And
+the Almighty Father watches over its observance with
+an awful jealousy. Is it not written: “Fornicators
+and adulterers God will judge”; and again, “The Lord
+is an avenger concerning all these things”?</p>
+
+<p>St Paul rightly gives to this subject a conspicuous
+place in this epistle of Christ and the Church. The
+corner-stone of the new social order which the gospel
+was to establish in the world lies here. The entire
+influence of the Church upon society depends upon
+right views on the relationship of man and woman and
+on the ethics of marriage.</p>
+
+<p>In wedlock there are blended most completely the
+two principles of association amongst moral beings,—viz.,
+authority and love, submission and self-surrender.</p>
+
+<p>I. On the one side, <i>submission to authority</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“Wives, be in subjection, as to the Lord,”—as is fitting
+in the Lord (Col. iii. 18). Again, in 1 Timothy ii.
+11, 12, the apostle writes: “I suffer not a woman to
+teach, nor to have dominion,” or (as the word may
+rather signify) “to act independently of the man.”
+Were these directions temporary and occasional?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
+Were they due, as one hears it suggested, to the
+uneducated and undeveloped condition of women in
+the apostle’s time? Or do they not affirm a law that
+is deeply seated in nature and in the feminine constitution?
+The words of 1 Corinthians xi. 2–15 show that,
+in the apostle’s view of life, this subordination is fundamental.
+“The head of woman is the man,” as “the
+head of every man is the Christ” and “the head of
+Christ is God.” “The woman,” he says, “is of the
+man,” and “was created because of the man.” Whether
+these sentences square with our modern conceptions or
+not, there they stand, and their import is
+unmistakable.<a name="FNanchor_139" id="FNanchor_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a>
+They teach that in the Divine order of things it is the
+man’s part to lead and rule, and the woman’s part to
+be ruled. But the Christian woman will not feel that
+there is any loss or hardship in this. For in the
+Christian order, ambition is sin. To obey is better
+than to rule. She remembers who has said: “I am
+amongst you as he that serveth.” The children of the
+world strive for place and power; but “it shall not be
+so amongst you.”</p>
+
+<p>Such subordination implies no inferiority, rather the
+opposite. A free and sympathetic obedience—which is
+the true submission—can only subsist between equals.
+The apostle writes: “Children, obey; ... Servants,
+obey” (vi. 1, 5); but “Wives, submit yourselves to
+your own husbands, as to the Lord.” The same word
+denotes submission within the Church, and within the
+house. It is here that Christianity, in contrast with
+Paganism, and notably with Mohammedanism, raises
+the weaker sex to honour. In soul and destiny it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span>
+declares the woman to be man, endowed with all rights
+and powers inherent in humanity. “In Christ Jesus
+there is no male and female,” any more than there is
+“Jew and Greek” or “bond and free.” The same
+sentence which broke down the barriers of Jewish
+caste, and in course of time abolished slavery, condemned
+the odious assumptions of masculine pride.
+It is one of the glories of our faith that it has enfranchised
+our sisters, and raises them in spiritual calling
+to the full level of their brothers and husbands. Both
+sexes are children of God by the same birthright; both
+receive the same Holy Spirit, according to the prediction
+quoted by St Peter on the day of Pentecost: “Your
+sons and your daughters shall prophesy.... Yea, on
+my servants and on my handmaidens in those days
+will I pour out of my Spirit, saith the Lord” (Acts ii.
+17, 18). This one point of headship, of public authority
+and guidance, is reserved. It is the point on which
+Christ forbids emulation amongst His people.</p>
+
+<p>Christian courtesy treats the woman as “the glory
+of the man”; it surrounds her from girlhood to old
+age with protection and deference. This homage, duly
+rendered, is a full equivalent for the honour of visible
+command. When, as it happens not seldom in the
+partnership of life, the superior wisdom dwells with
+the weaker vessel, the golden gift of persuasion is not
+wanting, by which the official ruler is guided, to his own
+advantage, and his adviser accomplishes more than she
+could do by any overt leadership. The chivalry of the
+Middle Ages, from which the refinement of European
+society takes its rise, was a product of Christianity
+grafted on the Teutonic nature. Notwithstanding the
+folly and excess that was mixed with it, there was a
+beautiful reverence in the old knightly service and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span>
+championship of women. It humanized the ferocity
+of barbarous times. It tamed the brute strength of
+warlike races and taught them honour and gentleness.
+Its prevalence marked a permanent advance in civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Shall we say that this law of St Paul is that laid
+down specifically for <i>Christian</i> women? is it not rather
+a law of nature—the intrinsic propriety of sex, whose
+dictates are reinforced by the Christian revelation?
+The apostle takes us back to the creation of mankind
+for the basis of his principles in dealing with this subject
+(ver. 31). The new commandments are the old
+which were in the world from the beginning, though
+concealed and overgrown with corruption. Notwithstanding
+the debasement of marriage under the non-Christian
+systems, the instincts of natural religion
+taught the wife her place in the house and gave rise
+to many a graceful and appropriate custom expressive
+of the honour due from one sex to the other. So the
+apostle regarded the man’s bared and cropped head and
+the woman’s flowing tresses as symbols of their relative
+place in the Divine order (1 Cor. xi. 13–15). These and
+such distinctions—between the dignities of strength
+and of beauty—no artificial sentiment and no capricious
+revolt can set aside, while the world stands. St Paul
+appeals to the common sense of mankind, to that which
+“nature itself teaches,” in censuring the forwardness
+of some Corinthian women who appeared to think that
+the liberty of the gospel released them from the limitations
+of their nature.</p>
+
+<p>Some earnest promoters of women’s rights have
+fallen into the error that Christianity, to which they
+owe all that is best in their present status, is the
+obstacle in the way of their further progress. It is an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span>
+obstacle to claims that are against nature and against
+the law of God,—claims only tolerable so long as they
+are exceptional. But the barriers imposed by Christianity,
+against which these people fret, are their main
+protection. “The moment Christianity disappears, the
+law of strength revives; and under that law women
+can have no hope except that their slavery may be
+mild and pleasant.” To escape from the “bondage
+of Christian law” means to go back to the bondage of
+paganism.</p>
+
+<p>“As unto the Lord” gives the pattern and the
+principle of the Christian wife’s submission. Not
+that, as Meyer seems to put it, the husband in virtue
+of marriage “represents Christ to the wife.” Her relation
+to the Lord is as full, direct, and personal as his.
+Indeed, the clause inserted at the end of verse 23 seems
+expressly designed to guard against this exaggeration.
+The qualification that Christ is “Himself Saviour of the
+body,” thrown in between the two sentences comparing
+the marital headship to that which Christ holds towards
+the Church, has the effect of limiting the
+former.<a name="FNanchor_140" id="FNanchor_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> The
+subjection of the Christian wife to her husband reserves
+for Christ the first place in the heart and the undiminished
+rights of Saviourship. St Paul indicates a real,
+and not unfrequent danger. The husband may eclipse
+Christ in the wife’s soul, and be counted as her all in
+all. Her absorption in him may be too complete.
+Hence the brief guarding clause: “He Himself [and
+no other] Saviour of the body [to which all believers
+alike belong].” As the Saviour of the Church, Christ
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span>
+holds an unrivalled and unqualified lordship over every
+member of the same.</p>
+
+<p>“Nevertheless, as the Church is subject to the
+Christ, so also wives [should be] to their husbands in
+everything” (ver. 24). Again, in verse 33: “Let the
+wife see that she fear her husband”—with the reverent
+and confiding fear which love makes sweet. As the
+Christian wife obeys the Lord Christ in the spiritual
+sphere, in the sphere of marriage she is subject to her
+husband. The ties that bind her to Christ, bind her
+more closely to the duties of home. These duties
+illustrate for her the submissive love that Christ’s
+people, and herself as one of them, owe to their Divine
+Head. Her service in the Church, in turn, will send
+her home with a quickened sense of the sacredness
+of her domestic calling. It will lighten the yoke of
+obedience; it will check the discontent that masculine
+exactions provoke; and will teach her to win by
+patience and gentleness the power within the house
+that is her queenly crown.</p>
+
+<p>II. The apostle alludes to submission as the wife’s
+duty; for she might, possibly, be tempted to think this
+superseded by the liberty of the children of God. Love
+he need not enjoin upon her; but he writes: “Husbands,
+<i>love your wives</i>, even as the Christ also loved
+the Church and gave up Himself for her” (comp. Col.
+iii. 18, 19).</p>
+
+<p>The danger of selfishness lies on the masculine side.
+The man’s nature is more exacting; and the self-forgetfulness
+and solicitous affection of the woman may
+blind him to his own want of the truest love. Full
+of business and with a hundred cares and attractions
+lying outside the domestic circle, he too readily forms
+habits of self-absorption and learns to make his wife
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span>
+and home a convenience, from which he takes as his
+right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of
+devotion and confidence in return. This lack of love
+denies the higher rights of marriage; it makes the
+wife’s submission a joyless constraint. Along with this
+selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there
+supervenes sometimes an irritability of temper that
+chafes over domestic troubles and makes a grievance
+of the most trifling mishap or inadvertence, ignoring
+the wife’s patient affection and anxiety to please. Too
+often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family
+tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness
+of their espousals. “There are many,” says Bengel
+(on this point unusually caustic), “who out of doors
+are civil and kind to all; when at home, toward their
+wives and children, whom they have no need to fear,
+they freely practise secret bitterness.”</p>
+
+<p>“Love your wives, <i>even as the Christ loved the Church</i>.”
+What a glory this confers upon the husband’s part in
+marriage! His devotion pictures, as no other love can,
+the devotion of Christ to His redeemed people. His love
+must therefore be a spiritual passion, the love of soul
+to soul, that partakes of God and of eternity. Of the
+three Greek words for love,—<i>eros</i>, familiar in Greek
+poetry and mythology, denoting the flame of sexual
+passion, is not named in the New Testament; <i>philia</i>,
+the love of friendship, is tolerably frequent, in its verb
+at least; but <i>agapé</i> absorbs the former and transcends
+both. This exquisite word denotes love in its spiritual
+purity and depth, the love of God and of Christ, and of
+souls to each other in God. This is the specific Christian
+affection. It is the attribute of God who “loved
+the world and gave His Son the Only-begotten,” of
+“the Christ” who “loved the Church and gave up
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span>
+Himself for her.” Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction,
+is its note. Its strength and authority it uses as
+material for sacrifice and instruments of service, not
+as prerogatives of pride or titles to enjoyment. Let
+this mind be in you, O husband, toward your wife,
+which was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and
+lowly in heart, counting it His honour to serve and His
+reward to save and bless.</p>
+
+<p>From verse 26 we gather that Christ is the husband’s
+model, not only in the rule of self-devotion, but in the
+end toward which that devotion is directed: “that He
+might sanctify the Church,—that He might present her
+to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle,—<i>that
+she might be holy and without blemish</i>.” The
+perfection of the wife’s character will be to the religious
+husband one of the dearest objects in life. He will
+desire for her that which is highest and best, as for
+himself. He is put in charge of a soul more precious
+to him than any other, over which he has an influence
+incomparably great. This care he cannot delegate to
+any priest or father-confessor. The peril of such
+delegation and the grievous mischiefs that arise when
+there is no spiritual confidence between husband and
+wife, when through unbelief or superstition the head of
+the house hands over his priesthood to another man, are
+painfully shown by the experience of Roman Catholic
+countries. The irreligion of laymen, the carelessness and
+unworthiness of fathers and husbands are responsible for
+the baneful influences of the confessional. The apostle
+bade the Corinthian wives, who were eager for religious
+knowledge, to “ask their husbands at home” (1 Cor.
+xiv. 35). Christian husbands should take more account
+of their office than they do; they should not be strangers
+to the spiritual trials and experiences of the heart so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span>
+near to them. It might lead them to walk more worthily
+and to seek higher religious attainments, if they considered
+that the shepherding of at least one soul devolves
+upon themselves, that they are unworthy of the name
+of husband without such care for the welfare of the
+soul linked to their own as Christ bears toward His
+bride the Church. Those who have no father or
+husband to look to, or who look in vain to this quarter
+for spiritual help, St Paul refers, beside the light and
+comfort of Scripture and the public ministry and
+fellowship of the Church, to the “aged women” who
+are the natural guides and exemplars of the younger
+in their own sex (Titus ii. 3–5).</p>
+
+<p>The selfishness of the stronger sex, supported by
+the force of habit and social usage, was hard to subdue
+in the Greek Christian Churches. Through some
+eight verses St Paul labours this one point. In verse
+28 he adduces another reason, added to the example
+of Christ, for the love enjoined. “So ought men indeed
+to love their wives as their own bodies. He that
+loveth his wife loveth himself.” The “So” gathers
+its force from the previous example. In loving us
+Christ does not love something foreign and, as it were,
+outside of Himself. “We are members of His body”
+(ver. 30). It is the love of the Head to the members,
+of the Son of man to the sons of men, whose race-life
+is founded in Him. Jesus Christ laid it down as the
+highest law, under that of love to God: “Thou shalt
+love thy neighbour <i>as thyself</i>.” His love to us followed
+this rule. His life was wrapped up in ours. By such
+community of life self-love is transfigured, and exalted
+into the purest self-forgetting.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it is with true marriage. The wedding of a
+human pair makes each the other’s property. They
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span>
+are “one flesh” (ver. 31); and so long as the flesh
+endures there remains this consciousness of union,
+whose violation is deadly sin. As the Church is not
+her own, nor Christ His own since He became man
+with men, so the husband and wife are no longer
+independent and self-complete personalities, but incorporated
+into a new existence common to both.
+Their love must correspond to this fact. If the man
+loves himself, if he values his own limbs and tends
+and guards from injury his bodily frame (ver. 29),
+he must do the same equally by his wife; for her
+life and limbs are as a part of his own. This the
+apostle lays down as an obvious duty. Nature teaches
+the obligation, by every manly instinct.</p>
+
+<p>The saying the apostle quotes in verse 31 dates from
+the origin of the human family; it is taken from the
+lips of the first husband and father of the race, while
+as yet unstained by sin (Gen. ii. 23, 24). Christ infers
+from it the singleness and indelibility of the marriage
+covenant. But this doctrine, natural as it is, was not
+inferred by natural religion. The cultivated Greek
+took a wife for the production of children. Her
+rights put no restriction upon his appetite. Love
+was not in the marriage contract. If she received the
+maintenance due to her rank and the mistress-ship of
+the house, and was the mother of his lawful children,
+she had all that a free-born woman could demand.
+The slave-woman had no rights. Her body was at
+her owner’s disposal. Nothing in Christianity appeared
+more novel and more severe, in comparison with the
+dissolute morals of the time, than the Christian view
+of marriage. Even Christ’s Jewish disciples seemed
+to think the state of wedlock intolerable under the
+condition He imposed. This want of reverence and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span>
+constancy between the sexes was a main cause of the
+degeneracy of the age. All virtues disappear with
+this one. Roman manliness and uprightness, Greek
+courtesy and courage, filial piety, civic worth, loyalty
+in friendship—the qualities that once in a high degree
+adorned the classic nations, were now rare amongst
+men. In the most exalted ranks infamous vices
+flourished; and purity of life was a cause for odium
+and suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst this seething mass of corruption the Spirit
+of life in Christ Jesus created new hearts and new
+homes. It kindled a pure fire on the desecrated
+hearth. It taught man and woman a chaste love; and
+their alliances were formed “in sanctification and
+honour, not in the passion of lust as it is with the
+Gentiles who know not God” (1 Thess. iv. 3–6).
+Every Christian house, thus based on an honourable
+and religious union, became the centre of a leaven that
+wrought upon the corrupt society around. It held
+forth an example of wedded loyalty and domestic joy
+beautiful and strange in that loveless Pagan world.
+Children grew up trained in pure and gentle manners.
+From that hour the hope of a better day began. The
+influence of the new ideal, filtrating everywhere into
+the surrounding heathenism and assimilating even
+before it converted the hostile world, raised society,
+though gradually and with many relapses, from the
+extreme debasement of the age of the Cæsars. Never
+subsequently have the morals of civilized mankind
+sunk to a level quite so low. The Christian conception
+of love and marriage opened a new era for mankind.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_139" id="Footnote_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a>
+See Dr. Maclaren’s admirable words on this subject in <i>Colossians
+and Philemon</i> (Expositor’s Bible), pp. 336–40; and Dr. Dale’s <i>Lectures
+on Ephesians</i>, Lect. xix., “Wives and Husbands.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_140" id="Footnote_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a>
+In verse 24 St Paul resumes with <span class="greek" title="alla">ἀλλά</span>,
+the <i>but</i> of opposition and not mere contrast, indicating a case where the claims of husband and
+Saviour may, conceivably, be in competition.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h4>CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Christ is the head of the Church, <i>being</i> Himself the Saviour
+of the body.... The Church is subject to the Christ in everything....</p>
+
+<p>“The Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that
+He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water
+with the word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious
+<i>Church</i>, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she
+should be holy and without blemish....</p>
+
+<p>“The Christ [nourisheth and cherisheth] the Church; because we
+are members of His body. ‘For this cause shall a man leave his father
+and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become
+one flesh.’ This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and
+of the Church.”—<span class="smcap">Eph</span>. v. 23–32.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>We have extracted from the apostle’s homily upon
+marriage the sentences referring to Christ and
+His Church, in order to gather up their collective
+import. The main topic of the epistle here again
+asserts itself; and under the figure of marriage St
+Paul brings to its conclusion his doctrine on the subject
+of the Church. This passage answers, theologically, a
+purpose similar to that of the allegory of Hagar and
+Sarah in the epistle to the Galatians: it lights up
+for the imagination the teaching and argument of the
+former part of the epistle; it shows how the doctrine
+of Christ and the Church has its counterpart in nature,
+as the struggle between the legal and evangelical spirit
+had its counterpart in the patriarchal history.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span>
+The three detached paragraphs present us three
+considerations, of which we shall treat the second first
+in order of exposition: Christ’s <i>love to the Church</i>;
+His <i>authority over the Church</i>; and <i>the mystery of the
+Church’s origin in Him</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I. “Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ
+also loved the Church, and gave up Himself for her.”
+This is parallel to the declaration of Galatians ii. 20:
+“He loved me; He gave up Himself for me.” The
+sacrifice of the cross has at once its personal and its
+collective purpose. Both are to be kept in mind.</p>
+
+<p>On the one hand, we must value infinitely and joyfully
+assert our individual part in the redeeming love
+of the Son of God; but we must equally admit the
+sovereign rights of the Church in the Redeemer’s
+passion. Our souls bow down before the glory of the
+love with which He has from eternity sought her for
+His own. There is in some Christians an absorption
+in the work of grace within their own hearts, an
+individualistic salvation-seeking that, like all selfishness,
+defeats its end; for it narrows and impoverishes
+the inner life thus sedulously cherished. The Church
+does not exist simply for the benefit of individual souls;
+it is an eternal institution, with an affiance to Christ,
+a calling and destiny of its own; within that universal
+sphere our personal destiny holds its particular place.</p>
+
+<p>It is “the Christ” who stands, throughout this context
+(vv. 23–29), over against “the Church” as her
+Lover and Husband; whereas in the context of
+Galatians ii. 20 we read “Christ”—the bare personal
+name—repeated again and again without the distinguishing
+article. <i>Christ</i> is the Person whom the soul
+knows and loves, with whom it holds communion in
+the Spirit. <i>The Christ</i> is the same regarded in the wide
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span>
+scope of His nature and office,—the Christ of humanity
+and of the ages. “The Christ” of this epistle expands
+the Saviour’s title to its boundless significance, and
+gives breadth and length to that which in “Christ” is
+gathered up into a single
+point.<a name="FNanchor_141" id="FNanchor_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p>
+
+<p>This Christ “gave Himself up for the Church,”—yielded
+Himself to the death which the sins of His
+people merited and brought upon Him. Under the
+same verb, the apostle says in Romans iv. 25: He
+“<i>was delivered</i> because of our trespasses, and raised up
+because of our justification”—the sacrifice being there
+regarded on its passive side. Here, as in Galatians
+ii. 20, the act is made His own,—a voluntary surrender.
+“No man taketh my life from me,” He said (John x. 18).
+In His case alone amongst the sons of men, death was
+neither natural nor inevitable. His surrender of life
+was an absolute sacrifice. He “laid down His life for
+His friends,” as no other friend of man could do—the
+One who died for all. The love measured by this
+sacrifice is proportionately great.</p>
+
+<p>The sayings of verses 25–27 set the glory of the
+vicarious death in a vivid light. Of such worth was
+the person of the Christ, of such significance and
+moral value His sacrificial death, that it weighed against
+the trespass, not of a man—Paul or any other—but of
+a world of men. He “purchased through His own
+blood,” said Paul to the Ephesian elders, “the Church
+of God” (Acts xx. 28)—the whole flock that feeds in
+the pastures of the Great Shepherd, that has passed
+or will pass through the gates of His fold. Great was
+the honour and glory with which he was crowned,
+when led as victim to the altar of the world’s atonement
+(Heb. ii. 9). Who will not say, as the meek
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span>
+Son of man treads so willingly His mournful path to
+Calvary, “Worthy is the Lamb!” Is not the heavenly
+Bridegroom worthy of the bride, that He consents to
+win by the sacrifice of Himself!</p>
+
+<p>He is worthy; and <i>she must be made worthy</i>. “He
+gave up Himself, that He might sanctify her,—that He
+might Himself present to Himself a glorious Church,
+not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind,—that
+she may be holy and without blemish.” The
+sanctification of the Church is the grand purpose of
+redeeming grace. This was the design of God for His
+sons in Christ before the world’s foundation, “that we
+should be holy and unblemished before Him” (i. 4).
+This, therefore, was the end of Christ’s mission upon
+earth; this was the intention of His sacrificial death.
+“For their sakes,” said Jesus concerning His disciples,
+“I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in
+truth” (John xvii. 19). His purchase of the Church
+is no selfish act. To God His Father Christ devotes
+every spirit of man that is yielded to Him. As the
+Priest of mankind it was His office thus to consecrate
+humanity, which is already in purpose and in essence
+“sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
+Christ once for all” (Heb. x. 10).</p>
+
+<p>Only in this passage, where the apostle is thinking
+of the preparation of the Church for its perfect union
+with its Head, does he name Christ as our <i>Sanctifier</i>;
+in 1 Corinthians i. 2 he comes near this expression,
+addressing his readers as men “sanctified in Christ
+Jesus.” In the epistle to the Hebrews this character
+is largely ascribed to Him, being the function of His
+priesthood. One in nature with the sanctified, Jesus
+our great Priest “sanctifies us through His own blood,”
+so that with cleansed consciences we may draw near
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span>
+to the living God.<a name="FNanchor_142" id="FNanchor_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a>
+As Christ the Priest stands towards
+His people, so Christ the Husband towards His Church.
+He devotes her with Himself to God. He cleanses her
+that she may dwell with Him for ever, a spotless bride,
+dead unto sin and living unto God through Him.</p>
+
+<p>“That He might sanctify her, <i>having cleansed her</i> in
+the laver of water by the word.” The Church’s purification
+is antecedent in thought to her sanctification
+through the sacrifice of Christ; and it is a means thereto.
+“Ye were washed, ye were sanctified,” writes the
+apostle in 1 Corinthians vi. 11, putting the two things
+in the same order. It is the order of doctrine which
+he has laid down in the epistle to the Romans, where
+sanctification is built on the foundation laid in justification
+through the blood of Christ. Through the virtue
+of the sacrificial death the Church in all her members
+was washed from the defilements of sin, that she might
+enter upon God’s service. Of the same initial purification
+of the heart St John writes in his first epistle
+(i. 7–9): “The blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us
+from all sin.... He is faithful and just, that He should
+forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
+This is “the redemption through Christ’s
+blood,” for which St Paul in his first words of praise
+called upon us to bless God (i. 7). It is the special
+distinction of the New Covenant, which renders possible
+its other gifts of grace, that “the worshippers once
+cleansed” need have “no further consciousness of
+sins” (Heb. x. 2, 14–18). In the theological use here
+made of the idea of <i>cleansing</i>, St Paul comes into
+line with St John and the epistle to the Hebrews.
+The purification is nothing else than that which he has
+elsewhere styled <i>justification</i>. He employs the terms
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span>
+synonymously in the later epistle to Titus (ii. 14;
+iii. 7).</p>
+
+<p>“Having cleansed” is a phrase congruous with the
+figure of <i>the laver</i>, or <i>bath</i> (comp. again Tit. 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.<a name="FNanchor_143" id="FNanchor_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a>
+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 passage through the
+gate of forgiveness into the sanctified life.</p>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>
+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 God. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 God, 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.”</p>
+
+<p>We passed 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 <i>in</i> [<i>the</i>] <i>word</i>.” 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,<a name="FNanchor_144" id="FNanchor_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a>
+is that of chapter vi. 17, “God’s
+word—the Spirit’s sword”; of Romans x. 8, “the word
+of faith which we proclaim”; of Luke i. 37, “the
+word from God which shall not be powerless”; of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>
+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 <i>verbum visibile</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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 God 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 <i>obedience</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 God of
+a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus
+Christ.” The vital constituent 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 God,—the inquiry thus conveyed,
+to which a sincere believer in the resurrection
+of Christ makes joyful and ready answer. It is, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span>
+fine, <i>the appeal to faith</i> contained in baptism that gives
+to the latter its saving worth.</p>
+
+<p>The “word” that makes Christian ordinances valid, is
+not the past utterance of God 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 pass from
+her face: the worldly passions 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:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span>
+“Come, gather yourselves to the great supper of God!
+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 pass 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.</p>
+
+<p>II. Concerning Christ’s lordly <i>authority</i> over His
+Church we have had occasion to speak already in other
+places. A word or two may be added here.</p>
+
+<p>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 God’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 assume the attitude of self-directing
+and self-responsible bodies.</p>
+
+<p>The Church is no democracy, any more than it is
+an aristocracy or a sacerdotal absolutism: it is a
+<i>Christocracy</i>. The people are not rulers in the house
+of God; 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 assemblies. Royalties and nobilities, and the
+holders of popular power—all whose “names are
+named in this world,” along with the principalities in
+heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span>
+the Church must lay aside their robes and forget their
+titles, 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.</p>
+
+<p>III. We come now to the profound mystery disclosed,
+or half-disclosed at the end of this section, that of
+<i>the origination of the Church from Christ</i>, 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.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, this membership is, in its origin, as old as
+creation. God “chose us in Christ before the world’s
+foundation” (i. 4). We were created in the Son of
+God’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.<a name="FNanchor_145" id="FNanchor_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a>
+It is not, strictly speaking,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> “on
+account of this”; but “in correspondence with
+this”<a name="FNanchor_146" id="FNanchor_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a>
+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 analogous to the derivation of the Church
+from Christ. The latter relationship existed in its ideal,
+and as conceived in the purpose of God, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 God.... Man is the image and glory of
+God: 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.</p>
+
+<p>“The <span class="smcap">Lord</span> God 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 <span class="smcap">Lord</span> God had taken from the man, made He
+a woman, and brought her to the man. And the man
+said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i4">This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">She shall be called Woman [<i>Isshah</i>], because she was taken out of Man [<i>Ish</i>].<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And they shall be one flesh” (Gen. ii. 21–24).<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>
+Thus the first father of our race prophesied, and
+sang his wedding song. In some mystical, but real
+sense, marriage is a <i>reunion</i>, 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 passage in Genesis explains the origin of
+marriage, and the instinct which draws the bridegroom
+to his bride.</p>
+
+<p>But our apostle sees within this declaration a deeper
+truth, kept secret from the foundation of the world.
+When he speaks of “this great <i>mystery</i>,” he means
+thereby not marriage itself, but <i>the saying of Adam
+about it</i>. 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 analogy
+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.</p>
+
+<p>What is affirmed in Colossians i. 16, 17 concerning
+the universe in general, is true in its perfect degree of
+redeemed humanity: “<i>In Him</i> 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 God 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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span>
+fellowship of Christ with mankind. This intention was
+in the mind of God at the institution 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.</p>
+
+<p>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. God 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.”<a name="FNanchor_147" id="FNanchor_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_141" id="Footnote_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a>
+Compare pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_142" id="Footnote_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a>
+Heb. ii. 9–12, ix. 14, 15, x. 5–22, xiii. 12.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_143" id="Footnote_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a>
+See Rom. vi. 1–11; Col. ii. 11, 12; 1 Cor. x. 2, xii. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_144" id="Footnote_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="En rhêmati">Ἐν ῥήματι</span>.
+<span class="greek" title="Logos">Λόγος</span> is word as expressive of <i>thought</i>.
+<span class="greek" title="Rhêma">Ῥῆμα</span>, the
+utterance of a living voice,—a <i>sentence</i>, <i>pronouncement</i>, <i>message</i>; it is
+the Greek term employed in all the passages here cited.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_145" id="Footnote_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a>
+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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_146" id="Footnote_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a>
+St Paul changes the <span class="greek" title="Heneken toutou">Ἕνεκεν τούτου</span>
+of the original to <span class="greek" title="Anti toutou">Ἀντὶ τούτου</span>,
+which conveys the idea that marriage has its counterpart in the fact
+that we are members of Christ.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_147" id="Footnote_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a>
+<i>Ecclesiastical Polity</i>; v. 56 7.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. ‘Honour
+thy father and mother,’ which is a first commandment, <i>given</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>“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 God 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 <i>he be</i> 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.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span>
+vi. 1–9.</p></div>
+
+<p>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 God; 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.</p>
+
+<p>I. Thus the apostle turns, in the opening words of
+chapter vi., from the husband and wife to the <i>children</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span>
+of the household. He addresses them as present in the
+assembly 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,<a name="FNanchor_148" id="FNanchor_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><i>Obedience</i> 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 God.</p>
+
+<p>The Latin <i>pietas</i> impressed a religious character
+upon filial duty. This word signified at once dutifulness
+towards the gods, 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span>
+The history of ancient Rome affords a splendid illustration
+of the fifth commandment.</p>
+
+<p><i>For this is right</i>, 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 associated 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>a first</i>
+[or <i>chief</i>] commandment”—just as the great rule,
+“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” is <i>the</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it is a “command <i>in promise</i>”—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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span>
+in the Septuagint, where the Greek Christian children
+would read it. But the last clause is abbreviated;
+St Paul writes “upon <i>the earth</i>” in place of “the good
+land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” This blessing
+is the heritage of dutiful children in every land.
+Those who have watched the history of godly 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 promptitude and faithfulness and kindliness
+of heart, which are the best guarantees for happiness
+and success in life. Through parental nurture
+“godliness” secures its “promise of the life that
+now is.”</p>
+
+<p>Children are exhorted to submission: fathers to
+<i>gentleness</i>. “Do not,” the apostle says, “anger your
+children”; in the corresponding place in Colossians,
+“Do not irritate your children, lest they be disheartened”
+(ch. iii. 21). In these parallel texts two distinct
+verbs are rendered by the one English word “provoke.”
+The Colossian passage warns against the chafing effect
+of parental exactions and fretfulness, that tend to break
+the child’s spirit and spoil its temper. Our text warns
+the father against angering his child by unfair or
+oppressive treatment. From this verb comes the noun
+“wrath” (or “provocation”) used in chapter iv. 26,
+denoting that stirring of anger which gives peculiar
+occasion to the devil.</p>
+
+<p>Not that the father is forbidden to cross his child’s
+wishes, or to do anything or refuse anything that may
+excite its anger. Nothing is worse for a child than to
+find that parents fear its displeasure, and that it will
+gain its ends by passion. But the father must not be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span>
+exasperating, must not needlessly thwart the child’s
+inclinations and excite in order to subdue its anger, as
+some will do even of set purpose, thinking that in this
+way obedience is learnt. This policy may secure submission;
+but it is gained at the cost of a rankling sense
+of injustice.</p>
+
+<p>Household rule should be equally firm and kind,
+neither provoking nor avoiding the displeasure of its
+subjects, inflicting no severity for severity’s sake, but
+shrinking from none that fidelity demands. With much
+parental fondness, there is sometimes in family government
+a want of seriousness and steady principle, an
+absence in father or mother of the sense that they
+are dealing with moral and responsible beings in their
+little ones, and not with toys, which is reflected in the
+caprice and self-indulgence of the children’s maturer
+life. Such parents will give account hereafter of their
+stewardship with an inconsolable grief.</p>
+
+<p>It is almost superfluous to insist on the apostle’s
+exhortation to treat children kindly. For them these
+are days of Paradise, compared with times not far
+distant. Never were the wants and the fancies of these
+small mortals catered for as they are now. In some
+households the danger lies at the opposite extreme
+from that of over-strictness. The children are idolized.
+Not their comfort and welfare only, but their humours
+and caprices become the law of the house. They are
+“nourished” indeed, but not “in the discipline and
+admonition of the Lord.” It is a great unkindness to
+treat our children so that they shall be strangers to
+hardship and restriction, so that they shall not know
+what real obedience means, and have no reverence
+for age, no habits of deference and self-denial. It is
+the way to breed monsters of selfishness, pampered
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span>
+creatures who will be useless and miserable in adult
+life.</p>
+
+<p>“Discipline and admonition” are distinguished as
+positive and negative terms. The first is the “training
+up of the child in the way that he should go”; the
+second checks and holds him back from the ways in
+which he should not go. The former word (<i>paideia</i>)—denoting
+primarily <i>treating-as-a-boy</i>—signifies very often
+“chastisement”;<a name="FNanchor_149" id="FNanchor_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a>
+but it has a wider sense, embracing
+instruction besides.<a name="FNanchor_150" id="FNanchor_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a>
+It includes the whole course of
+training by which the boy is reared into a man.—<i>Admonition</i>
+is a still more familiar word with St
+Paul.<a name="FNanchor_151" id="FNanchor_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a>
+It may be reproof bearing upon errors in the past; or
+it may be warning, that points out dangers lying in
+the future. Both these services parents owe to their
+children. Admonition implies faults in the nature of
+the child, and wisdom in the father to see and correct
+them.</p>
+
+<p>“Foolishness,” says the Hebrew proverb, “is bound
+up in the heart of a child.” In the Old Testament
+discipline there was something over-stern. The “hardness
+of heart” censured by the Lord Jesus, which
+allowed of two mothers in the house, put barriers
+between the father and his offspring that rendered “the
+rod of correction” more needful than it is under the
+rule of Christ. But correction, in gentler or severer
+sort, there must be, so long as children spring from
+sinful parents. The child’s conscience responds to the
+kindly and searching word of reproof, to the admonition
+of love. This faithful dealing with his children wins
+for the father in the end a deep gratitude, and makes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span>
+his memory a guard in days of temptation and an
+object of tender reverence.</p>
+
+<p>The child’s “obedience <i>in the Lord</i>” is its response
+to “the discipline and admonition <i>of the Lord</i>” exercised
+by its parents. The discipline which wise
+Christian fathers give their children, is the Lord’s
+discipline applied through them. “Correction and
+instruction should proceed from the Lord and be
+directed by the Spirit of the Lord, in such a way
+that it is not so much the father who corrects
+his children and teaches them, as the Lord through
+him” (Monod). Thus the Father of whom every
+family on earth is named, within each Christian house
+works all in all. Thus the chief Shepherd, through
+His under-shepherds, guides and feeds the lambs of
+His flock. By the gate of His fold fathers and mothers
+themselves have entered; and the little ones follow
+with them. In the pastures of His word they nourish
+them, and rule them with His rod and staff. To their
+offspring they become an image of the Good Shepherd
+and the Father in heaven. Their office teaches them
+more of God’s fatherly ways with themselves. From
+their children’s humbleness and confidence, from their
+simple wisdom, their hopes and fears and ignorances,
+the elders learn deep and affecting lessons concerning
+their own relations to the heavenly Father.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s instruction to fathers applies to all who have
+the charge of children: to schoolmasters of every degree,
+whose work, secular as it may be called, touches the
+springs of moral life and character; to teachers in the
+Sunday school, successors to the work that Christ
+assigned to Peter, of shepherding His lambs. These
+instructors supply the Lord’s nurture to multitudes of
+children, in whose homes Christian faith and example
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span>
+are wanting. The ideas which children form of Christ
+and His religion, are gathered from what they see and
+hear in the school. Many a child receives its bias for
+life from the influence of the teacher before whom it
+sits on Sunday. The love and meekness of wisdom, or
+the coldness or carelessness of the one who thus stands
+between Christ and the infant soul, will make or mar
+its spiritual future.</p>
+
+<p>II. From the children of the house the apostle proceeds
+to address the <i>servants</i>—slaves as they were,
+until the gospel unbound their chains. The juxtaposition
+of children and slaves is full of significance; it is
+a tacit prophecy of emancipation. It brings the slave
+within the household, and gives a new dignity to
+domestic service.<a name="FNanchor_152" id="FNanchor_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Greek philosophers regarded slavery as a fundamental
+institution, indispensable to the existence of
+civilized society. That the few might enjoy freedom
+and culture, the many were doomed to bondage.
+Aristotle defines the slave as an “animated tool,” and
+the tool as an “inanimate slave.” Two or three facts
+will suffice to show how utterly slaves were deprived
+of human rights in the brilliant times of the classic
+humanism. In Athens it was the legal rule to admit
+the evidence of a slave only upon torture, as that of a
+freeman was received upon oath. Amongst the Romans,
+if a master had been murdered in his house, the whole
+of his domestic servants, amounting sometimes to
+hundreds, were put to death without inquiry. It was
+a common mark of hospitality to assign to a guest a
+female slave for the night, like any other convenience.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span>
+Let it be remembered that the slave population outnumbered
+the free citizens of the Roman and Greek cities
+by many times; that they were frequently of the same
+race, and might be even superior in education to their
+masters. Indeed, it was a lucrative trade to rear young
+slaves and train them in literary and other accomplishments,
+and then to let them out in these capacities for
+hire. Let any one consider the condition of society
+which all this involved, and he will have some conception
+of the degradation in which the masses of mankind
+were plunged, and of the crushing tyranny that the
+world laboured under in the boasted days of republican
+liberty and Hellenic art.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that the new religion was welcome to
+the slaves of the Pagan cities, and that they flocked into
+the Church. Welcome to them was the voice that
+said: “Come unto me, all ye that are burdened and
+heavy laden”; welcome the proclamation that made
+them Christ’s freedmen, “brethren beloved” where
+they had been “animated tools” (Philem. 16). In the
+light of such teaching, slavery was doomed. Its re-adoption
+by Christian nations, and the imposition of
+its yoke on the negro race, is amongst the great crimes
+of history,—a crime for which the white man has had
+to pay rivers of his blood.</p>
+
+<p>The social fabric, as it then existed, was so entirely
+based upon slavery, that for Christ and the apostles to
+have proclaimed its abolition would have meant universal
+anarchy. In writing to Philemon about his
+converted slave Onesimus, the apostle does not say,
+“Release him,” though the word seems to be trembling
+on his lips. In 1 Corinthians vii. 20–24 he even advises
+the slave who has the chance of manumission to remain
+where he is, content to be “the Lord’s freedman.”
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span>
+To the Christian slave what mattered it who ruled over
+his perishing body! his spirit was free, death would
+be his discharge and enfranchisement. No decree is
+issued to abolish bond-service between man and man;
+but it was destroyed in its essence by the spirit of
+Christian brotherhood. It melted away in the spread
+of the gospel, as snow and winter melt before the face
+of spring.</p>
+
+<p>“Ye slaves, obey your lords according to the flesh.”
+The apostle does not disguise the slave’s subservience;
+nor does he speak in the language of pity or of condescension.
+He appeals as a man to men and equals,
+on the ground of a common faith and service to Christ.
+He awakens in these degraded tools of society the
+sense of spiritual manhood, of conscience and loyalty,
+of love and faith and hope. As in Colossians iii. 22–iv.
+1, the apostle designates the earthly master not
+by his common title (<i>despotēs</i>), but by the very word
+(<i>kyrios</i>) that is the title of the <i>Lord</i> Christ, giving the
+slave in this way to understand that he has, in common
+with his master (ver. 9), a higher Lord in the spirit.
+“Ye are slaves to the Lord Christ!” (Col. iii. 24). St
+Paul is accustomed to call himself “a slave of Christ
+Jesus.”<a name="FNanchor_153" id="FNanchor_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a>
+Nay, it is even said, in Philippians ii. 7, that
+Christ Jesus “took the form of a slave!”</p>
+
+<p>How much there was, then, to console the Christian
+bondman for his lot. In self-abnegation, in the
+willing forfeiture of personal rights, in his menial and
+unrequited tasks, in submission to insult and injustice,
+he found a holy joy. His was a path in which he
+might closely follow the steps of the great Servant
+of mankind. His position enabled him to “adorn the
+Saviour’s doctrine” above other men (Tit. ii. 9, 10).
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span>
+Affectionate, gentle, bearing injury with joyful courage,
+the Christian slave held up to that hardened and
+jaded Pagan age the example which it most required.
+God chose the base things of the world to bring to
+nought the mighty.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>The relations of servant and master will endure, in
+one shape or other, while the world stands. And the
+apostle’s injunctions bear upon servants of every order.
+We are all, in our various capacities, servants of the
+community. The moral worth of our service and its
+blessing to ourselves depend on the conditions that are
+here laid down.</p>
+
+<p>1. There must be <i>a genuine care for our work</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“Obey,” he says, “with fear and trembling, in
+singleness of your heart, as unto the Christ.” The
+fear enjoined is no dread of human displeasure, of the
+master’s whip or tongue. It is the same “fear and
+trembling” with which we are bidden to “work out
+our own salvation” (Phil. ii. 12). The inward work of
+the soul’s salvation and the outward work of the busy
+hands labouring in the mine or at the loom, or in the
+lowliest domestic duties,—all alike are to be performed
+under a solemn responsibility to God and in the presence
+of Christ, the Lord of nature and of men, who understands
+every sort of work, and will render to each of
+His servants a just and exact reward. No man,
+whether he be minister of state or stable-groom, will
+dare to do heedless work, who lives and acts in that
+august Presence,—</p>
+
+<p>
+“As ever in the great Task-master’s eye.”<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>2. The sense of Christ’s Lordship ensures <i>honesty
+in work</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span>
+So the apostle continues: “Not with <i>eye-service</i>, as
+<i>men-pleasers</i>.” Both these are rare compound words,—the
+former indeed occurring only here and in the
+companion letter, being coined, probably, by the writer
+for this use. It is the common fault and temptation
+of servants in all degrees to observe the master’s eye,
+and to work busily or slackly as they are watched or
+not. Such workmen act as they do, because they look
+to men and not to God. Their work is without conscience
+and self-respect. The visible master says
+“Well done!” But there is another Master looking
+on, who says “Ill done!” to all pretentious doings
+and works of eye-service,—who sees not as man sees,
+but judges with the act the motive and intent.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i10">“Not on the vulgar mass<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Called ‘work’ must sentence pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things done, which took the eye and had the price.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In His book of accounts there is a stern reckoning in
+store for deceitful dealers and the makers-up of unsound
+goods, in whatever handicraft or headcraft they are
+engaged.</p>
+
+<p>Let us all adopt St Paul’s maxim; it will be an
+immense economy. What armies of overlookers and
+inspectors we shall be able to dismiss, when every
+servant works as well behind his master’s back as to
+his face, when every manufacturer and shopkeeper puts
+himself in the purchaser’s place and deals as he would
+have others deal with him. It was for the Christian
+slaves of the Greek trading cities to rebuke the Greek
+spirit of fraud and trickery, by which the common
+dealings of life in all directions were vitiated.</p>
+
+<p>3. To the carefulness and honesty of the slave’s
+daily labour he must even add <i>heartiness</i>: “as slaves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span>
+of Christ doing the will of God from the soul, with
+good will doing service, as to the Lord and not to
+men.”</p>
+
+<p>They must do <i>the will of God</i> in the service of men,
+as Jesus Christ Himself did it,—and with His meekness
+and fortitude and unwearied love. Their work
+will thus be rendered from inner principle, with thought
+and affection and resolution spent upon it. That alone
+is the work of a man, whether he preaches or ploughs,
+which comes from the soul behind the hands and the
+tongue, into which the workman puts as much of his
+soul, of himself, as the work is capable of holding.</p>
+
+<p>4. Add to all this, the servant’s <i>anticipation of the
+final reward</i>. In each case, “whatsoever one may do
+that is good, this he will receive from the Lord, whether
+he be a bondman or a freeman.” The complementary
+truth is given in the Colossian letter: “He who does
+wrong, will receive back the wrong that he did.”</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of equal retribution at the judgement-seat
+of Christ matches that of equal salvation at the
+cross of Christ. How trifling and evanescent the differences
+of earthly rank appear, in view of these sublime
+realities. There is a “Lord in heaven,” alike for
+servant and for master, “with whom is no respect of
+persons” (ver. 9). This grand conviction beats down
+all caste-pride. It teaches justice to the mighty and
+the proud; it exalts the humble, and assures the
+down-trodden of redress. No bribery or privilege, no
+sophistry or legal cunning will avail, no concealment
+or distortion of the facts will be possible in that Court
+of final appeal. The servant and the master, the
+monarch and his meanest subject will stand before
+the bar of Jesus Christ upon the same footing. And
+the poor slave, wonderful to think, who was faithful
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span>
+in the “few things” of his drudging earthly lot, will
+receive the “many things” of a son of God and a
+joint-heir with Christ!</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>“<i>And</i>, <i>ye lords</i>, do the same things towards them”—be
+as good to your slaves as they are required to be
+towards you. A bold application this of Christ’s great
+rule: “What you would that men should do to you,
+do even so to them.” In many instances this rule
+suggested <i>liberation</i>, where the slave was prepared for
+freedom. In any case, the master is to put himself
+in his dependant’s place, and to act by him as he
+would desire himself to be treated if their positions
+were reversed.</p>
+
+<p>Slaves were held to be scarcely human. Deceit and
+sensuality were regarded as their chief characteristics.
+They must be ruled, the moralists said, by the fear of
+punishment. This was the only way to keep them in
+their place. The Christian master adopts a different
+policy. He “desists from threatening”; he treats his
+servants with even-handed justice, with fit courtesy
+and consideration. The recollection is ever present to
+his mind, that he must give account of his charge over
+each one of them to his Lord and theirs. So he will
+make, as far as in him lies, his own domain an image
+of the kingdom of Christ.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148" id="Footnote_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a>
+We cannot absolutely <i>prove</i> infant baptism from the New Testament
+texts adduced on its behalf; but they afford a strong presumption
+in its favour, which is confirmed on the one hand by the analogy
+of circumcision, and on the other by the immemorial usage of the
+early Church. Titus i. 6 shows that stress was laid on the faith of
+children, and that discrimination was used in their recognition as
+Church members.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149" id="Footnote_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a>
+1 Cor. xi. 32; Heb. xii. 5, 11, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150" id="Footnote_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a>
+Acts vii. 22, xxii. 3; Rom. ii. 20; 2 Tim. ii. 25, iii. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151" id="Footnote_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a>
+1 Cor. x. 11; Col. i. 28, iii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 14, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152" id="Footnote_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a>
+The word <i>family</i> (Latin <i>familia</i>) denoted originally the servants of
+the establishment, the domestic slaves. Its modern usage is an index
+to the elevating influence of Christianity upon social relations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153" id="Footnote_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a>
+Rom. i. 1; 2 Cor. iv. 5; Gal. i. 10, etc.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394"></a><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3 class="section">ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT.</h3>
+
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> vi. 10–20.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span>
+<p><span class="greek" title="Idou ho Satanas exêtêsato hymas, tou siniasai hôs ton siton.">
+Ἰδοὺ ὁ Σατανᾶς ἐξῃτήσατο ὑμᾶς, τοῦ σινιάσαι ὡς τὸν σῖτον.</span></p>
+<p class="ref"><span class="smcap">Luke</span> xxii. 31.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE FOES OF THE CHURCH.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“From henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the might of His
+strength. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against
+flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against
+the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual <i>hosts</i> of wickedness,
+in the heavenly <i>places</i>.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi. 10–12.</p></div>
+
+<p>We follow the Revised reading of the opening
+word of this paragraph, and the preferable
+rendering given by the Revisers in their margin. The
+adverb is the same that is found in Galatians vi. 17
+(“<i>Henceforth</i> let no man trouble me”); not that used
+in Philippians iii. 1 and elsewhere (“<i>Finally</i>, my
+brethren,” etc.). The copyists have conformed our
+text, seemingly, to the latter passage. We are recalled
+to the circumstances and occasion of the epistle. High
+as St Paul soars in meditation, he does not forget the
+situation of his readers. The words of chapter iv. 14
+showed us how well aware he is of the dangers looming
+before the Asian Churches.</p>
+
+<p>The epistle to the Colossians is altogether a letter of
+conflict (see ch. ii. 1 ff.). In writing that letter St Paul
+was wrestling with spiritual powers, mighty for evil,
+which had commenced their attack upon this outlying
+post of the Ephesian province. He sees in the sky
+the cloud portending a desolating storm. The clash of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span>
+hostile arms is heard approaching. This is no time for
+sloth or fear, for a faith half-hearted or half-equipped.
+“You have need of your best manhood and of all the
+weapons of the spiritual armoury, to hold your ground
+in the conflict that is coming upon you. <i>Henceforth
+be strong in the Lord, and in the might of His strength.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>It is the apostle’s call to arms!—“Be strengthened
+in the Lord,” he says (to render the imperative literally:
+so in 2 Timothy ii. I). <i>Make His strength your own.</i>
+The strength he bids them assume is <i>power</i>, <i>ability</i>,
+strength adequate to its
+end.<a name="FNanchor_154" id="FNanchor_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a>
+“The might of His strength” repeats the combination of terms we found
+in chapter i. 19. That sovereign power of the Almighty
+which raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, belongs to
+the Lord Christ Himself. From its resources He will
+clothe and arm His people. “In the Lord,” says
+Israel evermore, “is righteousness and strength. The
+rock of my salvation and my refuge is in God.” The
+Church’s strength lies in the almightiness of her risen
+Lord, the Captain of her warfare.</p>
+
+<p>“The <i>panoply</i> of God” (ver. II) reminds us of the
+saying of Jesus in reference to His casting out of
+demons, recorded in Luke xi. 21, 22—the only other
+instance in the New Testament of this somewhat rare
+Greek word. The Lord Jesus describes Himself in
+conflict with Satan, who as “the strong one armed
+keeps his possessions in peace,”—until there “come
+upon him the stronger than he,” who “conquers him
+and takes away his panoply wherein he trusted, and
+divides his spoils.” In this text the situation is reversed;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span>
+and the “full armour” belongs to Christ’s
+servants, who are equipped to meet the counter-attack
+of Satan and the powers of evil. There is a Divine
+and a Satanic panoply—arms tempered in heaven and
+in hell, to be wielded by the sons of light and of darkness
+respectively (comp. Rom. xiii. 12). The weapons
+of warfare on the two sides are even as the two leaders
+that furnish them—“the strong one armed” and the
+“Stronger than he.” Mightier are faith and love than
+unbelief and hate; “greater is He that is in you than
+he that is in the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Let us review the forces marshalled against us,—their
+<i>nature</i>, their <i>mode of assault</i>, and <i>the arena of the contest</i>.</p>
+
+<p>1. The Asian Christians had to “stand against <i>the
+wiles</i> [<i>schemes</i>, or
+<i>methods</i><a name="FNanchor_155" id="FNanchor_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a>]
+<i>of the devil</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Unquestionably, the New Testament assumes the
+personality of Satan. This belief runs counter to
+modern thought, governed as it is by the tendency to
+depersonalize existence. The conception of evil spirits
+given us in the Bible is treated as an obsolete superstition;
+and the name of the Evil One with multitudes
+serves only to point a profane or careless jest. To
+Jesus Christ, it is very certain, Satan was no figure
+of speech; but a thinking and active being, of whose
+presence and influence He saw tokens everywhere in
+this evil world (comp. ii. 2). If the Lord Jesus “speaks
+what He knows, and testifies what He has seen” concerning
+the mysteries of the other world, there can be
+no question of the existence of a personal devil. If in
+any matter He was bound, as a teacher of spiritual
+truth, to disavow Jewish superstition, surely Christ was
+so bound in this matter. Yet instead of repudiating
+the current belief in Satan and the demons, He earnestly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span>
+accepts it; and it entered into His own deepest
+experiences. In the visible forms of sin Jesus saw
+the shadow of His great antagonist. “From the Evil
+One” He taught His disciples to pray that they might
+be delivered. The victims of disease and madness
+whom He healed, were so many captives rescued from
+the malignant power of Satan. And when Jesus went
+to meet His death, He viewed it as the supreme conflict
+with the usurper and oppressor who claimed to be “the
+prince of this world.”<a name="FNanchor_156" id="FNanchor_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a></p>
+
+<p>Satan is the consummate form of depraved and
+untruthful intellect. We read of his “thoughts,” his
+“schemes,” his subtlety and deceit and
+impostures;<a name="FNanchor_157" id="FNanchor_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a>
+of his slanders against God and
+man,<a name="FNanchor_158" id="FNanchor_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> from which,
+indeed, the name devil (<i>diabolus</i>) is given him. Falsehood
+and hatred are his chief qualities. Hence Jesus
+called him “the manslayer” and “the father of falsehood”
+(John viii. 44). He was the first sinner, and the
+fountain of sin (1 John iii. 8). All who do unrighteousness
+or hate their brethren are, so far, his offspring
+(1 John iii. 10). With a realm so wide, Satan
+might well be called not only “the prince,” but the very
+“god of this world” (2 Cor. iv. 4). Plausibly he said
+to Jesus, in showing Him the kingdoms of the world, at
+the time when Tiberius Cæsar occupied the imperial
+throne: “All this authority and glory are delivered
+unto me. To whomsoever I will, I give it.” His power
+is exercised with an intelligence perhaps as great as
+any can be that is morally corrupt; but it is limited
+on all sides. In dealing with Jesus Christ he showed
+conspicuous ignorance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span>
+Chief amongst the wiles of the devil at this time was
+the “scheme of error,” the cunningly woven net of the
+Gnostical delusion, in which the apostle feared that the
+Asian Churches would be entangled. Satan’s empire
+is ruled with a settled policy, and his warfare carried
+on with a system of strategy which takes advantage of
+every opening for attack.<a name="FNanchor_159" id="FNanchor_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a>
+The manifold combinations
+of error, the various arts of seduction and temptation,
+the ten thousand forms of the deceit of unrighteousness
+constitute “the wiles of the devil.”</p>
+
+<p>Such is the gigantic opponent with whom Christ and
+the Church have been in conflict through all ages. But
+Satan does not stand alone. In verse 12 there is called
+up before us an imposing array of spiritual powers.
+They are “the angels of the devil,” whom Jesus set
+in contrast with the angels of God that surround and
+serve the Son of man (Matt. xxv. 41). These unhappy
+beings are, again, identified with the “demons,” or
+“unclean spirits,” having Satan for their “prince,”
+whom our Lord expelled wherever He found them
+infesting the bodies of
+men.<a name="FNanchor_160" id="FNanchor_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a>
+They are represented in the New Testament as fallen beings, expelled from
+a “principality” and “habitation of their own” (Jude 6)
+which they once enjoyed, and reserved for the dreadful
+punishment which Christ calls “the eternal fire prepared
+for the devil and his angels.” They are here
+entitled <i>principalities</i> and <i>powers</i> (or <i>dominions</i>), after
+the same style as the angels of God, to whose ranks,
+as we are almost compelled to suppose, these apostates
+once belonged.</p>
+
+<p>In contrast with the “angels of light” (2 Cor. xi. 14)
+and “ministering spirits” of the kingdom of God
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span>
+(Heb. i. 14), the angels of Satan have constituted themselves
+<i>the world-rulers of this darkness</i>. We find the compound
+expression <i>cosmo-krator</i> (world-ruler) in later rabbinical
+usage, borrowed from the Greek and applied to “the
+angel of death,” before whom all mortal things must
+bow. Possibly, St Paul brought the term with him
+from the school of Gamaliel. Satan being the god of
+this world and swaying “the dominion of
+darkness,”<a name="FNanchor_161" id="FNanchor_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a>
+according to the same vocabulary his angels are “the
+rulers of the world’s darkness”; and the provinces of
+the empire of evil fall under their direction.</p>
+
+<p>The darkness surrounding the apostle in Rome and
+the Churches in Asia—“this darkness,” he says—was
+dense and foul. With Nero and his satellites the
+masters of empire, the world seemed to be ruled by
+demons rather than by men. The frightful wish of one
+of the Psalmists was fulfilled for the heathen world:
+“Set a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at
+his right hand.”</p>
+
+<p>The last of St Paul’s synonyms for the satanic forces,
+“the spiritual [powers] of wickedness,” may have
+served to warn the Church against reading a political
+sense into the passage and regarding the civil constitution
+of society and the visible world-rulers as objects
+for their hatred. Pilate was a specimen, by no means
+amongst the worst, of the men in power. Jesus
+regarded him with pity. His real antagonist lurked
+behind these human instruments. The above phrase,
+“spirituals of wickedness,” is Hebraistic, like “judge” and “steward of
+unrighteousness,”<a name="FNanchor_162" id="FNanchor_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a>
+and is equivalent to “wicked spirits.” The adjective “spiritual,” which
+does duty for a substantive—“the spiritual [forces, or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span>
+elements] of wickedness”<a name="FNanchor_163" id="FNanchor_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a>—brings
+out the collective character of these hostile powers.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s demonology<a name="FNanchor_164" id="FNanchor_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a>
+is identical with that of Jesus
+Christ. The two doctrines stand or fall together. The
+advent of Christ appears to have stirred to extraordinary
+activity the satanic powers. They asserted themselves
+in Palestine at this particular time in the most
+open and terrifying manner. In an age of scepticism
+and science like our own, it belongs to “the wiles of
+the devil” to work obscurely. This is dictated by
+obvious policy. Moreover, his power is greatly reduced.
+Satan is no longer the god of this world, since Christianity
+rose to its ascendant. The manifestations of
+demonism are, at least in Christian lands, vastly less
+conspicuous than in the first age of the Church. But
+those are more bold than wise who deny their existence,
+and who profess to explain all occult phenomena and
+phrenetic moral aberrations by physical causes. The
+popular idolatries of his own day, with their horrible
+rites and inhuman orgies, St Paul ascribed to devilry.
+He declared that those who sat at the feast of the idol
+and gave sanction to its worship, were partaking of
+“the cup and the table of demons” (1 Cor. x. 20, 21).
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span>
+Heathen idolatries at the present time are, in many
+instances, equally diabolical; and those who witness
+them cannot easily doubt the truth of the representations
+of Scripture upon this subject.</p>
+
+<p>II. The conflict against these spiritual enemies is
+essentially a <i>spiritual</i> conflict. “Our struggle is not
+against blood and flesh.”</p>
+
+<p>They are not human antagonists whom the Church
+has to fear,—mortal men whom we can look in the face
+and meet with equal courage, in the contest where hot
+blood and straining muscle do their part. The fight
+needs mettle of another kind. The foes of our faith are
+untouched by carnal weapons. They come upon us
+without sound or footfall. They assail the will and
+conscience; they follow us into the regions of spiritual
+thought, of prayer and meditation. Hence the weapons
+of our warfare, like those which the apostle wielded
+(2 Cor. x. 2–5), “are not carnal,” but spiritual and
+“mighty toward God.”</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the Asian Churches had visible enemies
+arrayed against them. There were the “wild beasts”
+with whom St Paul “fought at Ephesus,” the heathen
+mob of the city, sworn foes of every despiser of their
+great goddess Artemis. There was Alexander the
+coppersmith, ready to do the apostle evil, and “the
+Jews from Asia,” a party of whom all but murdered
+him in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 27–36); there was Demetrius
+the silversmith, instigator of the tumult which
+drove him from Ephesus, and “the craftsmen of like
+occupation,” whose trade was damaged by the progress
+of the new religion. These were formidable opponents,
+strong in everything that brings terror to flesh and
+blood. But after all, these were of small account in
+St Paul’s view; and the Church need never dread
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span>
+material antagonism. The centre of the struggle lies
+elsewhere. The apostle looks beyond the ranks of his
+earthly foes to the power of Satan by which they are
+animated and directed,—“impotent pieces of the game
+he plays.” From this hidden region he sees impending
+an attack more perilous than all the violence of persecution,
+a conflict urged with weapons of finer proof
+than the sharp steel of sword and axe, and with darts
+tipped with a fiercer fire than that which burns the
+flesh or devours the goods.</p>
+
+<p>Even in outward struggles against worldly power,
+our wrestling is not simply against blood and flesh.
+Calvin makes a bold application of the passage when
+he says: “This sentence we should remember so often
+as we are tempted to revengefulness, under the smart
+of injuries from men. For when nature prompts us
+to fling ourselves upon them with all our might, this
+unreasonable passion will be checked and reined in
+suddenly, when we consider that these men who trouble
+us are nothing more than darts cast by the hand of
+Satan; and that while we stoop to pick up these, we
+shall expose ourselves to the full force of his blows.”
+<i>Vasa sunt</i>, says Augustine of human troublers, <i>alius
+utitur</i>; <i>organa sunt, alius tangit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The crucial assaults of evil, in many instances, come
+in no outward and palpable guise. There are sinister
+influences that affect the spirit more directly, fires that
+search its inmost fibres, a darkness that sweeps down
+upon the very light that is in us threatening its extinction.
+“Doubts, the spectres of the mind,” haunt it;
+clouds brood over the interior sky and fierce storms
+sweep down on the soul, that rise from beyond the
+seen horizon. “Jesus was led of the Spirit into the
+wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.” Away from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span>
+the tracks of men and the seductions of flesh and blood
+the choicest spirits have been tested and schooled. So
+they are tempered in the spiritual furnace to a fineness
+which turns the edge of the sharpest weapons the world
+may use against them.</p>
+
+<p>Some men are constitutionally more exposed than
+others to these interior assaults. There are conditions
+of the brain and nerves, tendencies lying deep in the
+organism, that give points of vantage to the enemy of
+souls. These are the opportunities of the tempter;
+they do not constitute the temptation itself, which
+comes from a hidden and objective source. Similarly
+in the trials of the Church, in the great assaults made
+upon her vital truths, historical conditions and the
+external movements of the age furnish the material
+for the conflicts through which it has to pass; but
+the spring and moving agent, the master will that
+dominates these hostile forces is that of Satan.</p>
+
+<p>The Church was engaged in a double conflict—of
+the flesh and of the spirit. On the one hand, it was
+assailed by the material seductions of heathenism and
+the terrors of ruthless persecution. On the other hand,
+it underwent a severe intellectual conflict with the
+systems of error that were rooted in the mind of the
+age. These forces opposed the Christian truth from
+without; but they became much more dangerous when
+they found their way within the Church, vitiating her
+teaching and practice, and growing like tares among
+the wheat. It is of heresy more than persecution that
+the apostle is thinking, when he writes these ominous
+words. Not blood and flesh, but the mind and spirit
+of the Asian believers will bear the brunt of the attack
+that the craft of the devil is preparing for the apostolic
+Church.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span>
+III. The last clause of verse 12, <i>in the heavenly places</i>,
+refuses to combine with the above description of the
+powers hostile to the Church. The heavenly places are
+the abode of God and the blessed angels. This is the
+region where the Father has blessed us in Christ (i. 3);
+where He seated the Christ at His own right hand
+(i. 20), and has in some sense seated us with Christ
+(ii. 6); and where the angelic princedoms dwell who
+follow with keen and studious sympathy the Church’s
+fortunes (iii. 10). To locate the devil and his angels
+<i>there</i> seems to us highly incongruous; the juxtaposition
+is out of the question with St Paul. Chapter ii. 2 gives
+no real support to this view: supposing “the air” to
+be literally intended in that passage, it belongs to <i>earth</i>
+and not to heaven.<a name="FNanchor_165" id="FNanchor_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a>
+Nor do the parallels from other
+Scriptures adduced supply any but the most precarious
+basis for an interpretation against which the use of the
+exalted phrase in our epistle revolts.</p>
+
+<p>No; Satan and his hosts do not dwell with Christ
+and the holy angels “in the heavenly places.” But
+the Church dwells there already, by her faith; and it
+is in the heavenly places of her faith and hope that
+she is assailed by the powers of hell. This final prepositional
+clause should be separated by a comma from
+the words immediately foregoing; it forms a distinct
+predicate to the sentence contained in verse 12. It
+specifies the <i>locality</i> of the struggle; it marks out the
+battle-field. “Our wrestling is ... in the heavenly
+places.”<a name="FNanchor_166" id="FNanchor_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a>
+So we construe the sentence, following the
+ancient Greek commentators.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span>
+The life of the Church “is hid with the Christ in
+God”; her treasure is laid up in heaven. She is
+assailed by a philosophy and vain deceit that perverts
+her highest doctrines, that clouds her vision of Christ
+and limits His glory, and threatens to drag her down
+from the high places where she sits with her ascended
+Lord.<a name="FNanchor_167" id="FNanchor_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a>
+Such was, in effect, the aim of the Colossian
+heresy, and of the great Gnostical movement to which
+this speculation was a prelude, that for a century and
+more entangled Christian faith in its metaphysical
+subtleties and false mysticism. The epistles to the
+Colossians and Ephesians strike the leading note of
+the controversies of the Church in this region during
+its first ages. Their character was thoroughly transcendental.
+“The heavenly things” were the subject-matter
+of the great conflicts of this epoch.</p>
+
+<p>The questions of religious controversy characteristic
+of our own times, though not identical with those of
+Colossæ or Ephesus, concern matters equally high
+and vital. It is not this or that doctrine that is now
+at stake—the nature or extent of the atonement, the
+procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son with the
+Father, the verbal or plenary inspiration of Scripture;
+but the personal being of God, the historical truth of
+Christianity, the reality of the supernatural,—these and
+the like questions, which formed the accepted basis and
+the common assumptions of former theological discussions,
+are now brought into dispute. Religion has to
+justify its very existence. Christianity must answer
+for its life, as at the beginning. God is denied. Worship
+is openly renounced. Our treasures in heaven
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span>
+are proclaimed to be worthless and illusive. The entire
+spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to
+the region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties
+of modern religious thought lie at the foundation
+of things, and touch the core of the spiritual life. Unbelief
+appears, in some quarters, to be more serious
+and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics
+and ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and
+immortality. The Churches are engaged in trivial contentions
+with each other, while the enemy pushes his
+way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.</p>
+
+<p>“The apostle incites the readers,” says Chrysostom,
+“by the thought of the prize at stake. When he has
+said that our enemies are powerful, he adds thereto
+that these are great possessions which they seek to
+wrest from us. When he says <i>in the heavenly places</i>,
+this implies <i>for the heavenly things</i>. How it must rouse
+and sober us to know that the hazard is for great
+things, and great will be the prize of victory. Our foe
+strives to take <i>heaven</i> from us.” Let the Church be
+stripped of all her temporalities, and driven naked as
+at first into the wilderness. She carries with her the
+crown jewels; and her treasure is unimpaired, so long
+as faith in Christ and the hope of heaven remain firm
+in her heart. But let these be lost; let heaven and
+the Father in heaven fade with our childhood’s dreams;
+let Christ go back to His grave—then we are utterly
+undone. We have lost our all in all!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154" id="Footnote_154"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Endynamousthe">Ἐνδυναμοῦσθε</span>
+[from <span class="greek" title="dynamis">δύναμις</span>]
+<span class="greek" title="en Kyriô kai en tô kratei tês ischyos autou">
+ἐν Κυρίῳ καὶ ἐν τῷ κράτει τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ</span>.
+See the note on these synonyms, on p. 76. Comp., for this verb,
+Col. i. II; 2 Tim. iv. 17; Phil. iv. 13: <span class="greek" title="Panta ischyô en tô endynamounti me">
+Πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῳ ἐνδυναμοῦντί με</span>,—“I have strength for everything in Him that <i>enables</i> me.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155" id="Footnote_155"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a>
+Comp. remark on <span class="greek" title="methodeia">μεθοδεία</span>
+(iv. 14), p. 247.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156" id="Footnote_156"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a>
+John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11: comp. Luke iv. 5–7; Heb. ii. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157" id="Footnote_157"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a>
+2 Cor. ii. 11, xi. 3; 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10; 2 Tim. ii. 26, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158" id="Footnote_158"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a>
+Rev. xii, 7–10; Gen. iii. 4, 5; Zech. iii. 1; Job i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159" id="Footnote_159"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a>
+Ch. iv. 27; 2 Cor. ii. 11; Luke xxii. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160" id="Footnote_160"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a>
+Luke x. 17–20, xi. 14–26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161" id="Footnote_161"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a>
+Col. i. 13: comp. Acts xxvi. 18, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162" id="Footnote_162"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a>
+Luke xvi. 8, xviii. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163" id="Footnote_163"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Ta pneumatika tês ponêrias">Τὰ πνευματικὰ tῆs πονηρίας</span>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164" id="Footnote_164"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a>
+Mr. Moule aptly observes, in his excellent and most useful Commentary
+on Ephesians in the <i>Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges</i>:
+St Paul’s “testimony to the real and objective existence” of evil spirits
+“gains in strength when it is remembered that the epistle was addressed
+(at least, among other designations) to Ephesus, and that Ephesus (see
+Acts xix.) was a peculiarly active scene of asserted magical and other
+dealings with the unseen darkness. Supposing that the right line to
+take in dealing with such beliefs and practices had been to say that the
+whole basis of them was a fiction of the human mind, not only would
+such a verse as this [vi. 12] not have been written, but, we may well
+assume, something would have been written strongly contradictory to
+the thought of it” (p. 176).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165" id="Footnote_165"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a>
+See p. 103.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166" id="Footnote_166"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a>
+The objection against the common rendering taken from the
+absence of the Greek article (<span class="greek" title="ta">τά</span>)
+before the phrase
+<span class="greek" title="en tois epouraniois">ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις</span>,
+required to link it to
+<span class="greek" title="ta pneumatika tês ponêrias">τὰ πνευματικὰ τῆς πονηρίας</span>,
+is not decisive.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167" id="Footnote_167"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a>
+Col. ii. 8–10, iii. 1–4; Phil. iii. 20, 21: comp. Eph. i. 3, ii. 6,
+18, iv. 10, 15; Heb. vi. 19, 20, etc.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h4>THE DIVINE PANOPLY.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able
+to withstand in the evil day, and, having conquered all, to stand.
+Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put
+on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with
+the readiness of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of
+faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the
+evil <i>one</i>. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the
+Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and supplication
+praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all
+perseverance and supplication for all the saints.”—<span class="smcap">Eph.</span> vi. 13–18.</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Stand</i> is the watchword for this battle, the
+apostle’s order of the day: “that you may be able
+to <i>stand</i> against the stratagems of the devil, ... that
+you may be able to <i>withstand</i> in the evil day, and
+mastering all your
+enemies<a name="FNanchor_168" id="FNanchor_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a>
+to <i>stand</i>.... <i>Stand</i> therefore,
+girding your loins about with truth.” The
+apostle is fond of this martial style, and such appeals
+are frequent in the letters of this
+period.<a name="FNanchor_169" id="FNanchor_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> The Gentile
+believers are raised to the heavenly places of fellowship
+with Christ, and invested with the lofty character
+of sons and heirs of God: let them hold their ground;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span>
+let them maintain the honour of their calling and the
+wealth of their high estate, standing fast in the grace
+that is in Christ Jesus. <i>Pro aris et focis</i> the patriot
+draws his sword, and manfully repels the invader.
+Even so the good soldier of Christ Jesus contends
+for his heavenly city and the household of faith. He
+defends the dearest interests and hopes of human life.</p>
+
+<p>This defence is needed, for an “evil day” is at
+hand! This emphatic reference points to something
+more definite than the general day of temptation that
+is co-extensive with our earthly life. St Paul foresaw
+a crisis of extreme danger impending over the young
+Church of Christ. The prophecies of Jesus taught
+His disciples, from the first, that His kingdom could
+only prevail by means of a severe conflict, and that
+some desperate struggle would precede the final
+Messianic triumph. This prospect looms before the
+minds of the New Testament writers, as “the day of
+Jehovah” dominated the imagination of the Hebrew
+prophets. Paul’s apocalypse in 1 and 2 Thessalonians
+is full of reminiscences of Christ’s visions of judgement.
+It culminates in the prediction of the evil day of Antichrist,
+which is to usher in the second, glorious coming
+of the Lord Jesus. The consummation, as the apostle
+was then inclined to think, might arrive within that
+generation (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17), although he declares
+its times and seasons wholly unknown. In his later
+epistles, and in this especially, it is clear that he
+anticipated a longer duration for the existing order
+of things; and “the evil day” for which the Asian
+Churches are to prepare can scarcely have denoted,
+to the apostle’s mind, the final day of Antichrist,
+though it may well be an epoch of similar nature and
+a token and shadow of the last things.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span>
+In point of fact, a great secular crisis was now
+approaching. The six years (64–70 after Christ) extending
+from the fire of Rome to the fall of Jerusalem,
+were amongst the most fateful and calamitous recorded
+in history. This period was, in a very real sense, the
+day of judgement for Israel and the ancient world. It
+was a foretaste of the ultimate doom of the kingdom
+of evil amongst men; and through it Christ appears
+to have looked forward to the end of the world.
+Already “the days are evil” (v. 16); and “the evil
+day” is at hand—a time of terror and despair for all
+who have not a firm faith in the kingdom of God.</p>
+
+<p>Two chief characteristics marked this crisis, as it
+affected the people of Christ: <i>persecution from without</i>,
+and <i>apostasy within the Church</i> (Matt. xxiv. 5, 8–12).
+To the latter feature St Paul refers
+elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_170" id="FNanchor_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> Of
+persecution he took less account, for this was indeed
+his ordinary lot, and had already visited his Churches;
+but it was afterwards to assume a more violent and
+appalling form.</p>
+
+<p>When we turn to the epistle to the Seven Churches
+(Rev. ii., iii.) written in the next ensuing period, we
+find a fierce battle raging, resembling that for which
+this letter warns the Asian Churches to prepare. The
+storm which our apostle foresees, had then burst. The
+message addressed to each Church concludes with a
+promise to “him that overcometh.” To the faithful
+it is said: “I know thy endurance.” The angel of
+the Church of Pergamum dwells where is “the throne
+of Satan,” and where “Antipas the faithful martyr was
+killed.” There also, says the Lord Jesus, “are those
+who hold the teaching of Balaam, and the teaching of
+the Nicolaitans,” with whom “I will make war with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span>
+sword of my mouth” (comp. Eph. vi. 17). Laodicea
+has shrunk from the trial, and grown rich by the
+world’s friendship. Thyatira “suffers the woman
+Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to
+seduce” the servants of Christ. Sardis has but “a
+few names that have not defiled their garments.”
+Even Ephesus, though she had tried the false teachers
+and found them wanting (surely Paul’s epistles to
+Timothy had helped her in this examination), has yet
+“left her first love.” The day of trial has proved an
+evil day to these Churches. Satan has been allowed
+to sift them; and while some good wheat remains,
+much of the faith of the numerous and prosperous
+communities of the province of Asia has turned out to
+be faulty and vain. The presentiments that weighed
+on St Paul’s mind when four years ago he took leave
+of the Ephesian elders at Miletus, and which reappear
+in this passage, were only too well justified by the
+course of events. Indeed, the history of the Church
+in this region has been altogether mournful and
+admonitory.</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>But it is time to look at the <i>armour</i> in which St Paul
+bids his readers equip themselves against the evil day.
+It consists of seven weapons, offensive or defensive—if
+we count prayer amongst them: the <i>girdle of truth</i>,
+the <i>breastplate of righteousness</i>, the <i>shoes of readiness to
+bear the message of peace</i>, the <i>shield of faith</i>, the <i>helmet
+of salvation</i>, the <i>sword of the word</i>, and the continual <i>cry
+of prayer</i>.</p>
+
+<p>1. In girding himself for the field, the first thing the
+soldier does is to fasten round his waist the military
+<i>belt</i>. With this he binds in his under-garments, that
+there may be nothing loose or trailing about him, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span>
+braces up his limbs for action. Peace admits of
+relaxation. The girdle is unclasped; the muscles are
+unstrung. But everything about the warrior is tense
+and firm; his dress, his figure and movements speak
+of decision and concentrated energy. He stands before
+us an image of resolute conviction, of <i>a mind made up</i>.
+Such a picture the words “girt about with truth”
+convey to us.</p>
+
+<p>The epistle is pervaded by the sense of the Church’s
+need of intellectual conviction. Many of the Asian
+believers were children, half-enlightened and irresolute,
+ready to be “tossed to and fro and carried about with
+every wind of doctrine” (iv. 14). They had “heard
+the truth as it is in Jesus,” but had an imperfect comprehension
+of its meaning.<a name="FNanchor_171" id="FNanchor_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a>
+They required to add to
+their faith knowledge,—the knowledge won by searching
+thought respecting the great truths of religion, by a
+thorough mental appropriation of the things revealed
+to us in Christ. Only by such a process can truth
+brace the mind and knit its powers together in “the
+full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge
+of the mystery of God, which is Christ” (Col. ii, 2, 3).</p>
+
+<p>Such is the faith needed by the Church, now as then,
+the faith of an intelligent, firm and manly assurance.
+There is in such faith a security and a vigour of action
+that the faith of mere sentiment and emotional impression,
+with its nerveless grasp, its hectic and impulsive
+fervours, cannot impart. The luxury of agnosticism,
+the languors of doubt, the vague sympathies and
+hesitant eclecticism in which delicate and cultured
+minds are apt to indulge; the lofty critical attitude,
+as of some intellectual god sitting above the strife of
+creeds, which others find congenial—these are conditions
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span>
+of mind unfit for the soldier of Christ Jesus.
+He must have sure knowledge, definite and decided
+purposes—a soul girdled with truth.</p>
+
+<p>2. Having girt his loins, the soldier next fastens on
+his <i>breastplate</i>, or cuirass.</p>
+
+<p>This is the chief piece of his defensive armour; it
+protects the vital organs. In the picture drawn in
+1 Thessalonians v. 8, the breastplate is made “of faith
+and love.” In this more detailed representation, faith
+becomes the outlying defensive “shield,” while righteousness
+serves for the innermost defence, the rampart
+of the heart. But, in truth, the Christian righteousness
+is compounded of faith and love.</p>
+
+<p>This attribute must be understood in its full Pauline
+meaning. It is the state of one who is right with God
+and with God’s law. It is the righteousness both of
+standing and of character, of imputation and of impartation,
+which begins with justification and continues in
+the new, obedient life of the believer. These are never
+separate, in the true doctrine of grace. “The righteousness
+that is of God by faith,” is the soul’s main defence
+against the shafts of Satan. It wards off deadly blows,
+both from this side and from that. Does the enemy
+bring up against me my old sins? I can say: “It is
+God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”—Am
+I tempted to presume on my forgiveness, and to fall
+into transgression once more? From this breastplate
+the arrow of temptation falls pointless, as it resounds:
+“He that doeth righteousness is righteous. He that is
+born of God doth not commit sin.” The completeness
+of pardon for past offence and the integrity of character
+that belong to the justified life, are woven together into
+an impenetrable mail.</p>
+
+<p>3. Now the soldier, having girt his loins and guarded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span>
+his breast, must look well to his feet. There are lying
+ready for him <i>shoes</i> of wondrous make.</p>
+
+<p>What is the quality most needed in the soldier’s
+shoes? Some say, it is <i>firmness</i>; and they so translate
+the Greek word employed by the apostle, occurring only
+here in the New Testament, which in certain passages
+of the Septuagint seems to acquire this sense, under
+the influence of Hebrew
+idiom.<a name="FNanchor_172" id="FNanchor_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> But firmness was
+embodied in the girdle. <i>Expedition</i> belongs to the
+shoes. The soldier is so shod that he may move with
+alertness over all sorts of ground.</p>
+
+<p>Thus shod with speed and willingness were “the
+beautiful feet” of those that brought over desert and
+mountain “the good tidings of peace,” the news of
+Israel’s return to Zion (Isai. lii. 7–9). With such swift
+strength were the feet of our apostle shod, when “from
+Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum” he had “fulfilled
+the gospel of Christ,” and is “ready,” as he says, “to
+preach the glad tidings to you also that are in Rome”
+(Rom. i. 15). This readiness belonged to His own
+holy feet, who “came and preached peace to the far off
+and the near” (ii. 17),—when, for example, sitting a
+weary traveller by the well-side at Sychar, He found
+refreshment in revealing to the woman of Samaria the
+fountain of living water. Such readiness befits His
+servants, who have heard from Him the message of
+salvation and are sent to proclaim it everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>The girdle and breastplate look to one’s own safety.
+They must be supplemented by the evangelic zeal
+inseparable from the spirit of Christ. This is, moreover,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span>
+a safeguard of Church life. Von Hofmann says
+admirably upon this point: “The objection [brought
+against the above interpretation] that the apostle is
+addressing the faithful at large, who are not all of
+them called to preach the gospel, is mistaken. Every
+believer should be prepared to witness for Christ so
+often as opportunity affords, and needs a <i>readiness</i>
+thereto. The knowledge of Christ’s peace qualifies
+him to convey its message. He brings it with him
+into the strife of the world. And it is the consciousness
+that he possesses himself such peace and has it
+to communicate to others, which enables him to walk
+firmly and with sure step in the way of faith.” When
+we are bidden to “<i>stand</i> in the evil day,” that does
+not mean to stand idle or content to hold our ground.
+Attack is often the best mode of defence. We keep
+our faith by spreading it. We defend ourselves from
+our opponents by converting them to the gospel, which
+breathes everywhere reconciliation and fraternity. Our
+Foreign Missions are our grand modern apologetic;
+and God’s peacemakers are His mightiest warriors.</p>
+
+<p>4. With his body girt and fenced and his feet clad
+with the gospel shoes, the soldier reaches out his left
+hand to “take up withal the <i>shield</i>,” while his right
+hand grasps first the helmet which he places on his
+head, and then the sword that is offered to him in the
+word of God.</p>
+
+<p>The shield signified is not the small round buckler,
+or target, of the light-armed man; but the door-like
+shield,<a name="FNanchor_173" id="FNanchor_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a>
+measuring four feet by two-and-a-half and
+rounded to the shape of the body, that the Greek
+hoplite and the Roman legionary carried. Joined
+together, these large shields formed a wall, behind
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span>
+which a body of troops could hide themselves from
+the rain of the enemy’s missiles. Such is the office
+of faith in the conflicts of life: it is the soldier’s main
+defence, the common bulwark of the Church. Like the
+city’s outer wall, faith bears the brunt and onset of
+all hostility. On this shield of faith the darts of Satan
+are caught, their point broken and their fire quenched.
+These military shields were made of wood, covered
+on the outside with thick leather, which not only
+deadened the shock of the missile, but protected the
+frame of the shield from the “fire-tipped darts” that
+were used in the artillery of the ancients. These
+flaming arrows, armed with some quickly burning and
+light combustible, if they failed to pierce the warrior’s
+shield, fell in a moment extinguished at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul can scarcely mean by his “fiery darts”
+incitements to passion in ourselves, inflammatory
+temptations that seek to rouse the inward fires of
+anger or lust. For these missiles are “fire-pointed
+darts <i>of the Evil One</i>.” The fire belongs to the enemy
+who shoots the dart. It signifies the malignant hate
+with which Satan hurls slanders and threats against
+the people of God through his human instruments. A
+bold faith wards off and quenches this fire even at a
+distance, so that the soul never feels its heat. The
+heart’s confidence is unmoved and the Church’s songs
+of praise are undisturbed, while persecution rages and
+the enemies of Christ gnash their teeth against her.
+Such a shield to him was the faith of Stephen the
+proto-martyr.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“I heard the defaming of many; there was terror on every side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I trusted in Thee, O Jehovah: I said, Thou art my God!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To “take up the shield of faith,” is it not, like the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span>
+Psalmist, to meet injuries and threats, the boasts of
+unbelief and of worldly power, the poisoned arrows of
+the deceitful and the bitter words of unjust reproach,
+with faith’s quiet counter-assertion? “Who shall
+separate us from the love of Christ?” says the apostle
+in the midst of tribulation. “God is my witness, whom
+I serve in the gospel of His Son,” he answers when his
+fidelity is questioned. No shaft of malice, no arrow of
+fear can pierce the soul that holds such a shield.</p>
+
+<p>5. At this point (ver. 17), when the sentence
+beginning at verse 14 has drawn itself out to such
+length, and the relative clause of verse 16<i>b</i> makes a
+break and eddy in the current of thought, the writer
+pauses for a moment. He resumes the exhortation in
+a form slightly changed and with rising emphasis,
+passing from the participle to the finite verb: “And
+take <i>the helmet of salvation</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The word <i>take</i>, in the original, differs from the <i>taking
+up</i> of verses 13 and 16. It signifies the <i>accepting</i> of
+something offered by the hand of another. So the
+Thessalonians “<i>accepted</i> the word” brought them by
+St Paul (1 Thess. i. 6) and Titus “<i>accepted</i> the consolation”
+given him by the Corinthians (2 Cor. viii. 17)—in
+each case a welcome gift. God’s hand is stretched
+out to bestow on His chosen warrior the helmet of
+salvation and the sword of His word, to complete his
+equipment for the perilous field. We accept these gifts
+with devout gratitude, knowing from what source they
+come and where the heavenly arms were fashioned.</p>
+
+<p>The “helmet of salvation” is worn by the Lord
+Himself, as He is depicted by the prophet coming to
+the succour of His people (Isai. lix. 17). This helmet,
+on the head of Jehovah, is the crest and badge of their
+Divine champion. Given to the human warrior, it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span>
+becomes the sign of his protection by God. The
+apostle does not call it “the <i>hope</i> of salvation,” as he
+does in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, thinking of the believer’s
+assurance of victory in the last struggle. Nor is it the
+sense and assurance of past salvation that here guards
+the Christian soldier. The presence of his Saviour and
+God in itself constitutes his highest safeguard.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“O Jehovah my Lord, the strength of my salvation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The warrior’s head rising above his shield was frequently
+open to attack. The arrow might shoot over
+the shield’s edge, and inflict a mortal blow. Our faith,
+at the best, has its deficiencies and its limits; but
+God’s salvation reaches beyond our highest confidence
+in Him. His overshadowing presence is the crown of
+our salvation, His love its shining crest.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the equipment of Christ’s soldier is complete;
+and he is arrayed in the full armour of light. His
+loins girt with truth, his breast clad with righteousness,
+his feet shod with zeal, his head crowned with safety,
+while faith’s all-encompassing shield is cast about him,
+he steps forth to do battle with the powers of darkness,
+“strong in the Lord, and in the might of His strength.”</p>
+
+<p>6. It only remains that “the <i>sword</i> of the Spirit”
+be put into his right hand, while his lips are open in
+continual prayer to the God of his strength.</p>
+
+<p>The “cleansing word” of chapter v. 26, by whose
+virtue we passed through the gate of baptism into the
+flock of Christ, now becomes the guarding and smiting
+word, to be used in conflict with our spiritual foes. Of
+the Messiah it was said, in language quoted by the
+apostle against Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 8): “He shall
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span>
+smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with
+the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked”
+(Isai. xi. 4). Similarly, in Hosea the Lord tells how
+He has “hewed” the unfaithful “by His prophets, and
+slain them by the words of His mouth” (Hos. vi. 5).
+From such sayings of the Old Testament the idea of the
+sword of the Divine word is derived. We find it again
+in Hebrews iv. 12: “The word of God, living and
+active, sharper than any two-edged sword”; and in
+the “sword, two-edged, sharp,” which John in the
+Revelation saw “coming out of the mouth of the Son
+of man”: it belongs to Him whose name is “the word
+of God,” and with it “He shall smite the
+nations.”<a name="FNanchor_174" id="FNanchor_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p>
+
+<p>This sword of the inspired word Paul himself
+wielded with supernatural effect, as when he rebuked
+Elymas the sorcerer, or when he defended his gospel
+against the Judaizers of Galatia and Corinth. In his
+hand it was even as</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i16">“The sword<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Michael, from the armoury of God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">... tempered so that neither keen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor solid might resist that edge.”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>With what piercing reproofs, what keen thrusts of
+argument, what double-edged irony and dexterous
+sword-play did this mighty combatant smite the enemies
+of the cross of Christ! In times of conflict never may
+such leaders be wanting to the Church, men using
+weapons of warfare not carnal, but mighty to “cast
+down strongholds,” to “bring down every high thing
+that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and
+make captive every thought to Christ’s obedience.”</p>
+
+<p>In her struggle with the world’s gigantic lusts and
+tyrannies, the Israel of God must be armed with this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span>
+lofty and lightning-like power, with the flaming sword
+of the Spirit. No less in the secret, internal conflicts
+of the religious life, the sword of the word is the
+decisive weapon. The Son of man put it to proof in
+His combat in the wilderness. Satan himself sought
+to wrest this instrument to his purpose. With pious
+texts in his mouth he addressed our Lord, like an angel
+of light, fain to deceive Him by the very Scripture He
+had Himself inspired! until, with the last thrust of
+quotation, Jesus unmasked the tempter and drove him
+from the field, saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan!”</p>
+
+<p>7. We have surveyed the Christian soldier with his
+harness on. From head to foot he is clothed in arms
+supernatural. No weapon of defence or offence is
+lacking, that the spiritual combat needs. Nothing
+seems to be wanting: yet everything is wanting, if this
+be all. Our text began: “Be strong in the Lord.”
+It is <i>prayer</i> that links the believer with the strength
+of God.</p>
+
+<p>What avails Michael’s sword, if the hand that holds
+it is slack and listless? what the panoply of God, if
+behind it beats a craven heart? He is but a soldier
+in semblance who wears arms without the courage and
+the strength to use them. The life that is to animate
+that armed figure, to beat with high resolve beneath
+the corslet, to nerve the arm as it lifts the strong shield
+and plies the sharp sword, to set the swift feet moving
+on their gospel errands, to weld the Church together
+into one army of the living God, comes from the inspiration
+of God’s Spirit received in answer to believing
+prayer. So the apostle adds: “With all prayer and
+supplication praying at every time in the Spirit.”</p>
+
+<p>There is here no needless repetition. “Prayer” is
+the universal word for reverent address to God; and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span>
+“supplication” the entreaty for such help as “on every
+occasion”—at each turn of the battle, in each emergency
+of life—we find ourselves to need. And Christian
+prayer is always “in the Spirit,”—being offered in the
+grace and power of the Holy Spirit, who is the element
+of the believer’s life in Christ, who helps our infirmities
+and, virtually, intercedes for us (Rom. viii. 26, 27).
+When the apostle continues, “<i>watching</i> [or <i>keeping awake</i>]
+thereunto,” he reminds us, as perhaps he was thinking
+himself, of our Lord’s warning to the disciples sleeping
+in Gethsemane: “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into
+temptation.” The “perseverance” he requires in this
+wakeful attention to prayer, is the resolute persistence
+of the suppliant, who will neither be daunted by opposition
+nor wearied by delay.<a name="FNanchor_175" id="FNanchor_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a></p>
+
+<p>The word “supplication” is resumed at the end of
+verse 18, in order to enlist the prayers of the readers
+for the service of the Church at large: “with wakeful
+heed thereto, in all persistence and <i>supplication for all
+the saints</i>.” Prayer for ourselves must broaden out
+into a catholic intercession for all the servants of our
+Master, for all the children of the household of faith.
+By the bands of prayer we are knit together,—a vast
+multitude of saints throughout the earth, unknown by
+face or name to our fellows, but one in the love of
+Christ and in our heavenly calling, and all engaged in
+the same perilous conflict.</p>
+
+<p>“All the saints,” St Paul said (i. 15), were interested
+in the faith of the Asian believers; they were called
+“with all the saints” to share in the comprehension
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span>
+of the immense designs of God’s kingdom (iii. 18).
+The dangers and temptations of the Church are equally
+far-reaching; they have a common origin and character
+in all Christian communities. Let our prayers, at
+least, be catholic. At the throne of grace, let us forget
+our sectarian divisions. Having access in one Spirit
+to the Father, let us realize in His presence our communion
+with all His children.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168" id="Footnote_168"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a>
+Comp. Rom. viii. 37, xvi. 20. <i>To bring down</i>, <i>overpower</i>, <i>conquer</i>
+is the military sense of <span class="greek" title="katergazomai">κατεργάζομαι</span>,—not
+found elsewhere in the
+New Testament, but, as it seems to us, unmistakable here. It occurs
+in Ezek. xxxiv. 4 (LXX), and 1 Esdr. iv. 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169" id="Footnote_169"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a>
+Col. i. 23, ii. 5; Phil. i. 27–30, iv. 1: comp. 1 Thess. v. 8; Rom.
+xiii. 11–14; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; 2 Cor. x. 3–6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170" id="Footnote_170"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a>
+2 Thess. ii. 3; Acts xx. 29, 30; 1 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iii. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171" id="Footnote_171"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a>
+Ch. 1. 17–23, iii. 16–19, iv. 13–15, 20–24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172" id="Footnote_172"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Hetoimasia">Ἑτοιμασία</span>
+is adopted by the Greek translators as the equivalent of
+the Hebrew word for <i>foundation</i>, or <i>base</i>, in Ps. lxxxix. 14; Ezra ii. 68,
+iii. 3; Dan. xi. 7, 20, 21. See, however, the note of Meyer, who
+thinks that they misunderstood the Hebrew.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173" id="Footnote_173"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Thyreos">Θυρεός</span>:
+Latin <i>scutum</i>; only here in N.T.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174" id="Footnote_174"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a>
+Rev. i. 16, ii. 12, xix. 13–15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175" id="Footnote_175"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="En pasê proskarterêsei">Ἐν πάσῃ προσκαρτερήσει</span>:
+<i>in every kind of persistence</i>,—a perseverance
+that tries all arts and holds its ground at every point. The verb
+<span class="greek" title="proskartereô">προσκαρτερέω</span>
+appears in the parallel passages: Col. iv. 2; Rom. xii. 12;
+also in Acts i. 14.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="section"><a name="THE_CONCLUSION" id="THE_CONCLUSION"></a>THE CONCLUSION.</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4 class="section"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span> vi. 19–24.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="greek"
+title="Pepeismai gar hoti oute thanatos oute zôê oute angeloi oute archai oute
+enestôta oute mellonta oute dynameis oute hypsôma oute bathos oute tis
+ktisis hetera dynêsetai hêmas chôrisai apo tês agapês tou Theou tês en
+Christô Iêsou tô Kyriô hêmôn">
+Πέπεισμαι γὰρ ὅτι οὔτε θάνατος οὔτε ζωὴ οὔτε ἄγγελοι οὔτε ἀρχαὶ οὔτε
+ἐνεστῶτα οὔτε μέλλοντα οὔτε δυνάμεις οὔτε ὕψωμα οὔτε βάθος οὔτε τις
+κτίσις ἑτέρα δυνήσεται ἡμᾶς χωρίσαι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ Θεοῦ τῆς ἐν
+Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν</span>—<span class="smcap">Rom.</span> viii. 38, 39.</p>
+
+<p class="center">“Love for Christ is immortal.”—<span class="smcap">R. W. Dale.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<h4>REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“And [pray] on my behalf, that the word may be given unto me
+in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of
+the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may
+speak boldly, as I ought to speak.</p>
+
+<p>“But that ye also may know my affairs, how I do, Tychicus, the
+beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known
+to you all things: whom I have sent unto you for this very purpose,
+that ye may know our state, and that he may comfort your hearts.”—<span class="smcap">Eph</span>.
+vi. 19–22.</p></div>
+
+<p>The apostle has bidden his readers apply themselves
+with wakeful and incessant earnestness
+to prayer (ver. 18). For this is, after all, the chief
+arm of the spiritual combat. By this means the soul
+draws reinforcements of mercy and hope from the
+eternal sources (ver. 10). By this means the Asian
+Christians will be able not only to carry on their own
+conflict with vigour, but to help all the saints (ver. 18);
+and through their aid the whole Church of God will
+be sustained in its war with the prince of this world.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle Paul himself stood in the forefront of
+this battle. He was suffering for the cause of common
+Christendom; he was a mark for the attack of the
+enemies of the gospel.<a name="FNanchor_176" id="FNanchor_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a>
+On him, more than on any
+other man, the safety and progress of the Church
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span>
+depended (Phil. i. 25). In this position he naturally
+says: “Watching unto prayer in all perseverance and
+supplication for all the saints—<i>and for me</i>.” If his
+heart should fail him, or his mouth be closed, if the
+word of inspiration ceased to be given him and the
+great teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth no
+longer spoke as he ought to speak, it would be a heavy
+blow and sore discouragement to the friends of Christ
+throughout the world. “My afflictions are your glory
+(iii. 13). My unworthy testimony to Christ is showing
+forth His praise to all men and
+angels.<a name="FNanchor_177" id="FNanchor_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> Pray for me
+then, that I may speak and act in this hour of trial
+in a manner worthy of the dispensation given to me.”</p>
+
+<p>Strong and confident as the apostle Paul was, he
+felt himself to be nothing without prayer. It is his
+habit to expect the support of the intercessions of all
+who love him in Christ.<a name="FNanchor_178" id="FNanchor_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a>
+He knew that he was helped
+by this means, on numberless occasions and in wonderful
+ways. He asks his present readers to entreat that
+“the word<a name="FNanchor_179" id="FNanchor_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a>
+may be given me when I open my mouth,
+so that I may freely make known the mystery of the
+gospel, on which behalf I serve as ambassador in bonds,
+that in it I may speak freely, as I ought to speak.”
+This sentence hangs upon the verb “may-be-given.”
+Jesus said to His apostles: “It shall be <i>given</i> you in
+that hour what you shall speak, when brought before
+rulers and kings” (Matt x. 18–20). The apostle stands
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span>
+now before the Roman world. He has appealed to
+Cæsar, and awaits his trial. If he has not yet appeared
+at the Emperor’s tribunal, he will shortly have to do
+so. Christ’s ambassador is about to plead in chains
+before the highest of human courts. It is not his
+own life or freedom that he is concerned about; the
+ambassador has only to consider how he shall represent
+his Sovereign’s interests. The importance which Paul
+attached to this occasion, is manifest from the words
+written to Timothy (2 Ep. iv. 17) referring to his later
+trial. St Paul has this special need in his thoughts,
+in addition to the help from above continually required
+in the discharge of his ministry, under the hampering
+conditions of his imprisonment (comp. Col. iv. 3, 4).</p>
+
+<p>The Church must entreat on Paul’s behalf that the
+word he utters may be God’s, and not his own. It is
+in vain to “open the mouth,” unless there is this higher
+prompting and through the gates of speech there issues
+a Divine message, unless the speaker is the mouthpiece
+of the Holy Spirit rather than of his individual
+thought and will. “The words that I speak unto you,”
+Jesus said, “I speak not of myself.” The bold apostle
+intends to open his mouth; but he must have the
+true “word given” him to say. We should pray for
+Christ’s ambassadors, and especially for the more public
+and eloquent pleaders of the Christian cause, that it
+may be thus with them. Rash and vain words, that
+bear the stamp of the mere man who utters them and
+not of the Spirit of his Master, do a hurt to the cause
+of the gospel proportioned to the blessing that comes
+from such lips when they speak the word given to them.</p>
+
+<p>Such inspiration would enable the apostle to “make
+known the mystery of the gospel <i>with freedom and
+confidence of speech</i>”: the expression rendered
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span> “with
+boldness”<a name="FNanchor_180" id="FNanchor_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a>
+means all this. Before the emperor Nero,
+or the slave Onesimus, he will be able with the same
+aptness and dignity and self-command to declare his
+message and to vindicate his Master’s name. “The
+mystery of the gospel” is no other secret than that
+which this epistle unfolds (iii. 3–9), the great fact that
+Jesus Christ is the Saviour and the Lord of the whole
+world. Jesus proclaimed Himself to Pilate, who represented
+at Jerusalem the imperial rule, as the King of
+all who are of the truth; and the apostle Paul has
+the like message to convey to the head of the Empire.
+It needed the greatest boldness and the greatest wisdom
+in the ambassador of the Messianic King to play his
+part at Rome; an unwise word might make his own life
+forfeit, and bring incalculable dangers on the Church.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s trial, we suppose, passed off successfully, as he at this time
+anticipated.<a name="FNanchor_181" id="FNanchor_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a>
+The Roman government was perfectly aware that the political charge
+against their prisoner was frivolous; and Nero, if he
+personally gave Paul a hearing on this earlier trial, in
+all probability viewed his spiritual pretensions on his
+Master’s behalf with contemptuous tolerance. If he did
+so, the toleration was not due to any want of courage or
+clearness on the defendant’s part. It is possible even
+that the courage and address of the advocate of the
+“new superstition” pleased the tyrant, who was not
+without his moments of good humour nor without the
+instincts of a man of taste. The apostle, we may well
+believe, made an impression on the supreme court at
+Rome similar to that made on his judges in Cæsarea.</p>
+
+<p>St Paul’s bonds in Christ have now become widely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span>
+“manifest” in Rome (Phil. i. 13). He pleads in circumstances
+of disgrace. But God brings good for His
+servants out of evil. As he said at a later time, so
+he could say now: “They have bound me; but they
+cannot bind the word of
+God.”<a name="FNanchor_182" id="FNanchor_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> He was “not
+ashamed of the gospel” in the prospect of coming
+to Rome years before (Rom. i. 16); and he is not
+ashamed now, though he has come in chains as an
+evil-doer. Through the intercessions of Christ’s
+people all these injuries of Satan are turning to his
+salvation and to the “furtherance of the gospel”; and
+Paul rejoices and triumphs in them, well assured that
+Christ will be magnified whether by his life or death,
+whether by his freedom or his chains (Phil. i. 12–26).
+The prayers which the imprisoned apostle asks from
+the Church were fulfilled. For we read in the last
+verses of the Acts of the Apostles, which put into a
+sentence the history of this period: “He received all
+that came to him, preaching the kingdom and teaching
+the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, <i>with all
+boldness</i>, none forbidding him.”</p>
+
+<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+<p>The paragraph relating to Tychicus is almost identical
+with that of Colossians iv. 7, 8. It begins with a “But”
+connecting what follows with the statement the apostle
+has just made respecting his position at Rome. As
+much as to say: “I want your prayers, set as I am
+for the defence of the gospel and in circumstances of
+difficulty and peril. But Tychicus will tell you more
+about me than I can convey by letter. I am sending
+him, in fact, for this very purpose.”</p>
+
+<p>St Paul knew the great anxiety of the Christians of
+Asia on his account. Epaphras of Colossæ had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span> “shown
+him the love in the Spirit” that was felt towards him
+even by those in this region who had never seen him
+in the flesh (Col. i. 8). The tender heart of the apostle
+is touched by this assurance. So he sends Tychicus
+to visit as many of the Asian Churches as he may be
+able to reach, bringing news that will cheer their hearts
+and relieve their discouragement
+(iii. 13).<a name="FNanchor_183" id="FNanchor_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> The note
+sent at this time to Philemon indicates the hopeful
+tidings that Tychicus was able to convey to Paul’s friends
+in the East: “I trust that through your prayers I shall
+be given to you” (Philem. 22). To the Philippians he
+writes, perhaps a little later, in the same strain: “I
+trust in the Lord that I myself shall come shortly”
+(Phil. ii. 24). He anticipates, with some confidence,
+his speedy acquital and release: it is not likely that
+this expectation, on the part of such a man as St Paul,
+was disappointed. The good news went round the
+Asian and Macedonian Churches: “Paul is likely soon
+to be free, and we shall see and hear him again!”</p>
+
+<p>In the parallel epistle he writes, “that you may
+know” (Col. iv. 8); here it is, “that you <i>also</i> may
+know my affairs.” The added word is significant.
+The writer is imagining his letter read in the various
+assemblies which it will reach. He has the other
+epistle in his mind, and remembering that he there
+introduced Tychicus in similar terms, he says to this
+wider circle of Asian disciples: “That you also, as well
+as the Churches of the Lycus valley, may know how
+things are with me, I send Tychicus to give you a full
+report.” It is not necessary, however, to look beyond
+the last two verses for the reference of the <i>also</i> of
+verse 21: “I have asked your prayers on my behalf;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span>
+and I wish you in turn to know how things go with
+me.” Possibly, there were some matters connected
+with St Paul’s trial at Rome that could not be fitly or
+safely communicated by letter. Hence he adds: “He
+shall make known unto you all things.” When he
+writes “that ye may know my affairs, how I do,” we
+gather that Tychicus was to communicate to those he
+visited everything about the beloved apostle that would
+be of interest to his Asian brethren.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle commends Tychicus in language identical
+in the two letters, except that in Colossians “fellow-servant”
+is added to the honourable designations of
+“beloved brother and faithful minister,” under which
+he is here introduced. We find him first associated
+with St Paul in Acts xx. 4, where “Tychicus and
+Trophimus” represent Asia in the number of those
+who accompanied the apostle on his voyage to Jerusalem,
+when he carried the contributions of his Gentile
+Churches to the relief of the Christian poor in Jerusalem.
+Trophimus, his companion, is called a “Greek” and an
+“Ephesian” (Acts xxi. 28, 29). Whether Tychicus
+belonged to the same city or not, we cannot tell. He
+was almost certainly a Greek. The Pastoral epistles
+show Tychicus still in the apostle’s service in his last
+years. He appears to have joined St Paul’s staff and
+remained with him from the time that he accompanied
+him to Jerusalem in the year 59. From 2 Timothy iv
+9–12 we gather that Tychicus was sent to Ephesus
+to relieve Timothy, when St Paul desired the presence
+of the latter at Rome. It is evident that he was a man
+greatly valued by the apostle and endeared to him.</p>
+
+<p>Tychicus was well known in the Asian Churches,
+and suitable therefore to be sent upon this errand.
+And the commendation given to him would be very
+welcome to the circle to which he belonged. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span>
+apostle has great tact in these personal matters, the
+tact which belongs to delicate feeling and a generous
+mind. He calls his messenger “the beloved brother”
+in his relation to the Church in general, and “faithful
+minister in the Lord” in his special relation to himself.
+So he describes Epaphroditus to the Philippians as
+“your apostle and minister of my need.” In conveying
+these letters and messages, this worthy man was
+Paul’s apostle and minister of his need in regard to
+the Asian Churches. He is a “<i>minister in the Lord</i>,”
+inasmuch as this office lies within the range of his
+service to the Lord Christ.</p>
+
+<p>We observe that in writing to the Colossians the
+apostle applies to Onesimus, the converted slave, the
+honourable epithets applied here to this long-tried
+friend: “the faithful and beloved brother” (Col. iv. 9).
+Every Christian believer should be in the eyes of his
+fellows a “beloved brother.” And every true servant
+of Christ and His people is a “faithful minister in the
+Lord,” be his rank high or low, and whether official
+hands have been laid upon his head or not. We are
+apt, by a trick of words, to limit to the order which
+we suitably call “the ministry” expressions that the
+New Testament applies to the common ministry of
+Christ’s saints (comp. iv. 12). This devoted servant of
+Christ is employed just now as a newsman and letter-carrier.
+But what a high responsibility it was, to be
+the bearer to the Asian cities, and to the Church for all
+time, of the epistles of Paul the apostle to the Ephesians,
+Colossians and Philemon. Had Tychicus been careless
+or dishonest, had he lost these precious documents or
+tampered with them, how great the loss to mankind!
+We cannot read them without feeling our debt to this
+beloved brother and faithful servant of the Church.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[435]</a></span>
+Those who travel upon Christ’s business, who link
+distant communities to each other and convey from one
+to another the Holy Spirit’s fellowship and grace, are
+“the messengers of the Churches and the glory of
+Christ” (2 Cor. viii. 23).</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Benediction</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ<br /></span>
+<span class="i24">In incorruption” (vv. 23, 24).<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Grace and Peace were the first words of the epistle,—the
+apostle’s salutation to all his Churches. In
+<i>Peace and Grace</i> he breathes out his final blessing.
+The benediction is fuller than in most of the epistles,
+and exhibits several peculiar features.</p>
+
+<p>To the Thessalonians (2 Ep. iii. 16) St Paul wished:
+“Peace continually, in all ways, from the Lord of peace
+Himself”; and he commends the Romans twice to
+“the God of peace” (ch. xv. 33, xvi. 20): the Corinthians
+he bids to “live in peace,” so that “the God of
+love and peace” may be with them (2 Cor. xiii. 11).
+There is nothing in the least degree strange or un-Pauline
+in the wishes here expressed, except the fact
+that they are put in the third person—“<i>Peace to the
+brethren</i>,” etc.—instead of being addressed directly to
+the readers in the second person, as in all other of the
+apostle’s extant closing benedictions. This peculiarity,
+as we observed in the first Chapter, is in accordance
+with the encyclical and impersonal stamp of the
+epistle.<a name="FNanchor_184" id="FNanchor_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a>
+It is Paul’s most catholic benediction, his blessing upon
+“all the Israel of God” (comp. Gal. vi. 16).</p>
+
+<p>“With faith,” that “love” is desired whereby,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[436]</a></span>
+according to the Pauline ethics of salvation, faith works
+(Gal. v. 6), the love which as a vitalizing organic force
+creates the new man, formed in all his doings and dispositions
+after the image of Jesus Christ. From chapter
+iv. 1–3 we have learnt how “peace” and “love” attend
+each other. Love is the source of the forbearance, the
+mutual consideration and self-sacrifice, without which
+there is no peace within the Church. Peace springs
+from love: love waits on faith. Amongst brethren in
+Christ, members of the same household of faith, peace
+and love have their home. These are the sons of
+peace: with good will and good hope, entering or
+quitting their abode, we say, “Peace be to this house!”</p>
+
+<p>The peace that the apostle looks for amongst
+Christian brethren is the fruit of peace with God
+through Christ. Such “peace guarding the thoughts
+and heart” of each Christian man, nothing contrary
+thereto will arise amongst them. Calm and quiet
+hearts make a peaceful Church. There are no clashing
+interests, no selfish competitions, no strife as to who
+shall be greatest. Differences of opinion and taste are
+kept within the bounds of mutual submission. The
+awe of God’s presence with His people, the remembrance
+of the dear price at which His Church was
+purchased, the sense of Christ’s Lordship in the Spirit
+and of the sacredness of our brotherhood in Him,
+check all turbulence and rivalry and teach us to seek
+the things that make for peace.</p>
+
+<p>“Peace <i>and love</i>,” the apostle desires. Love includes
+peace, and more; for it labours not to prevent contention
+only, but to help and enrich in all ways the body
+of Christ. By such “toil of love” faith is made
+complete. We are bidden indeed, in certain matters,
+to “have faith to ourselves before God” (Rom. xiv. 22).
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[437]</a></span>
+This maxim holds where one has a special faith in
+regard to such things as eating flesh or drinking wine,
+in which any one of us may without offence differ from
+his brethren. But it is a poor faith that dwells upon
+questions of this nature, and makes its religion of
+them. The essentials of faith, as we saw them
+delineated in chapter iv. 1–6, are things that unite and
+not distinguish us.</p>
+
+<p>As faith grows and deepens, it makes new channels
+in which love may flow. “We are bound to thank
+God always for you,” writes St Paul to the Thessalonians
+(2 Ep. i. 3), “for that your faith groweth exceedingly,
+and the love of each one of you all toward
+one another multiplieth.” This is the sound and true
+growth of faith. Where an intenser faith makes men
+disputatious and exclusive; where it fails to breed
+meekness and courtesy, we cannot but suspect its
+quality. Such faith may be sincere; but it is mixed
+with a lamentable ignorance, and a resistance to the
+Holy Spirit that is likely to end in grave offence.
+“Contending earnestly for the faith” does not mean
+contending angrily, with the weapons of satire and censoriousness.
+It is well to remember that we are not
+the judges of our brethren. There are many questions
+raised and discussed amongst us, which we may safely
+leave to the judgement of the last day. It is too easy
+to fill the air with matters of contention, and to excite
+a sore and suspicious temper destructive of peace,
+and in which nothing but fault-finding will flourish.
+If we must contend, we may surely debate quietly on
+secondary matters, while we are one in Christ. If we
+have not <i>love with faith</i>, our faith is worthless (1 Cor.
+xiii. 2).</p>
+
+<p>Deep beneath the peace that dwells in the Church
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[438]</a></span>
+and the love that fills each believer’s heart, is the
+eternal fountain of <i>grace</i>. “Grace be with all those
+who love our Lord Jesus Christ,” says the apostle.
+Grace is theirs already; and they desire nothing so
+much as its increase. Their love to Christ is the fruit
+of the grace of God that is with them. This wish
+includes all good wishes; it surpasses both our deservings
+and desires. All that God prepared for us in His
+eternal counsels, and that Christ purchased by His
+redeeming love, all of good that our nature can receive
+now and for ever, is embraced in this one word: <i>Grace
+be with you.</i></p>
+
+<p>“With all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul
+says; for it is to lovers of Christ that God gives the
+continuance of His grace. If our love to Christ fails,
+grace leaves us. God cannot look with favour upon
+the man who has no love to His Son Jesus Christ. In
+giving his blessing to the Corinthians, St Paul was compelled
+to write with his own hand: “If any man love
+not the Lord, let him be anathema.” The blessing
+involves the anathema. God’s love is not a love of
+indifference, an indiscriminate, immoral affection. It
+is a love of choice and predilection—“If any man
+love me,” said Jesus, “my Father will love him.” Is
+not the condition reasonable,—and the inference inevitable?
+The Father cannot grant His grace to those who
+have seen and hated Him in His Son and image. By
+that hatred they refuse His grace, and cast it from them.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, a sincere love to the Lord Jesus
+Christ opens the heart to all the rich and purifying
+influences of Divine grace. The sinful woman, stained
+with false and foul love, who washed the Saviour’s feet
+with her tears, attained in that act to a height of purity
+undreamed of by the virtuous Pharisee. This new and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[439]</a></span>
+holy flame burns out impure passion from the soul:
+it kindles lofty thoughts; it makes crooked natures
+straight, and timid and weak natures brave and strong.
+“To them that love God, we know, all things work
+together for good.” To them that love Christ, all things
+contribute blessing; all conditions and events of life
+become means of grace. If we love Christ, we shall
+love His people,—the Church, the bride of Christ from
+whom He will never be parted in our thoughts. If we
+love Christ, we shall love the work He has laid upon
+us, and the word He has taught us, and the sacramental
+pledges He has given us in remembrance of Him and
+assurance of His coming. If we love Him, we shall
+“keep His commandments,” and He will keep His
+promise to send us the “other Helper, to be with us
+for ever, even the Spirit of truth.” The gift of the
+Holy Spirit is the all-sufficiency of
+grace.<a name="FNanchor_185" id="FNanchor_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> Here is
+the innermost sanctuary of our religion, the fountain
+and beginning of the soul’s eternal life,—in the love
+which joins it to the Lord in one spirit.</p>
+
+<p><i>In incorruption</i> is the last and sealing word of this
+letter, which we have been so long studying together.
+It “stands as the crown and climax of this glorious
+epistle” (Alford). Like so many other words of the
+epistle, at first sight its interpretation is not clear. The
+apostle has used the term in several other passages, as synonymous with
+<i>immortality</i><a name="FNanchor_186" id="FNanchor_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a>
+and denoting the state
+of the blessed after the resurrection, when they will
+stand before God complete in body and in spirit, with
+all that is mortal in them swallowed up of life—“raised
+in incorruption.” But there is nothing in this
+context<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[440]</a></span>
+to lead up to the idea of personal, bodily immortality.
+Those who construe the apostle’s words in this sense,
+place a comma before the final clause and treat it as
+a qualification of the main predicate of the sentence:
+“Grace be with all them that love our Lord,—grace
+[culminating] in incorruption”—or in other words,
+“grace crowned with glory!” But it must be admitted
+that this is somewhat strained.</p>
+
+<p>The rendering of our ordinary version, “in sincerity”
+(in the Revised rendering, “uncorruptness”), gives an
+ethical sense to the word that is scarcely borne out by
+usage. It is a different, though kindred expression that
+St Paul employs to express “uncorruptness” in Titus
+ii. 7.<a name="FNanchor_187" id="FNanchor_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a></p>
+
+<p>It appears to us that the term “incorruption,” in its
+ordinary significance, applies fitly to the believer’s love
+for the Lord, when the word is read in accordance with
+the symbolism of the epistle. This love is the life of
+the body of Christ. In it lies the Church’s immortality.
+The gates of death prevail not against her, rooted and
+grounded as she is in love to the risen and immortal
+Christ. “May that love be maintained,” the apostle
+says, “in its deathless power. Let it be an unspoilt
+and unwasting love.”</p>
+
+<p>Of earthly love we often say with sadness:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“Space is against thee: it can part!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time is against thee: it can chill!”<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Not so with the love of Christ. Neither death nor life
+parts the soul from Him. Our love to the Lord Jesus
+Christ seats us with Him in the heavenly places,—above
+the realm of decay, above this wasting flesh and
+perishing world.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176" id="Footnote_176"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a>
+Col. i. 24—ii. 1; Phil. i. 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177" id="Footnote_177"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a>
+Ch. ii. 7, iii. 10; Phil. i. 20; 2 Tim. iv. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178" id="Footnote_178"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a>
+I Thess. v. 25; 2 Thess. iii. 1; Rom. xv. 30–32; Col. iv. 3, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179" id="Footnote_179"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a>
+Out of the instances in which the English Version renders
+<span class="greek" title="logos">λόγος</span>
+in St Paul by <i>utterance</i>, the Revisers have substituted <i>word</i> for <i>utterance</i>
+only in Col. iv. 3. One wishes they had done so throughout.
+For <span class="greek" title="logos">λόγος</span>
+surely implies the <i>content</i>, the <i>import</i> of what is said. This
+passage reminds us of John xvii. 14: “I have given them Thy word”;
+and xiv. 24: “The word which ye hear is not mine, but His.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180" id="Footnote_180"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="En parrêsia">Ἐν παρρησίᾳ</span>:
+comp. iii. 12; Phil. i. 20; Philem. 8; 2 Cor. vii. 4;
+1 Thess. ii. 2, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181" id="Footnote_181"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a>
+Phil. i. 25, 26, ii. 23, 24; Philem. 22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182" id="Footnote_182"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a>
+2 Tim. i. 7–12, ii. 3–10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183" id="Footnote_183"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a>
+Comp. Phil. i. 24–26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184" id="Footnote_184"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a>
+See pp. 13–17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185" id="Footnote_185"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a>
+Ch. i. 14, iv. 30. See Chapter IV., above.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186" id="Footnote_186"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a>
+Rom. ii. 7; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 50, 53, 54; 2 Tim. i. 10. See Alford’s
+excellent note on this passage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187" id="Footnote_187"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a>
+<span class="greek" title="Aphthoria">Ἀφθορία</span>:
+<span class="greek" title="aphtharsia">ἀφθαρσία</span>
+is deleted in the critical texts.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="sameauthor">
+
+<h4><a name="WORKS_BY_THE_SAME_AUTHOR" id="WORKS_BY_THE_SAME_AUTHOR"></a>WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.</h4>
+
+<p><b>THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS</b> (<i>Expositor’s Bible</i>).
+Crown 8vo, cloth.</p>
+
+<p><b>COMMENTARY ON COLOSSIANS</b> (<i>Pulpit Commentary</i>).</p>
+
+<p><b>COMMENTARY ON I. &amp; II. THESSALONIANS</b> (<i>Cambridge
+Bible for Schools and Colleges</i>).</p>
+
+<p><b>AN ESSAY ON THE PASTORAL EPISTLES</b> (<span class="smcap">Sabatier’s</span>
+<i>The Apostle Paul</i>).</p>
+
+<p><b>THE EPISTLES OF PAUL THE APOSTLE:</b> <i>a Sketch of
+their Origin and Contents.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="THE_EXPOSITORS_BIBLE" id="THE_EXPOSITORS_BIBLE"></a>THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol.</i></p>
+
+<h4 class="series">First Series, 1887–8.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">Colossians.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">A. Maclaren</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">St. Mark.</p>
+<p class="author">By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Genesis.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Marcus Dods</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">1 Samuel.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. G. Blaikie</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">2 Samuel.</p>
+<p class="author">By the same Author.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Hebrews.</p>
+<p class="author">By Principal <span class="smcap">T. C. Edwards</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<h4 class="series">Second Series, 1888–9.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">Galatians.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">G. G. Findlay</span>, B.A.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Pastoral Epistles.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. A. <span class="smcap">Plummer</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="bookwithchap"><span class="book">Isaiah</span> <span class="smcap lowercase">I.—XXXIX.</span></p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">G. A. Smith</span>, D.D. Vol. I.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Book of Revelation.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. Milligan</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">1 Corinthians.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Marcus Dods</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Epistles of St. John.</p>
+<p class="author">By Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.</p>
+
+<h4 class="series">Third Series, 1889–90.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">Judges and Ruth.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">R. A. Watson</span>, M.A., D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Jeremiah.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. <span class="smcap">C. J. Ball</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="bookwithchap"><span class="book">Isaiah</span> <span class="smcap lowercase">XL.—LXVI.</span></p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">G. A. Smith</span>, D.D. Vol. II.</p>
+
+<p class="book">St. Matthew.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. <span class="smcap">J. Monro Gibson</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Exodus.</p>
+<p class="author">By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.</p>
+
+<p class="book">St. Luke.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. <span class="smcap">H. Burton</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<h4 class="series">Fourth Series, 1890–1.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">Ecclesiastes.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. <span class="smcap">Samuel Cox</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">St. James and St. Jude.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. <span class="smcap">A. Plummer</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Proverbs.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. <span class="smcap">R. F. Horton</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Leviticus.</p>
+<p class="author">By Rev. <span class="smcap">S. H. Kellogg</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Gospel of St. John.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">M. Dods</span>, D.D. Vol. I.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Acts of the Apostles.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Stokes</span>, D.D. Vol. I.</p>
+
+<h4 class="series">Fifth Series, 1891–2.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">The Psalms.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">A. Maclaren</span>, D.D. Vol. I.</p>
+
+<p class="book">1 and 2 Thessalonians.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">James Denney</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Book of Job.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">R. A. Watson</span>, M.A., D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Ephesians.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">G. G. Findlay</span>, B.A.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Gospel of St. John.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">M. Dods</span>, D.D. Vol. II.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Acts of the Apostles.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Stokes</span>, D.D. Vol. II.</p>
+
+<h4 class="series">Sixth Series, 1892–3.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">1 Kings.</p>
+<p class="author">By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Philippians.</p>
+<p class="author">By Principal <span class="smcap">Rainy</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. F. Adeney</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Joshua.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. G. Blaikie</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Psalms.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">A. Maclaren</span>, D.D. Vol. II.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Epistles of St. Peter.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Rawson Lumby</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<h4 class="series">Seventh Series, 1893–4.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">2 Kings.</p>
+<p class="author">By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Romans.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">H. C. G. Moule</span>, M.A., D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Books of Chronicles.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. H. Bennett</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="book">2 Corinthians.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">James Denney</span>, D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Numbers.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">R. A. Watson</span>, M.A., D.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Psalms.</p>
+<p class="author">By <span class="smcap">A. Maclaren</span>, D.D. Vol. III.</p>
+
+<h4 class="series">Eighth Series, 1895–6.</h4>
+
+<p class="book">Daniel.</p>
+<p class="author">By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Book of Jeremiah.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. H. Bennett</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Deuteronomy.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">Andrew Harper</span>, B.D.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">W. F. Adeney</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="book">Ezekiel.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">John Skinner</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="book">The Book of the  Twelve Prophets.</p>
+<p class="author">By Prof. <span class="smcap">G. A. Smith</span>, D.D. Two Vols.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/39196.txt b/39196.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc0cdf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39196.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13363 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians
+
+Author: G. G. Findlay
+
+Editor: W. Robertson Nicoll
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2012 [EBook #39196]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
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+
+  [Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This e-text is intended for users whose text readers cannot display
+  the Unicode (utf-8) version of the file. Greek words have been
+  transliterated and enclosed in equals signs, e.g. =ho logos=.
+
+  _Italic_ words have been similarly enclosed in underscores.
+
+  As the oe ligature cannot be included in this file format, for
+  consistency both ae and oe ligatures have been replaced with the
+  separate letters throughout. In addition, where a macron is placed
+  above the letter e in the original to represent the Greek letter eta,
+  it is replaced in this version by a circumflex over the e: e.
+
+  A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+
+  The Table of Contents refers to original page numbers.
+
+  All advertising material has been placed at the end of the text.]
+
+
+
+
+         THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
+
+           EDITED BY THE REV.
+    W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
+    _Editor of "The Expositor," etc._
+
+      THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+
+
+                 THE
+       EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+             THIRD EDITION
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+    _Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    _INTRODUCTION._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    CHAPTER I.
+
+    THE WRITER AND READERS.
+                                                                  PAGE
+    Contrast of Galatians and Ephesians--Pauline qualities of
+    Ephesians: intellectual, historical, theological, spiritual,
+    ethical--The Idea of the Church--The Person of
+    Christ--Ephesians and Colossians--Style of
+    Ephesians--Circular Hypothesis--Epistle from
+    Laodicea--Designation of the Readers--Faithful Brethren          3
+
+
+    _PRAISE AND PRAYER._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+    CHAPTER II.
+
+    THE ETERNAL PURPOSE.
+
+    The Apostle's Hymn of Praise--Blessed be God!--Blessing
+    spiritual, heavenly, Christian--In the Beginning the
+    Election of Grace--The World and its Founder--Redemption
+    embedded in Creation--God's prescient
+    Choice--Our Holiness His Purpose--Divine Adoption--Who
+    are the Elect?                                                  21
+
+    CHAPTER III.
+
+    THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE.
+
+    Structure of the Paragraph--Grace an Experience--Christ the
+    Beloved--Forgiveness and its Price--The Value of
+    Forgiveness--Wisdom a Gift of Grace--The Gospel as an
+    intellectual Force--God's Will the Goal of human
+    Thought--Sonship and Heritage--The Fulness of the Times--The
+    Christian Inventory of the Universe--Reconciliation and
+    Reconstitution--Gathering in and Gathering out                  34
+
+    CHAPTER IV.
+
+    THE FINAL REDEMPTION.
+
+    Mutual Inheritance--Jewish and Gentile Heirs--Uses of the
+    Seal--The Stamp of Sanctity--Promise fulfilled and to be
+    fulfilled--Hearing and Believing--Salvation by the
+    Truth--Salvation for the Gentiles--Faith and the Holy
+    Spirit--The two Redemptions--The encumbered Property--The
+    Earnest of our consummate Life                                  50
+
+    CHAPTER V.
+
+    FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART.
+
+    Thanksgiving for the Readers--The God of Christ, the Father
+    of Glory--Christian Enlightenment--Seeing with the
+    Heart--What is our Hope?--God's Wealth in Men--The true
+    Standard of Value--The Power of Christ's Resurrection           65
+
+
+    THE DOCTRINE.
+
+    CHAPTER i. 20--iii. 13.
+
+    CHAPTER VI.
+
+    WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST.
+
+    Prayer and Teaching--Historical Effect of Christ's
+    Resurrection--The Stages of His Exaltation--Christianity
+    without Miracles--The efficient Cause of Christianity--The
+    perfect Resurrection--The First-begotten out of the
+    Dead--The Risen One, the Holy One--Resurrection and
+    Ascension--Ascension to Rule--Christ and the Angels--Christ
+    glorified God's Gift to the Church--Christ the Fulness of
+    God                                                             81
+
+    CHAPTER VII.
+
+    FROM DEATH TO LIFE.
+
+    Raised with Christ--Sin is Death--Jesus Christ in a dead
+    World--Alive in Body, dead in Spirit--Religious
+    Difficulties--Antipathy to God--The Power of the Air--God's
+    Anger against Sinners--The Soul's Awaking--Consciousness of
+    God--Fellowship in Salvation                                    95
+
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    SAVED FOR AN END.
+
+    Beginning and End of God's Plan--Mercy, Love, Kindness,
+    Grace and Gift--Not of Works--Boasting excluded--Evangelical
+    Assurance--In the heavenly Places--Grace a
+    Task-master--Creation and Redemption--The apostolic Church
+    and the coming Times                                           109
+
+    CHAPTER IX.
+
+    THE FAR AND NEAR.
+
+    Wherefore remember!--Sudden and gradual Conversion--The
+    Gentile World: Godless, hopeless, Christless--Away with the
+    Atheists!--The double Pessimism--The Uncircumcision--Nigh in
+    the Blood of Christ--Reunion in Guilt and in Pardon            120
+
+    CHAPTER X.
+
+    THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION.
+
+    The Jewish War--The two Parties in the Church--The Jewish
+    Enmity typical--The new Christian Humanity--The Church in
+    the first Century and the nineteenth--Hindrances to Unity:
+    external, internal--The Ground of Reconciliation--Enemies of
+    God--The Atonement of the Cross--Moral Communism--Personal
+    Faith--The Fraternization of Mankind                           131
+
+    CHAPTER XI.
+
+    GOD'S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.
+
+    The Divine Occupant--The Service of Man and of God--One
+    Temple and many Buildings--The Variety of the apostolic
+    Church--The primitive Catholicism--Church and Dissent--Union
+    by Approximation--Our Lord's Prayer for Unity--The apostolic
+    Basis--The Builder Spirit--The sure Foundation Stone           143
+
+    CHAPTER XII.
+
+    THE SECRET OF THE AGES.
+
+    St Paul's Style of Composition--Christ the Mystery of
+    God--Christ in the Old Testament--The Exploration of
+    Christ--The Portion of the Gentiles in Israel--The Organs of
+    the new Revelation--The unique Office and Influence of the
+    Apostle Paul                                                   155
+
+    CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN.
+
+    Christ the Bond of Angels and Men--Our Lord and
+    theirs--Jesus of Nazareth the Lord of the Ages--The Reality
+    of the Angels--Their Interest in the Church--The Peculiarity
+    of the human Problem--The Docility of the heavenly
+    Potentates--The angelic Standpoint--The Grandeur of
+    Christianity inspires Courage                                  167
+
+
+    _PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+    CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.
+
+    Contents of St Paul's Prayer--The Father of Angels and of
+    Men--Strength of Spirit and of the Spirit--Christ abiding in
+    the Heart--Christ and the Christ--Christ's Claim on the
+    Intellect--Neglect of Theology--Dimensions of God's
+    Building--Strength to grasp the Magnitude of
+    Christianity--The true Broad Churchman                         183
+
+    CHAPTER XV.
+
+    KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE.
+
+    Knowledge in the Growth--Paul's Study of the Love of
+    Christ--Christ's manifested Love--God's Fulness our
+    final Aim--The Fulness more than Love--Praise out-soaring
+    Prayer--God's Gifts beyond our Requests--The
+    Divine Power immanent in Men--The Inspirer of Prayer
+    its Fulfiller--The Union of the Church and Christ in
+    God's Praise--The eternal Glory                                197
+
+
+    _THE EXHORTATION.
+    ON CHURCH LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 1-16.
+
+    CHAPTER XVI.
+
+    THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES.
+
+    The Prisoner in the Lord--The Foes of Church Peace:
+    Low-mindedness, Ambition, Resentfulness--The Basis of Unity:
+    sevenfold, threefold--One Body despite Divisions--One Spirit
+    makes one Body--Unity of Life and Hope--One Lord in all
+    Churches--Baptism a Sign of Christ's Rule, the Seal of a
+    corporate Life--The one God, and the many                      213
+
+    CHAPTER XVII.
+
+    THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST.
+
+    Unity in Diversities--Christ the Administrator--The
+    Ascension of David and of David's Son--Height and
+    Breadth--The Giving of Jesus--Christ's Descent and
+    Ascent--The Warfare of Christ--The Spoils of His
+    Victory--The Enlistment of His Prisoners--Apostles and
+    Prophets, Evangelists and Pastors--Paul, Augustine, Luther,
+    Knox, Wesley--The Demands of the Future--Individual
+    Responsibility                                                 227
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+    THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    The Aim of the Christian Ministry--A perfect
+    Manhood--Sleight or Sport?--Junctures of Supply--Reunion in
+    the Knowledge of the Son of God--The Stature of Christ our
+    Standard--The Dangers of Childishness--Speculative
+    Error--Gnosticism and Agnosticism--Conditions of
+    Safety--Church Organization--The Framework of the Body of
+    Christ--Its Continuity of Tissue                               244
+
+
+    _ON CHRISTIAN MORALS._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 17-v. 21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIX.
+
+    THE WALK OF THE GENTILES.
+
+    The old World and the old Man--Impotence of Gentile
+    Reason--Science and Pessimism--Loss of the Life of
+    God--Ignorance the Mother of Indevotion--Induration of
+    Heart--Impudicity of Paganism                                  261
+
+    CHAPTER XX.
+
+    THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.
+
+    Defective Views of Christ amongst Paul's Readers--The
+    historical Jesus the true Christ--Paul and the Tradition of
+    Jesus--Jesus the human Model--Nero a Type of the Pagan
+    Order--The Fraud of Sin--The Growth and the Birth of the new
+    Man--Righteousness and Holiness                                275
+
+    CHAPTER XXI.
+
+    DISCARDED VICES.
+
+    The seven Gentile Sins--Truthfulness and the Truth--The
+    Perils of Anger--The Antidote to Theft--Sinfulness of vain
+    Speech--Malice and its Brood--Imitation of the Divine
+    Love--Filthiness and Jesting--The golden Leprosy               290
+
+    CHAPTER XXII.
+
+    DOCTRINE AND ETHICS.
+
+    The Intrinsic and Experimental in Morals--Originality of
+    Christian Ethics--Ethical Art and Science--Four Principles
+    of Pauline Ethics--Personality and Morals--Ethical
+    Character of Christ's Forgiveness--Auguste Comte and the
+    Gospel--The moral Import of the Resurrection--And of the
+    Atonement                                                      305
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+    THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.
+
+    Right the Fruit of Light--All Virtue from one
+    Source--Unbelief and Immorality--Christian Goodness--The Way
+    of Righteousness--Truth the Hall-mark of Sanctity--Verity
+    and Veracity--Specialists in Virtue--Reproof of open and of
+    hidden Sins--Manifestation and Transformation                  321
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+    THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+    Soberness and Excitement--The heedful Look--Evil Days for
+    the Asian Christians--Wisdom to know God's Will--Wine and
+    social Pleasure--The Craving for Excitement--Fulness of the
+    Spirit--The Rise of Christian Psalmody--The Music of the
+    Heart--Enthusiasm and Order                                    336
+
+
+    _ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    CHAPTER XXV.
+
+    CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.
+
+    The Divine Character of Marriage--Religious Equality of the
+    Sexes--The Glory of the Man--Women's Rights--Christ's
+    undivided Headship--Masculine Selfishness--Greek Terms for
+    Love--The Husband and the Priest--The double
+    Self--Indelibility of Wedlock                                  353
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+    CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    Marriage and the Doctrine of the Church--The Individual and
+    the Church--The Glory of the vicarious Death--Christ the
+    Sanctifier of His Church--The Signification of Baptism--The
+    Water and the Word--The Bride made ready--The Church a
+    Christocracy--Adam's Wedding-song--The Church inherent in
+    Christ                                                         366
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+    THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.
+
+    Children in the Church--The initial Form of
+    Duty--Commandment and Promise--Gentleness of fatherly
+    Rule--Spoilt Children--The Lord's Nurture--Greek and Roman
+    Slaves--The Church and the Slaves--Christ a Pattern for
+    Slaves--Servants of Society--Care, Honesty, Heartiness in
+    Work--The heavenly Master's Reward--Responsibility of the
+    earthly Master                                                 380
+
+
+    _ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 10-18.
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+    THE FOES OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    Henceforth be strong!--The two Panoplies--The Personality of
+    Satan--The Devil and his Angels--Paul's Demonology--The
+    spiritual Combat--Interior Temptations--Persecution and
+    Heresy--The Region of the Struggle--The Siege of the
+    heavenly City                                                  397
+
+    CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+    THE DIVINE PANOPLY.
+
+    The coming evil Day--Comparison with Revelation ii.,
+    iii.--The Girdle of Truth--The Breastplate of
+    Righteousness--Shoes of Gospel Readiness--The great Shield
+    of Faith--Fire-tipped Darts--The Helmet of Salvation--The
+    Spirit's Sword--The Weapon of All-prayer                       410
+
+
+    _THE CONCLUSION._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    CHAPTER XXX.
+
+    REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION.
+
+    Paul's Need of the Church's Prayers--Christ's Ambassador
+    before the Emperor--Speaking the Word given--Good News for
+    the Asian Churches--Character and Services of
+    Tychicus--Peace to the Brethren--Love with Faith--Love
+    toward Christ and Grace from God--The Love incorruptible       427
+
+
+
+
+
+_THE INTRODUCTION_
+
+CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    =Ou monon Ephesou alla schedo pases tes Asias ho Paulos houtos
+    peisas metestesen hikano ochlon= (Demetrius the Silversmith).
+
+    ACTS xix. 26.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_THE WRITER AND READERS._
+
+    "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the
+    saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and
+    peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."[1]--EPH. i. 1,
+    2.
+
+
+In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle we are conscious of
+entering a different atmosphere. We leave the region of controversy for
+that of meditation. From the battle-field we step into the hush and
+stillness of the temple. Verses 3-14 of this chapter constitute the most
+sustained and perfect act of praise that is found in the apostle's
+letters. It is as though a door were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts
+behind us, and earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these two
+writings, following each other in the established order of the epistles,
+is singular and in some ways extreme. They are, respectively, the most
+combative and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned, the most
+concrete and abstract, the most human and divine amongst the great
+apostle's writings.
+
+Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity of character. The
+two letters are not the expression of different minds, but of different
+phases of the same mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians
+is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic behind the
+ardent missionary and the masterly debater. Those critics who recognize
+the genuine apostle only in the four previous epistles and reject
+whatever does not conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how
+much is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul. Without the
+inwardness, the brooding faculty, the power of abstract and metaphysical
+thinking displayed in the epistles of this group, he could never have
+wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those earlier writings,
+nor grasped the principles which he there applies with such vigour and
+effect. That so many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny, St
+Paul's authorship of this epistle on internal grounds and because of the
+contrast to which we have referred, is one of those phenomena which in
+future histories of religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities
+of a hypercritical age.[2]
+
+Let us observe some of the Pauline qualities that are stamped upon the
+face of this document. There is, in the first place, the apostle's
+intellectual note, what has been well called his _passion for the
+absolute_. St Paul's was one of those minds, so discomposing to
+superficial and merely practical thinkers, which cannot be content with
+half-way conclusions. For every principle he seeks its ultimate basis;
+every line of thought he pushes to its furthest limits. His gospel, if
+he is to rest in it, must supply a principle of unity that will bind
+together all the elements of his mental world.
+
+Hence, in contesting the Jewish claim to religious superiority on the
+ground of circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant, St Paul developed in
+the epistle to the Galatians a religious philosophy of history; he
+arrived at a view of the function of the law in the education of mankind
+which disposed not only of the question at issue, but of all such
+questions. He established for ever the principle of salvation by faith
+and of spiritual sonship to God. What that former argument effects for
+the history of revelation, is done here for the gospel in its relations
+to society and universal life. The principle of Christ's headship is
+carried to its largest results. The centre of the Church becomes the
+centre of the universe. God's plan of the ages is disclosed, ranging
+through eternity and embracing every form of being, and "gathering into
+one all things in the Christ." In Galatians and Romans the thought of
+salvation by Christ breaks through Jewish limits and spreads itself over
+the field of history; in Colossians and Ephesians the idea of life in
+Christ overleaps the barriers of time and human existence, and brings
+"things in heaven and things in earth and things beneath the earth"
+under its sway.
+
+The second, historical note of original Paulinism we recognize in the
+writer's _attitude towards Judaism_. We should be prepared to stake the
+genuineness of the epistle on this consideration alone. The position and
+point of view of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles are unique in
+history. It is difficult to conceive how any one but Paul himself, at
+any other juncture, could have represented the relation of Jew and
+Gentile to each other as it is put before us here. The writer is a Jew,
+a man nourished on the hope of Israel (i. 12), who had looked at his
+fellow-men across "the middle wall of partition" (ii. 14). In his view,
+the covenant and the Christ belong, in the first instance and as by
+birthright, to the men of Israel. They are "the near," who live hard by
+the city and house of God. The blessedness of the Gentile readers
+consists in the revelation that they are "fellow-heirs and of the same
+body and joint-partakers with us of the promise in Christ Jesus" (iii.
+6). What is this but to say, as the apostle had done before, that the
+branches "of the naturally wild olive tree" were "against nature grafted
+into the good olive tree" and allowed to "partake of its root and
+fatness," along with "the natural branches," the children of the stock
+of Abraham who claimed it for "their own"; that "the men of faith are
+sons of Abraham" and "Abraham's blessing has come on the Gentiles
+through faith"?[3]
+
+For our author this revelation has lost none of its novelty and
+surprise. He is in the midst of the excitement it has produced, and is
+himself its chief agent and mouthpiece (iii. 1-9). This disclosure of
+God's secret plans for the world overwhelms him by its magnitude, by the
+splendour with which it invests the Divine character, and the sense of
+his personal unworthiness to be entrusted with it. We utterly disbelieve
+that any later Christian writer could or would have personated the
+apostle and mimicked his tone and sentiments in regard to his vocation,
+in the way that the "critical" hypothesis assumes. The criterion of
+Erasmus is decisive: _Nemo potest Paulinum pectus effingere._
+
+St Paul's doctrine of _the cross_ is admittedly his specific
+theological note. In the shameful sacrificial death of Jesus Christ he
+saw the instrument of man's release from the curse of the broken law;[4]
+and through this knowledge the cross which was the "scandal" of Saul the
+Pharisee, had become Paul's glory and its proclamation the business of
+his life. It is this doctrine, in its original strength and fulness,
+which lies behind such sentences as those of chapter i. 7, ii. 13, and
+v. 2: "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
+trespasses--brought nigh in the blood of Christ--an offering and
+sacrifice to God for an odour of sweet smell."
+
+Another mark of the apostle's hand, his specific spiritual note, we find
+in the _mysticism_ that pervades the epistle and forms, in fact, its
+substance. "I live no longer: Christ lives in me." "He that is joined to
+the Lord is one spirit."[5] In these sentences of the earlier letters we
+discover the spring of St Paul's theology, lying in his own
+experience--_the sense of personal union through the Spirit with Christ
+Jesus_. This was the deepest fact of Paul's consciousness. Here it meets
+us at every turn. More than twenty times the phrase "in Christ" or its
+equivalents recur, applied to Christian acts or states. It is enough to
+refer to chapter iii. 17, "that the Christ may make His dwelling in your
+hearts through faith," to show how profoundly this mysterious
+relationship is realized in this letter. No other New Testament writer
+conceived the idea in Paul's way, nor has any subsequent writer of whom
+we know made the like constant and original use of it. It was the habit
+of the apostle's mind, the index of his innermost life. Kindred to this,
+and hardly less conspicuous, is his conception of "God in Christ" (2
+Cor. v. 19) saving and operating upon men, who, as we read here, "chose
+us in Christ before the world's foundation--forgave us in Him--made us
+in Him to sit together in the heavenly places--formed us in Christ Jesus
+for good works."
+
+The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception of the _new
+man_ in Christ Jesus, whose sins were slain by His death, and who shares
+His risen life unto God (Rom. vi.). From this idea, as from a
+fountainhead, the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle (ch. iii.)
+deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and disposition of the
+believer, his conduct in all social duties and practical affairs are the
+expression of a "life hid with Christ in God." It is the identical "new
+man" of Romans and Colossians who presents himself as our ideal here,
+raised with Christ from the dead and "sitting with Him in the heavenly
+places." The newness of life in which he walks, receives its impulse and
+direction from this exalted fellowship.
+
+The characteristics of St Paul's teaching which we have described--his
+logical thoroughness and finality, his peculiar historical, theological,
+spiritual, and ethical standpoint and manner of thought--are combined in
+the conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz., its
+idea of _the Church_ as the body of Christ,--or in other words, of _the
+new humanity_ created in Him. This forms the centre of the circle of
+thought in which the writer's mind moves;[6] it is the meeting-point of
+the various lines of thought that we have already traced. The doctrine
+of personal salvation wrought out in the great evangelical epistles
+terminates in that of social and collective salvation. A new and
+precious title is conferred on Christ: He is "Saviour of _the body_" (v.
+23), _i.e._, of the corporate Christian community. "The Son of God who
+loved _me_ and gave up Himself for _me_" becomes "the Christ" who "loved
+_the Church_ and gave up Himself for _her_."[7] "The new man" is no
+longer the individual, a mere transformed _ego_; he is the type and
+beginning of a new mankind. A perfect society of men, all sons of God in
+Christ, is being constituted around the cross, in which the old
+antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is restored, and a
+body is provided to contain the fulness of Christ, a holy temple which
+God inhabits in the Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its
+centre and Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form the
+material--"the Jew first," lying nearest to the site.[8]
+
+The apostle Paul necessarily conceived the reconstruction of humanity
+under the form of a reconciliation of Israel and the Gentiles. The
+Catholicism we have here is Paul's Catholicism of _Gentile
+engrafting_--not Clement's, of _churchly order and uniformity_; nor
+Ignatius', of _monepiscopal rule_. It is profoundly characteristic of
+this apostle, that in "the law" which had been to his own experience the
+barrier and ground of quarrel between the soul and God, "the strength of
+sin," he should come to see likewise the barrier between men and men,
+and the strength of the sinful enmity which distracted the Churches of
+his foundation (ii. 14-16).
+
+The representation of the Church contained in this epistle is,
+therefore, by no means new in its elements. Such texts as 1 Corinthians
+iii. 16, 17 ("Ye are God's temple," etc.) and xii. 12-27 (concerning the
+_one body and many members_) bring us near to its actual expression.
+But the figures of the _body_ and _temple_ in these passages, had they
+stood alone, might be read as mere passing illustrations of the nature
+of Christian fellowship. Now they become proper designations of the
+Church, and receive their full significance. While in 1 Corinthians,
+moreover, these phrases do not look beyond the particular community
+addressed, in Ephesians they embrace the entire Christian society. This
+epistle signalizes a great step forwards in the development of the
+apostle's theology--perhaps we might say, the last step. The Pastoral
+epistles serve to put the final apostolic seal upon the theological
+edifice that is now complete. Their care is with the guarding and
+furnishing of the "great house"[9] which our epistle is engaged in
+building.
+
+The idea of the Church is not, however, independently developed.
+Ephesians and Colossians are companion letters,--the complement and
+explanation of each other. Both "speak with regard to Christ and the
+Church"; both reveal the Divine "glory in the Church and in Christ
+Jesus."[10] The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians
+on the latter of these objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and
+that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal step. The two
+epistles form one process of thought.
+
+Criticism has attempted to derive first one and then the other of the
+two from its fellow,--thus, in effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr.
+Holtzmann, in his _Kritik der Epheser-und Kolosserbriefe_,[11] undertook
+to show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the other. There is,
+Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus hidden in Colossians, which he has
+himself extracted. By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second
+century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned to the brief
+Colossian writing of St Paul, and worked it up, with his own Ephesian
+composition lying before him, into our existing epistle to the
+Colossians. This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not
+satisfied any one except its author, and need not detain us here. But
+Holtzmann has at any rate made good, against his predecessors on the
+negative side, the unity of origin of the two canonical epistles, the
+fact that they proceed from one mint and coinage. They are _twin_
+epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostle's mind. Much of
+their subject-matter, especially in the ethical section, is common to
+both. The glory of the Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths
+inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each other. To the
+confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," His
+response ever is, "_I will build my Church_."[12] The same
+correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic
+movement of the apostle's thought.
+
+At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two
+writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Paul's
+hand, and who admits that "among all the epistles bearing the name of
+Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most
+anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles," yet
+speaks of this epistle as a "verbose amplification" of the other, "a
+commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and
+repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevancies, full of
+pleonasms and obscurities."[13]
+
+In this instance, Renan's literary sense has deserted him. While
+Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so
+sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure,[14] Ephesians from
+beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and
+obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and
+involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which
+the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance.
+Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole
+difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of
+Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles,[15] we find the
+stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in
+this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those
+unfinished sentences and _anacolutha_, the grammatical inconsequence
+associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main
+characteristic of St Paul's style.[16] The epistle to the Colossians is
+like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that
+to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters
+restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict
+and repose which alternated in St Paul's mobile nature.
+
+In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the
+apostle's imprisonment and advancing age,[17] display less passion and
+energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy.
+They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the author's mind had
+been much thrown in upon itself. They have been well styled "the
+afternoon epistles," being marked by the subdued and reflective temper
+natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical
+representative of the third group of Paul's epistles, as Galatians is of
+the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter
+came, as it purports to do, from _Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
+through God's will_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But that it was addressed to "the saints which are _in Ephesus_" is more
+difficult to believe. The apostle has "heard of the faith which prevails
+amongst" his readers; he presumes that they "have heard of the Christ,
+and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus."[18] He hopes
+that by "reading" this epistle they will "perceive his understanding in
+the mystery of Christ" (iii. 2-4). He writes somewhat thus to the
+Colossians and Romans, whom he had never seen;[19] but can we imagine
+Paul addressing in this distant and uncertain fashion his children in
+the faith? In Ephesus he had laboured "for the space of three whole
+years" (Acts xx. 31), longer than in any other city of the Gentile
+mission, except Antioch. His speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus,
+delivered four years ago, was surcharged with personal feeling, full of
+pathetic reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance with the
+individual membership of the Ephesian Church. In the epistle such signs
+are altogether wanting. The absence of greetings and messages we could
+understand; these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But how the
+man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians and Corinthians could have
+composed this long and careful letter to his own Ephesian people without
+a single word of endearment or familiarity,[20] and without the least
+allusion to his past intercourse with them, we cannot understand. It is
+in the destination that the only serious difficulty lies touching the
+authorship. Nowhere do we see more of _the apostle_ and less of _the
+man_ in St Paul; nowhere more of _the_ Church, and less of _this or
+that_ particular church.
+
+It agrees with these internal indications that the local designation is
+wanting in the oldest Greek copies of the letter that are extant. The
+two great manuscripts of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic
+codices, omit the words "in Ephesus." Basil in the fourth century did
+not accept them, and says that "the old copies" were without them.
+Origen, in the beginning of the third century, seems to have known
+nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the second century, while
+he condemns the heretic Marcion (who lived about fifty years earlier)
+for entitling the epistle "To the Laodiceans," quotes only the _title_
+against him, and not the text of the address, which he would presumably
+have done, had he read it in the form familiar to us. We are compelled
+to suppose, with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally,
+that these words form no part of the original address.
+
+Here the _circular hypothesis_ of Beza and Ussher comes to our aid. It
+is supposed that the letter was destined for a number of Churches in
+Asia Minor, which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of the
+journey which took him to Colossae.[21] Along with the letters for the
+Colossians and Philemon, he was entrusted with this more general
+epistle, intended for the Gentile Christian communities of the
+neighbouring region at large. During St Paul's ministry at Ephesus, we
+are told that "all those that dwell in Asia heard the word of the Lord,
+both Jews and Greeks" (Acts xix. 10). In so large and populous an area,
+amongst the Churches founded at this time there were doubtless others
+beside those of the Lycus valley "which had not seen Paul's face in the
+flesh," some about which the apostle had less precise knowledge than he
+had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus, but for whom he was no less
+desirous that their "hearts should be comforted, and brought into all
+the wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge
+of the mystery of God" (Col. ii. 1, 2).
+
+To which or how many of the Asian Churches Tychicus would be able to
+communicate the letter was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at
+Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance by Tychicus
+(vi. 21, 22) supplied the only limit to its distribution. Proconsular
+Asia was the richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so
+populous that it was called "the province of five hundred cities."
+Ephesus was only the largest of many flourishing commercial and
+manufacturing towns.
+
+At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St Paul directs this
+Church to procure "from Laodicea," in exchange for their own, a letter
+which he is sending there (iv. 16). Is it possible that we have the lost
+Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So Ussher suggested; and
+though the assumption is not essential to his theory, it falls in with
+it very aptly. Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence of
+the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in this letter. The
+conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot, who says, writing on Colossians iv.
+16: "There are good reasons for the belief that St Paul here alludes to
+the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact a circular
+letter, addressed to the principal Churches of proconsular Asia.
+Tychicus was obliged to pass through Laodicea on his way to Colossae, and
+would leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was delivered."[22]
+The two epistles admirably supplement each other. The Apocalyptic letter
+"to the seven churches which are in Asia," ranging from Ephesus to
+Laodicea (Rev. ii., iii.), shows how much the Christian communities of
+this region had in common and how natural it would be to address them
+collectively. For the same region, with a yet wider scope, the "first
+catholic epistle of Peter" was destined, a writing that has many points
+of contact with this. Ephesus being the metropolis of the Asian
+Churches, and claiming a special interest in St Paul, came to regard the
+epistle as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it was
+communicated to the Church in other provinces. Hence it came to pass
+that when Paul's epistles were gathered into a single volume and a title
+was needed for this along with the rest, "To the Ephesians" was written
+over it; and this reference standing in the title, in course of time
+found its way into the text of the address. We propose to read this
+letter as _the general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia_, or _to
+Ephesus and its daughter Churches_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But how are we to read the address, with the local definition wanting?
+There are two constructions open to us:--(1) We might suppose that a
+space was left blank in the original to be filled in afterwards by
+Tychicus with the names of the particular Churches to which he
+distributed copies, or to be supplied by the voice of the reader. But if
+that were so, we should have expected to find some trace of this variety
+of designation in the ancient witnesses. As it is, the documents either
+give Ephesus in the address, or supply no local name at all. Nor is
+there, so far as we are aware, any analogy in ancient usage for the
+proceeding suggested. Moreover, the order of the Greek words[23] is
+against this supposition.--(2) We prefer, therefore, to follow
+Origen[24] and Basil, with some modern exegetes, in reading the sentence
+straight on, as it stands in the Sinaitic and Vatican copies. It then
+becomes: _To the saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus_.
+
+"The saints" is the apostle's designation for Christian believers
+generally,[25] as men consecrated to God in Christ (1 Cor. i. 2). The
+qualifying phrase "those who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus," is
+admonitory. As Lightfoot says with reference to the parallel
+qualification in Colossians i. 2, "This unusual addition is full of
+meaning. Some members of the [Asian] Churches were shaken in their
+allegiance, even if they had not fallen from it. The apostle therefore
+wishes it to be understood that, when he speaks of the saints, he means
+those who are true and steadfast members of the brotherhood. In this way
+he obliquely hints at the defection." By this further definition "he
+does not directly exclude any, but he indirectly warns all." We are
+reminded that we are in the neighbourhood of the Colossian heresy.
+Beneath the calm tenor of this epistle, the ear catches an undertone of
+controversy. In chapter iv. 14 and vi. 10-20 this undertone becomes
+clearly audible. We shall find the epistle end with the note of warning
+with which it begins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Salutation is according to St Paul's established form of greeting.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised
+Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations will
+be explained in the exposition.
+
+[2] The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson's
+_Introduction to the N. T._; see also Baur's _Paul_, Pfleiderer's
+_Paulinism_, Hilgenfeld's _Einleitung_, Hatch's article on "Paul" in the
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The case for the defence may be found in
+Weiss', Salmon's, Bleek's, or Dods' _N. T. Introduction_--the last
+brief, but to the point; in Reuss' _History of the N. T._; Milligan's
+article on "Ephesians" in _Encycl. Brit._; Gloag's _Introduction to the
+Pauline Epp._; Meyer's, or Beet's, or Eadie's _Commentary_; Sabatier's
+_The Apostle Paul_.
+
+[3] Rom. xi. 16-24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.
+
+[4] Gal. iii. 10-13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.
+
+[5] Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.
+
+[6] See ch. i. 9-13, ii. 11-22, iii. 5-11, iv. 1-16, v. 23-32.
+
+[7] Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.
+
+[8] Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17-20.
+
+[9] 1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.
+
+[10] Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.
+
+[11] _Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres
+Verwandtschaftsverhaeltnisses_ (Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and
+scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than
+this of Holtzmann, we do not know.
+
+Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann's
+collaborateur in the new _Hand-Commentar_, accepts Colossians in its
+integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the
+subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple
+of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.
+
+[12] Matt. xvi. 15-18; John xvii. 10: _I am glorified in them._
+
+[13] See his _Saint Paul_, Introduction, pp. xii.-xxiii.
+
+[14] See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20-23.
+
+[15] _E.g._, in Rom. i. 1-7, viii. 28-30, xi. 33-36, xvi. 25-27.
+
+[16] See the Winer-Moulton _N. T. Grammar_, p. 709: "It is in writers of
+great mental vivacity--more taken up with the thought than with the mode
+of its expression--that we may expect to find anacolutha most
+frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style
+of the apostle Paul."
+
+[17] Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.
+
+[18] Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.
+
+[19] Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.
+
+[20] "My brethren" in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even
+the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in the _third person_--a
+thing unexampled in St Paul's epistles.
+
+[21] Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7-9.
+
+[22] Compare Maclaren on _Colossians and Philemon_, p. 406, in this
+series.
+
+[23] =Tois hagiois tois ousin ... kai pistois en Christo Iesou.= The
+interposition of the heterogeneous attributive between =hagiois= and
+=pistois= is harsh and improbable--not to say, with Hofmann, "quite
+incredible." The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck
+and of von Soden (in the _Hand-Commentar_), interpreters of opposite
+schools, agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regarding
+=pistois= as the complement of =tois ousin=.
+
+[24] Origen, in his fanciful way, makes of =tois ousin= a predicate by
+itself: "the saints _who are_," who possess real being like God Himself
+(Exod. iii. 14)--"called from non-existence into existence." He compares
+1 Cor. i. 28.
+
+[25] See, _e.g._, ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.
+
+
+
+
+PRAISE AND PRAYER.
+
+CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+        =Hous proegno, kai proorisen
+    symmorphous tes eikonos tou huiou autou,
+    eis to einai auto prototokon en pollois adelphois;
+      hous de proorisen, toutous kai ekalesen;
+      kai hous ekalesen, toutous kai edikaiosen;
+      hous de edikaiosen, toutous kai edoxasen.=
+
+    ROM. viii. 29, 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_THE ETERNAL PURPOSE._
+
+
+We enter this epistle through a magnificent gateway. The introductory
+Act of Praise, extending from verse 3 to 14, is one of the most sublime
+of inspired utterances, an overture worthy of the composition that it
+introduces. Its first sentence compels us to feel the insufficiency of
+our powers for its due rendering.
+
+The apostle surveys in this thanksgiving the entire course of the
+revelation of grace. Standing with the men of his day, the new-born
+community of the sons of God in Christ, midway between the ages past and
+to come,[26] he looks backward to the source of man's salvation when it
+lay a silent thought in the mind of God, and forward to the hour when it
+shall have accomplished its promise and achieved our redemption. In this
+grand evolution of the Divine plan three stages are marked by the
+refrain, thrice repeated, _To the praise of His glory, of the glory of
+His grace_ (vv. 6, 12, 14). St Paul's psalm is thus divided into three
+strophes, or stanzas: he sings the glory of redeeming love in its past
+designs, its present bestowments, and its future fruition. The
+paragraph, forming but one sentence and spun upon a single golden
+thread, is a piece of thought-music,--a sort of _fugue_, in which from
+eternity to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by Paul's bold and
+exulting thought.
+
+Despite the grammatical involution of the style here carried to an
+extreme, and underneath the apparatus of Greek pronouns and participles,
+there is a fine Hebraistic lilt pervading the doxology. The refrain is
+in the manner of Psalms xlii.-xliii., and xcix., where in the former
+instance "health of countenance," and in the latter "holy is He" gives
+the key-note of the poet's melody and parts his song into three balanced
+stanzas. In such poetry the strophes may be unequal in length, each
+developing its own thought freely, and yet there is harmony in their
+combination. Here the central idea, that of God's actual bounty to
+believers, fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there is a
+pause within it, at verse 10, which in effect resumes the idea of the
+first strophe and works it in as a _motif_ to the second, carrying on
+both in a full stream till they lose themselves in the third and
+culminating movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying
+expression the phrase "in Christ--in the Beloved--in Him--in whom,"
+weaving the verses into subtle continuity. The theme of the entire
+composition is given in verse 3, which does not enter into the threefold
+division we have described, but forms a prelude to it.
+
+    "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath
+        blessed us,
+    In every blessing of the spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ."
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the song of the universe, in which heaven and
+earth take responsive parts. "When the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy," this concert began, and continues
+still through the travail of creation and the sorrow and sighing of men.
+The work praises the Master. All sinless creatures, by their order and
+harmony, by the variety of their powers and beauty of their forms and
+delight of their existence, declare their Creator's glory. That praise
+to the Most High God which the lower creatures act instrumentally, it is
+man's privilege to utter in discourse of reason and music of the heart.
+Man is Nature's high priest; and above other men, the poet. Time will
+be, as it has been, when it shall be accounted the poet's honour and the
+crown of his art, that he should take the high praises of God into his
+mouth, making hymns to the glory of the Supreme Maker and giving voice
+to the dumb praise of inanimate nature and to the noblest thoughts of
+his fellows concerning the Blessed God.
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the perpetual strain of the Old Testament, from
+Melchizedek down to Daniel,--of David in his triumph, and Job in his
+misery. But not hitherto could men say, Blessed be _the God and Father
+of our Lord Jesus Christ_! He was "the Most High God, the God of
+heaven,"--"Jehovah, God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous
+things,"--"the Shepherd" and "the Rock" of His people,--"the true God,
+the living God, and an everlasting King"; and these are glorious titles,
+which have raised men's thoughts to moods of highest reverence and
+trust. But the name of _Father_, and _Father of our Lord Jesus Christ_,
+surpasses and outshines them all. With wondering love and joy
+unspeakable St Paul pronounced this _Benedictus_. God was not less to
+him the Almighty, the High and Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in
+the days of his youthful Jewish faith; but the Eternal and All-holy One
+was now his Father in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name: and let the
+whole earth be filled with His glory!
+
+The apostle's psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving to God _blessing and
+blessed_. The second clause rhythmically answers to the first. True, our
+blessing of Him is far different from His blessing of us: ours in
+thought and words; His in mighty deeds of salvation. Yet in the fruit of
+lips giving thanks to His name there is a revenue of blessing paid to
+God which He delights in, and requires. "O Thou that inhabitest the
+praises of Israel," grant us to bless Thee while we live and to lift up
+our hands in Thy name!
+
+By three qualifying adjuncts the blessing which the Father of Christ
+bestowed upon us is defined: in respect of its _nature_, its _sphere_,
+and its _personal ground_.
+
+The blessings that prompt the apostle's praise are not such as those
+conspicuous in the Old Covenant: "Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and
+in the field; in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and
+the increase of thy kine; blessed shall be thy basket, and thy
+kneading-trough" (Deut. xxviii. 3-5). The gospel pronounces beatitudes
+of another style: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed the meek, the
+merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted." St Paul had small share
+indeed in the former class of blessings,--a childless, landless,
+homeless man. Yet what happiness and wealth are his! Out of his poverty
+he is making all the ages rich! From the gloom of his prison he sheds a
+light that will guide and cheer the steps of multitudes of earth's sad
+wayfarers. Not certainly in the earthly places where he finds himself is
+Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus blessed; but "in spiritual blessing"
+and "in heavenly places" how abundantly! His own blessedness he claims
+for all who are in Christ.
+
+Blessing _spiritual_ in its nature is, in St Paul's conception of
+things, blessing in and of the Holy Spirit.[27] In His quickening our
+spirit lives; through His indwelling health, blessedness, eternal life
+are ours. In this verse justly the theologians recognize the Trinity of
+the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.--Blessing _in the heavenly
+places_ is not so much blessing coming from those places--from God the
+Father who sits there--as it is blessing which lifts us into that
+supernal region, giving to us a place and heritage in the world of God
+and of the angels. Two passages of the companion epistles interpret this
+phrase: "Your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. iii. 3); and again,
+"Our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. iii. 20).--The decisive note of St
+Paul's blessedness lies in the words "in Christ." For him all good is
+summed up there. Spiritual, heavenly, and Christian: these three are
+one. In Christ dying, risen, reigning, God the Father has raised
+believing men to a new heavenly life. From the first inception of the
+work of grace to its consummation, God thinks of men, speaks to them and
+deals with them _in Christ_. To Him, therefore, with the Father be
+eternal praise!
+
+    "As He chose us in Him before the world's foundation,
+      That we should be holy and unblemished before Him:
+    When in love He foreordained us
+      To filial adoption through Jesus Christ for Himself,
+          According to the good pleasure of His will,--
+                To the praise of the glory of His grace" (vv. 4-6a).
+
+Here is St Paul's first chapter of Genesis. _In the beginning was the
+election of grace._ There is nothing unprepared, nothing unforeseen in
+God's dealings with mankind. His wisdom and knowledge are as deep as His
+grace is wide (Rom. xi. 33). Speaking of his own vocation, the apostle
+said: "It pleased God, who set me apart from my mother's womb, to reveal
+His Son in me" (Gal. i. 15, 16). He does but generalize this conception
+and carry it two steps further back--from the origin of the individual
+to the origin of the race, and from the beginning of the race to the
+beginning of the world--when he asserts that the community of redeemed
+men was chosen in Christ before the world's foundation.
+
+"The world" is a work of time, the slow structure of innumerable yet
+finite ages. Science affirms on its own grounds that the visible
+universe had a beginning, as it has its changes and its certain end. Its
+structural plan, its unity of aim and movement, show it to be the
+creation of a vast Intelligence. Harmony and law, all that makes science
+possible is the product of thought. Reason extracts from nature what
+Reason has first put there. The longer, the more intricate and grand the
+process, the farther science pushes back the beginning in our thoughts,
+the more sublime and certain the primitive truth becomes: "In the
+beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
+
+The world is a system; it has a method and a plan, therefore a
+foundation. But before the foundation, there was _the Founder_. And man
+was in His thoughts, and the redeemed Church of Christ. While yet the
+world was not and the immensity of space stretched lampless and
+unpeopled, _we_ were in the mind of God; His thought rested with
+complacency upon His human sons, whose "name was written in the book of
+life from the foundation of the world." This amazing statement is only
+the logical consequence of St Paul's experience of Divine grace, joined
+to his conviction of the infinite wisdom and eternal being of God.
+
+When he says that God "chose us in Christ _before the foundation of the
+world_"--or _before founding the world_--this is not a mere mark of
+time. It intimates that in laying His plans for the world the Creator
+had the purpose of redeeming grace in view. The kingdom which the
+"blessed children" of the Father of Christ "inherit," is the kingdom
+"_prepared_ for them _from the foundation of the world_" (Matt. xxv.
+34). Salvation lies as deep as creation. The provision for it is
+eternal. For the universe of being was conceived, fashioned, and built
+up "in Christ." The argument of Colossians i. 13-22 lies behind these
+words. The Son of God's love, in whom and for whom the worlds were made,
+always was potentially the Redeemer of men, as He was the image of God
+(Col. i. 14, 15). He looked forward to this mission from eternity, and
+was in spirit "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev.
+xiii. 8). Creation and redemption, Nature and the Church, are parts of
+one system; and in the reconciliation of the cross all orders of being
+are concerned, "whether the things upon the earth or the things in the
+heavens."
+
+Evil existed before man appeared on the earth to be tempted and to fall.
+Through the geological record we hear the voice of creation groaning for
+long aeons in its pain.
+
+            "Dragons of the prime,
+    That tare each other in their slime,"
+
+grim prophets of man's brutal and murderous passions, 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
+God" (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing its bondage to
+corruption, God 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God "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
+God"--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 God'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--God'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. God's sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons.
+For this end "we" were elected of God in the beginning. Nay, with this
+end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to
+provide God 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 God by their own choice and will, meeting God'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 God'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] God 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 God. The ideal
+which God 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 God, 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 sanctity, is now
+pronounced by Jesus: "You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
+perfect." Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: God 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
+God 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 institution of Roman law,
+familiar to Paul as a citizen of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile
+believers their relation to the family of God. "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 assumed
+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 God, 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 passed away and all
+things became new.'"[31]
+
+This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose of God from eternity;
+but as a matter of fact it was instituted "through Jesus Christ," the
+historical Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in God'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 God
+_Father_! This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for them through
+the ages past in God'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 pronoun
+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 God 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 pronoun further; we cannot allow
+that the sonship here signified is man's natural relation to God, 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 God's redeeming love toward sinners. God'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] =eis auton=, _for Him_; not =auto=, _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 trespasses,
+                  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.
+
+God "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 God's eternal
+thought regarding Christ. And that regard of God 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 God and brings us into fellowship with God 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 trespasses_ (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
+God 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 participate "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 trespasses.[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 trespasses as men against God'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 God and to the laws of his being. We
+cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the
+bestowments of God'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 God'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 God'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 God 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 God who is more merciful
+than the God of our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a God
+who is not righteous, a God who does not glow with fiery indignation
+against sin, is no God 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 God_,
+what will this avail us? If "the redemption through Christ's blood, the
+forgiveness of our trespasses," is no longer to us the momentous and
+glorious fact that it was to the apostles, then it is time to ask
+whether our God is in truth the same as theirs, whether He is still the
+God 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 God's benefits to men. Without
+this sentiment, we can only wonder at the passionate gratitude with
+which he receives the atonement and measures by its completeness the
+riches of God'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 associate 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 God 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 God's special favour and blessing. "I give thanks
+always for you," he writes to the Corinthians, "for the grace of God
+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 God "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 God 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 God's purpose to reconstitute 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 God'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 God. It craves to
+know _the mystery of His will_.
+
+III. Verse 11 fills up the measure of the bestowment of grace on sinful
+men. The present anticipates the future; faith and love are lifted to a
+glorious hope. "In whom also--_i.e._, in Christ--_we received our
+heritage_, predestinated [to it], according to His purpose who works all
+things according to the counsel of His will."
+
+Following Meyer and other great interpreters, we prefer in this passage
+the rendering of the English Authorized Version (_we obtained an
+inheritance_) to that of the Revised (_we were made a heritage_).[39]
+"Foreordained" carries us back to verse 5--to the phrase "foreordained
+to sonship." The believer cannot be predestinated to sonship without
+being predestinated to an inheritance.[40] "If children, then heirs"
+(Rom. viii. 17). But while in the parallel passage we are designated
+heirs _with_ Christ, we appear in this place, according to the tenor of
+the context, as heirs _in_ Him. Christ is Himself the believer's wealth,
+both in possession and hope: all his desire is to gain Christ (Phil.
+iii. 8). The apostle gives thanks here in the same strain as in
+Colossians i. 12-14, "to the Father who qualified us [by making us His
+sons] to partake of the inheritance of the saints in the light." In that
+thanksgiving we observe the same connexion as in this between our
+_forgiveness_ (ver. 7) and our _enfeoffment_, or investment with the
+forfeited rights of sons of God (vv. 5, 11).[41]
+
+The heritage of the saints in Christ is theirs already, by actual
+investiture. The liberty of sons of God, access to the Father, the
+treasures of Christ's wisdom and knowledge, the sanctifying Spirit and
+the moral strength and joy that He imparts, these form a rich estate of
+which ancient saints had but foretastes and promises. In the
+all-controlling "counsel of His will," God wrought throughout the
+course of history to convey this heritage to us. We are children of "the
+fulness of the times," heirs of all the past. For us God has been
+working from eternity. On us the ends of the world have come. Thus from
+the summit of our exaltation in Christ the apostle looks backward to the
+beginning of Divine history.
+
+From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the end. God's purpose
+embraces the ages to come with those that are past. His working will not
+cease till the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our
+inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise of infinitely
+more; and the Holy Spirit is the "earnest of our inheritance" (ver. 14).
+God intends "that we should be to the praise of His glory." As things
+are, His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. "It doth not yet
+appear what we shall be,"--and it will not appear until the unveiling of
+the sons of God (Rom. viii. 18-25). One day God's glory in us will burst
+forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and earth will then sing
+_to the praise of His glory_, when it is seen in His redeemed and
+godlike sons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 (_which He purposed ... upon the earth_) are, as we have
+said, a parenthesis or episode in the passage just reviewed. Neither in
+structure nor in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this clause
+been wanting. With the "in Him" repeated at the end of verse 10, St Paul
+resumes the main current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment
+while he dwells on "the mystery of God's will."
+
+This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he has said in
+verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He will pause for an instant to
+set forth once more the eternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the
+Church is now admitted. The communication of this mystery is, he says,
+"according to God's good pleasure which He purposed in Christ [comp.
+ver. 4], for a dispensation of the fulness of the times, intending to
+gather up again all things in the Christ--the things in the heavens, and
+the things upon the earth."
+
+God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation of His grace, in
+due time to re-unite the universe under the headship of Christ. This
+mysterious design, hitherto kept secret, He has "made known unto us."
+Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all the wisdom of
+former ages.[42] Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.
+
+The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for its interpretation.
+The _fulness of the times_, in St Paul's dialect, can only be the time
+of Christ.[43] The dispensation which God designed of old is that in
+which the apostle himself is now engaged;[44] it is the dispensation, or
+administration (_economy_), of the grace and truth that came by Jesus
+Christ, whether God be conceived as Himself the Dispenser, or through
+the stewards of His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul's Jewish
+thought the denouement of antecedent history. How long this age would
+continue, into what epochs it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for
+him the fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was come; the
+kingdom of God was amongst men. It was the beginning of the end. It is
+a mistake to relegate this text to the dim and distant future, to some
+far-off consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian
+reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The decisive epoch
+fell when "God sent forth His Son." All that has followed, and will
+follow, is the result of this mission. Christ is all things, and in all;
+and we are already complete in Him.
+
+What, then, signifies this _gathering-into-one_ or _summing-up_ of all
+things in the Christ? Our _recapitulate_ is the nearest equivalent of
+the Greek verb, in its etymological sense. In Romans xiii. 8, 9 the same
+word is used, where the several commands of the second table of the
+Decalogue are said to be "comprehended in this word, namely, Thou shalt
+love thy neighbour as thyself." This summing up is not a generalization
+or compendious statement of the commands of God; it signifies their
+reduction to a fundamental principle. They are unified by the discovery
+of a law that underlies them all. And while thus theoretically
+explained, they are made practically effective: "For love is the
+fulfilling of the law."
+
+Similarly, St Paul finds in Christ the fundamental principle of the
+creation. For those who think with him, God has by the Christian
+revelation already brought all things to their unity. This summing
+up--the Christian inventory and recapitulation of the universe--the
+apostle has formally stated in Colossians i. 15-20: "Christ is God's
+image and creation's firstborn. In Him, through Him, for Him all things
+were made. He is before them all; and in Him they have their basis and
+uniting bond. He is equally the Head of the Church and the new creation,
+the firstborn out of the dead, that He might hold a universal
+presidence--charged with all the fulness, so that in Him is the ground
+of the reconciliation no less than of the creation of all things in
+heaven and earth." What can we desire more comprehensive than this? It
+is the theory and programme of the world revealed to God's holy apostles
+and prophets.
+
+The "gathering into one" of this text includes the "reconciliation" of
+Colossians i. 20, and more. It signifies, beside the removal of the
+enmities which are the effect of sin (ii. 14-16), the subjection of all
+powers in heaven and earth to the rule of Christ (vv. 21, 22),[45] the
+enlightenment of the angelic magnates as to God's dealings with men
+(iii. 9, 10),--in fine, the rectification and adjustment of the several
+parts of the great whole of things, bringing them into full accord with
+each other and with their Creator's will. What St Paul looks forward to
+is, in a word, the organization of the universe upon a Christian basis.
+This reconstitution of things is provided for and is being effected "in
+the Christ." He is the rallying point of the forces of peace and
+blessing. The organic principle, the organizing Head, the creative
+nucleus of the new creation is there. The potent germ of life eternal
+has been introduced into the world's chaos; and its victory over the
+elements of disorder and death is assured.
+
+Observe that the apostle says "in _the Christ_."[46] He is not speaking
+of Christ in the abstract, considered in His own Person or as He dwells
+in heaven, but in His relations to men and to time. The Christ manifest
+in Jesus (iv. 20, 21), the Christ of prophets and apostles, the Messiah
+of the ages, the Husband of the Church (v. 23), is the author and
+finisher of this grand restoration.
+
+Christ's work is essentially a work of _restoration_. We must insist,
+with Meyer, upon the significance of the Greek preposition in Paul's
+compound verb (_ana_-, equal to _re_-in _restore_ or _resume_). The
+Christ is not simply the climax of the past--the Son of man and the
+recapitulation of humanity, as man is of the creatures below him,
+summing up human development and lifting it to a higher stage--though He
+is all that. Christ _rehabilitates_ man and the world. He re-asserts the
+original ground of our being, as that exists in God. He carries us and
+the world forward out of sin and death, by carrying us back to God's
+ideal. The new world is the old world repaired, and in its reparation
+infinitely enhanced--rich in the memories of redemption, in the fruit of
+penitence and the discipline of suffering, in the lessons of the cross.
+
+_All things_ in heaven and earth it was God's good pleasure in the
+Christ to gather again into one. Is this a general assertion concerning
+the universe as a whole, or may we apply it with distributive exactness
+to each particular thing? Is there to be, as we fain would hope, no
+single exception to the "all things"--no wanderer lost, no exile finally
+shut out from the Holy City and the tree of life? Are all evil men and
+demons, willing or against their will, to be embraced somehow and at
+last--at last--in the universal peace of God?
+
+It is impossible that the first readers should have so construed Paul's
+words (comp. v. 5). He has not forgotten the "unquenchable fire," the
+"eternal punishment"; nor dare we. "If anything is certain about the
+teaching of Christ and His apostles, it is that they warned men not to
+reject the Divine mercy and so to incur irrevocable exile from God's
+presence and joy. They assumed that some men would be guilty of this
+supreme crime, and would be doomed to this supreme woe" (Dale). There is
+nothing in this text to warrant any man in presuming on the mercy or the
+sovereignty of God, nothing to justify us in supposing that,
+deliberately refusing to be reconciled to God in Christ, we shall yet be
+reconciled in the end, despite ourselves.
+
+St Paul assures us that God and the world will be reunited, and that
+peace will reign through all realms and orders of existence. He does
+not, and he could not say that none will exclude themselves from the
+eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made it possible for them to
+contradict Him, so long as they have any being. The apostle's words have
+their note of warning, along with their boundless promise. There is no
+place in the future order of things for aught that is out of Christ.
+There is no standing-ground anywhere for the unclean and the unjust, for
+the irreconcilable rebel against God. "The Son of man shall send forth
+His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that
+offend and them that do iniquity."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] The arrangement above made of the lines of this intricate passage
+is designed to guide the eye to its elucidation. Our disposition of the
+verses has not been determined by any preconceived interpretation, but
+by the parallelism of expression and cadences of phrase. The rhythmical
+structure of the piece, it seems to us, supplies the key to its
+explanation, and reduces to order its long-drawn and heaped-up relative
+and prepositional clauses, which are grammatically so unmanageable.
+
+[34] =Chaire, kecharitomene.= It is impossible to reproduce in English
+the beautiful assonance--the _play_ of sound and sense--in Gabriel's
+greeting, as St Luke renders it.
+
+[35] See Rom. i. 16-18, iii. 19-v. 21, vi. 7, vii. 1-6, viii. 1-4,
+31-34, x. 6-9; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 17, 56, 57; 2 Cor. v. 18-21; Gal. ii.
+14-iii. 14, vi. 12-14. The latter passages the writer has endeavoured to
+expound in Chapters X. to XII. and XXVIII. of his Commentary on
+_Galatians_ in this series.
+
+[36] It is an error to suppose, as one sometimes hears it said, that
+_trespasses_ or _transgressions_ are a light and comparatively trivial
+form of sin. Both words denote, in the language of Scripture, definite
+offences against known law, departures from known duty. Adam's sin was
+the typical "transgression" and "trespass" (Rom. v. 14, 15, etc.; comp.
+ii. 23; Gal. iii. 19).
+
+[37] Gal. iii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.
+
+[38] See _The Evangelical Revival, and other Sermons_, pp. 149-170, on
+"The Forgiveness of Sins."
+
+[39] Bishop Ellicott, who advocates the latter rendering, objects to
+Meyer's interpretation that it is "doubtful in point of usage." _Pace
+tanti viri_, we must retort this objection upon the new translation. _To
+obtain by lot, to have (a thing) allotted to one_, is the meaning
+regularly given to =klerousthai= in the classical dictionaries; and in
+O.T. usage the _lot_ (=kleros=) becomes the _inheritance_ (the thing
+_allotted_). The verb is repeatedly used by Philo with the meaning _to
+obtain_, or _receive an inheritance_; whereas there seems to be no real
+parallel to the other rendering. It is true that =klerousthai= in the
+sense of the A.V. requires an object; but that is virtually supplied by
+=en ho=: "we had our inheritance allotted _in Christ_." Comp. Col. i.
+12, "the lot of the saints _in the light_," which signifies not the
+locality, but the nature and content of the saints' heritage.
+
+[40] See Gal. iii. 22--iv. 7; and Chapters XV.--XVII. in the
+_Expositor's Bible_ (Galatians), on Sonship and Inheritance in St Paul.
+
+[41] Compare Acts xxvi. 18, which also speaks to this association of
+ideas in St Paul's mind, with vers. 4, 5, 7, and 11 in this chapter.
+
+[42] Vv. 8, 9, ch. iii. 4, 5; comp. Col. ii. 2, 3; 1 Cor. ii. 6-9.
+
+[43] "The fulness of the time," Gal. iv. 4; "in due season," Rom. v. 6;
+"in its own times," 1 Tim. ii. 6. These are all synonymous expressions
+for the Messianic era. Comp. Heb. i. 2, ix. 26; 1 Pet. i. 20.
+
+[44] Ch. iii. 8, 9; Col. i. 25; 1 Cor. iv. 1; 1 Tim. i. 4, i. 7; 2 Tim.
+i. 9-11; and especially Rom. xvi. 25, 26.
+
+[45] Comp. ch. v. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 24-28; Phil. ii. 9-12; Heb. ii. 8; Rev.
+i. 5, xi. 15, xvii. 14; Dan. vii. 13, 14.
+
+[46] One wonders that our Revisers, so attentive to all points of Greek
+idiom, did not think it worth while to discriminate between _Christ_ and
+_the Christ_ in such passages as this. In Ephesians this distinction is
+especially conspicuous and significant. See vv. 12, 20 iii. 17, iv. 20,
+v. 23; similarly in 1 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. xv. 3.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_THE FINAL REDEMPTION._
+
+          "[That we might be to the praise of His glory:]
+    We who had before hoped in the Christ, in whom also ye _have hoped_,
+      Since ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,--
+    In whom indeed, when ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy
+        Spirit of the promise,
+      Which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of
+        _God's_ possession,--
+                                 To the praise of His glory."
+    EPH. i. 12-14.
+
+
+When the apostle reaches the "heritage" conferred upon us in Christ
+(ver. 11), he is on the boundary between the present and the future.
+Into that future he now presses forward, gathering from it his crowning
+tribute "to the praise of God's glory." We shall find, however, that
+this heritage assumes a twofold character, as did the conception of the
+inheritance of the Lord in the Old Testament. If the saints have their
+heritage in Christ, partly possessed and partly to be possessed, God has
+likewise, and antecedently, His inheritance in them, of which He too has
+still to take full possession.[47]
+
+Opening upon this final prospect, St Paul touches on a subject of
+supreme interest to himself and that could not fail to find a place in
+his great Act of Praise--viz., _the admission of the Gentiles_ to the
+spiritual property of Israel. The thought of the heirship of believers
+and of God's previous counsel respecting it (ver. 11), brought before
+his mind the distinction between Jew and Gentile and the part assigned
+to each in the Divine plan. Hence he varies the general refrain in verse
+12 by saying significantly, "that _we_ might be to the praise of His
+glory." This emphatic _we_ is explained in the opening phrase of the
+last strophe: "that have beforehand fixed our hope on the Christ,"--the
+heirs of Israel's hope in "Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets
+did write." With this "we" of Paul's Jewish consciousness the "ye also"
+of verse 13 is set in contrast by his vocation as Gentile apostle. This
+second pronoun, by one of Paul's abrupt turns of thought, is deprived of
+its predicating verb; but that is given already by the "hoped" of the
+last clause. "The Messianic hope, Israel's ancient heirloom, in its
+fulfilment is _yours_ as much as ours."
+
+This hope of Israel pointed Israelite and Gentile believer alike to the
+completion of the Messianic era, when the mystery of God should be
+finished and His universe redeemed from the bondage of corruption (vv.
+10, 14). By the "one hope" of the Christian calling the Church is now
+made one. From this point of view the apostle in chapter ii. 12
+describes the condition in which the gospel found his Gentile readers as
+that of men cut off from Christ, strangers to the covenants of
+promise,--in a word, "having no hope"; while he and his Jewish
+fellow-believers held the priority that belonged to those whose are the
+promises. The apostle stands precisely at the juncture where the wild
+shoot of nature is grafted into the good olive tree. A generation later
+no one would have thought of writing of "the Christ in whom _you_
+(Gentiles) _also_ have found hope"; for then Christ was the established
+possession of the Gentile Church.
+
+To these Christless heathen Christ and His hope came, when they "heard
+the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation." A great light had
+sprung up for them that sat in darkness; the good tidings of salvation
+came to the lost and despairing. "To the Gentiles," St Paul declared,
+addressing the obstinate Jews of Rome, "this salvation of God was sent:
+they indeed will hear it" (Acts xxviii. 28). Such was his experience in
+Ephesus and all the Gentile cities. There were hearing ears and open
+hearts, souls longing for the word of truth and the message of hope. The
+trespass of Israel had become the riches of the world. For this on his
+readers' behalf he gives joyful thanks,--that his message proved to be
+"the gospel of _your_ salvation."
+
+Salvation, as St Paul understands it, includes our uttermost
+deliverance, the end of death itself (1 Cor. xv. 26). He renders praise
+to God for that He has sealed Gentile equally with Jewish believers with
+the stamp of His Spirit, which makes them His property and gives
+assurance of absolute redemption.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are three things to be considered in this statement: _the seal_
+itself, _the conditions_ upon which, and _the purpose_ for which it is
+affixed.
+
+I. A seal is a token of proprietorship put by the owner upon his
+property;[48] or it is the authentication of some statement or
+engagement, the official stamp that gives it validity;[49] or it is the
+pledge of inviolability guarding a treasure from profane or injurious
+hands.[50] There is the protecting seal, the ratifying seal, and the
+proprietary seal. The same seal may serve each or all of these purposes.
+Here the thought of possession predominates (comp. ver. 4); but it can
+scarcely be separated from the other two. The witness of the Holy Spirit
+marks men out as God's _purchased right_ in Christ (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20).
+In that very fact it guards them from evil and wrong (iv. 30), while it
+ratifies their Divine sonship (Gal. iv. 6) and guarantees their personal
+share in the promises of God (2 Cor. i. 20-22). It is a bond between God
+and men; a sign at once of what we are and shall be to God, and of what
+He is and will be to us. It secures, and it assures. It stamps us for
+God's possession, and His kingdom and glory as our possession.
+
+This seal is constituted by _the Holy Spirit of the promise_,--in
+contrast with the material seal, "in the flesh, wrought by hand,"[51]
+which marked the children of the Old Covenant from Abraham downwards,
+previously to the fulfilment of the promise (Gal. iii. 14). We bear it
+in the inmost part of our nature, where we are nearest to God: "The
+Spirit witnesseth to our spirit." "The Israelites also were sealed, but
+by circumcision, like cattle and irrational animals. We were sealed by
+the Spirit, as sons" (Chrysostom). The stamp of God is on the
+consciousness of His children. "We know that Christ abides in us,"
+writes St John, "from the Spirit which He gave us" (1 Ep. iii. 24).
+Under this seal is conveyed the sum of blessing comprised in our
+salvation. Jesus promised, "Your heavenly Father will give His Holy
+Spirit to them that ask" (Luke xi. 13), as if there were nothing else to
+ask. Giving us this, God gives everything, gives us Himself! In
+substance or anticipation, this one bestowment contains all good things
+of God.
+
+The apostle writes "the Spirit of the promise, _the Holy_ [Spirit],"
+with emphasis on the word of quality; for the testifying power of the
+seal lies in its character. "Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try
+the spirits, whether they are of God" (1 John iv. 1). There are false
+prophets, deceiving and deceived; there are promptings from "the spirit
+that works in the sons of disobedience," diabolical inspirations, so
+plausible and astonishing that they may deceive the very elect. It is a
+most perilous error to identify the supernatural with the Divine, to
+suppose mere miracles and communications from the invisible sphere a
+sign of the working of God. Antichrist can mimic Christ by his "lying
+wonders and deceit of unrighteousness" (2 Thess. ii. 8-12). Jesus never
+appealed to the power of His works in proof of His mission, apart from
+their ethical quality. God's Spirit works after His kind, and makes ours
+a holy spirit. There is an objective and subjective witness--the obverse
+and reverse of the medal (2 Tim. ii. 19). To be sealed by the Holy
+Spirit is, in St Paul's dialect, the same thing as to be _sanctified_;
+only, the phrase of this text brings out graphically the promissory
+aspect of sanctification, its bearing on our final redemption.[52]
+
+When the sealing Spirit is called the Spirit _of promise_, does the
+expression look backward or forward? Is the apostle thinking of the past
+promise now fulfilled, or of some promise still to be fulfilled? The
+former, undoubtedly, is true. _The_ promise (the article is
+significant[53]) is, in the words of Christ, "the promise of the
+Father." On the day of Pentecost St Peter pointed to the descent of the
+Holy Spirit as God's seal upon the Messiahship of Jesus, fulfilling what
+was promised to Israel for the last days. When this miraculous effusion
+was repeated in the household of Cornelius, the Jewish apostle saw its
+immense significance. He asked, "Can any one forbid water that these
+should be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?"
+(Acts x. 47). This was the predicted criterion of the Messianic times.
+Now it was _given_, and with an abundance beyond hope,--_poured out_, in
+the full sense of Joel's words, _upon all flesh_.
+
+Now, if God has done so much--for this is the implied argument of verses
+13, 14--He will surely accomplish the rest. The attainment of past hope
+is the warrant of present hope. He who gives us His own Spirit, will
+give us the fulness of eternal life. The earnest implies the sum. In the
+witness of the Holy Spirit there is for the Christian man the power of
+an endless life, a spring of courage and patience that can never fail.
+
+II. But there are very definite conditions, upon which this assurance
+depends. "When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
+salvation"--there is the outward condition: "when you believed"--there
+is the inward and subjective qualification for the affixing of the seal
+of God to the heart.
+
+How characteristic is this antithesis of _hearing_ and _faith_![54] St
+Paul delights to ring the changes upon these terms. The gospel he
+carried about with him was a message from God to men, the good news
+about Jesus Christ. It needs, on the one hand, to be effectively
+uttered, proclaimed so as to be heard with the understanding; and, on
+the other hand, it must be trustfully received and obeyed. Then the due
+result follows. There is salvation,--conscious, full.
+
+If they are to believe unto salvation, men must be made to _hear_ the
+word of truth. Unless the good news reaches their ears and their heart,
+it is no good news to them. "How shall they believe in Him of whom they
+have not heard? how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. x. 14).
+The light may be true, and the eyes clear and open; but there is no
+vision till both meet, till the illuminating ray falls on the sensitive
+spot and touches the responsive nerve. How many sit in darkness, groping
+and wearying for the light, ready for the message if there were any to
+speak it to them! Great would Paul's guilt have been, if when Christ
+called him to preach to the heathen, he had refused to go, if he had
+withheld the gospel of salvation from the multitudes waiting to receive
+it at his lips. Great also is our fault and blame, and heavy the
+reproach against the Church to-day, when with means in her hand to make
+Christ known to almost the whole world, she leaves vast numbers of men
+within her reach in ignorance of His message. She is not the proprietor
+of the Christian truth: it is God's gospel; and she holds it as God's
+trustee for mankind,--that through her "the message might be fully
+preached, and that all the nations might hear" (2 Tim. iv. 17). She has
+St Paul's programme in hand still to complete, and loiters over it.
+
+The nature of the message constitutes our duty to proclaim it. It is
+"the word _of truth_." If there be any doubt upon this, if our certainty
+of the Christian truth is shaken and we can no longer announce it with
+full conviction, our zeal for its propagation naturally declines.
+Scepticism chills and kills missionary fervour, as the breath of the
+frost the young growth of spring. At home and amongst our own people
+evangelistic agencies are supported by many who have no very decided
+personal faith, from secondary motives,--with a view to their social and
+reformatory benefits, out of philanthropic feeling and love to "the
+brother whom we have seen." The foreign missions of the Church, like the
+work of the Gentile apostle, gauge her real estimate of the gospel she
+believes and the Master she serves.
+
+But if we have no sure word of prophecy to speak, we had better be
+silent. Men are not saved by illusion or speculation. Christianity did
+not begin by offering to mankind a legend for a gospel, or win the ear
+of the world for a beautiful romance. When the apostles preached Jesus
+and the resurrection, they declared what they knew. To have spoken
+otherwise, to have uttered cunningly devised fables or pious phantasies
+or conjectures of their own, would have been, in their view, to bear
+false witness against God. Before the hostile scrutiny of their
+fellow-men, and in prospect of the awful judgement of God, they
+testified the facts about Jesus Christ, the things that they had "heard,
+and seen with their eyes, and which their hands had handled concerning
+the word of life." They were as sure of these things as of their own
+being. Standing upon this ground and with this weapon of truth alone in
+their hands, they denounced "the wiles of error" and the "craftiness of
+men who lie in wait to deceive" (iv. 14).
+
+And they could always speak of this word of truth, addressing whatsoever
+circle of hearers or of readers, as "the good news of _your salvation_."
+The pronoun, as we have seen, is emphatic. The glory of Paul's apostolic
+mission was its universalism. His message was to every man he met. His
+latest writings glow with delight in the world-wide destination of his
+gospel.[55] It was his consolation that the Gentiles in multitudes
+received the Divine message to which his countrymen closed their ears.
+And he rejoiced in this the more, because he foresaw that ultimately the
+gospel would return to its native home, and at last amid "the fulness of
+the Gentiles all Israel would be saved" (Rom. xi. 13-32). At present
+Israel was not prepared to seek, while the Gentiles were seeking
+righteousness by the way of faith (Rom. ix. 30-33).
+
+For it is upon this question of _faith_ that the whole issue turns.
+Hearing is much, when one hears the word of truth and news of salvation.
+But faith is the point at which salvation becomes ours--no longer a
+possibility, an opportunity, but a fact: "in whom indeed, _when you
+believed_, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit." So characteristic is
+this act of the new life to which it admits, that St Paul is in the
+habit of calling Christians, without further qualification, simply
+_believers_ ("those who believe," or "who believed"). Faith and the gift
+of the Holy Spirit are associated in his thoughts, as closely as Faith
+and Justification. "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?"
+was the question he put to the Baptist's disciples whom he found at
+Ephesus on first arriving there (Acts xix. 2). This was the test of the
+adequacy of their faith. He reminds the Galatians that they "received
+the Spirit from the hearing of faith," and tells them that in this way
+the blessing and the promise of Abraham were theirs already (Gal. iii.
+2, 7, 14). Faith in the word of Christ admits the Spirit of Christ, who
+is in the word waiting to enter. Faith is the trustful surrender and
+expectancy of the soul towards God; it sets the heart's door open for
+Christ's incoming through the Spirit This was the order of things from
+the beginning of the new dispensation. "God gave to them," says St Peter
+of the first baptized Gentiles, "the like gift as He did also unto us,
+when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost fell on them,
+as on us at the beginning" (Acts xi. 15-18). Upon our faith in Jesus
+Christ, the Holy Spirit enters the soul and announces Himself by His
+message of adoption, crying in us to God, _Abba, Father_ (Gal. iv. 6,
+7).
+
+In the chamber of our spirit, while we abide in faith, the Spirit of the
+Father and the Son dwells with us, witnessing to us of the love of God
+and leading us into all truth and duty and divine joy, instilling a deep
+and restful peace, breathing an energy that is a fire and fountain of
+life within the breast, which pours out itself in prayer and labour for
+the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is no mere gift to receive, or
+comfort to enjoy; He is an almighty Force in the believing soul and the
+faithful Church.
+
+III. The end for which the seal of God was affixed to Paul's Gentile
+readers, along with their Jewish brethren in Christ, appears in the
+last verse, with which the Act of Praise terminates: "sealed," he says,
+"with the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest of our inheritance, _until
+the redemption of the possession_."
+
+The last of these words is the equivalent of the Old Testament phrase
+rendered in Exodus xix. 5, and elsewhere, "_a peculiar treasure_ unto
+me"; in Deuteronomy vii. 6, etc., "a _peculiar_ people" (_i.e._, people
+of _possession_). The same Greek term is employed by the Septuagint
+translators in Malachi iii. 17, where our Revisers have substituted "a
+peculiar treasure" for the familiar, but misleading "jewels" of the
+older Version. St Peter in his first epistle (ii. 9, 10) transfers the
+title from the Jewish people to the new Israel of God, who are "an elect
+race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people _for God's own
+possession_." In that passage, as in this, the Revisers have inserted
+the word _God's_ in order to signify whose possession the term signifies
+in Biblical use. In the other places in the New Testament where the same
+Greek noun occurs,[56] it retains its primary active force, and denotes
+"_obtaining_ of the glory," etc., "_saving_ of the soul." The word
+signifies not the possessing so much as the _acquiring_ or _securing_ of
+its object. The Latin Vulgate suitably renders this phrase, _in
+redemptionem acquisitions_,--"till the redemption of the acquisition."
+
+God has "redeemed unto Himself a people"; He has "bought us with a
+price." His rights in us are both natural and _acquired_; they are
+redemptional rights, the recovered rights of the infinite love which in
+Jesus Christ saved mankind by extreme sacrifice from the doom of death
+eternal. This redemption "we have, in the remission of our trespasses"
+(ver. 7). But this is only the beginning. Those whose sin is cancelled
+and on whom God now looks with favour in Christ, are thereby redeemed
+and saved (ii. 5, 8).[57] They are within the kingdom of grace; they
+have passed out of death into life. They have but to persist in the
+grace into which they have entered, and all will be well. "Now," says
+the apostle to the Romans, "you are made free from sin and made servants
+to God; you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life."
+
+Our salvation is come; but, after all, it is still to come. We find the
+apostle using the words "save" and "redeem" in this twofold sense,
+applying them both to the commencement and the consummation of the new
+life.[58] The last act, in Romans viii. 23, he calls "the redemption of
+the body." This will reinstate the man in the integrity of his twofold
+being as a son of God. Hence our bodily redemption is there called an
+_adoption_. For as Jesus Christ by His resurrection was "marked out
+[_or_ instated] as Son of God in power" (Rom. i. 4), not otherwise will
+it be with His many brethren. Their reappearance in the new "body of
+glory" will be a "revelation" to the universe "of the sons of God."
+
+But this last redemption--or rather this last act of the one
+redemption--like the first, is through the blood of the cross. Christ
+has borne for us in His death the entire penalty of sin; the remission
+of that penalty comes to us in two distinct stages. The shadow of death
+is lifted off from our spirits now, in the moment of forgiveness. But
+for reasons of discipline it remains resting upon our bodily frame.
+Death is a usurper and trespasser in the bounds of God's heritage.
+Virtually and in principle, he is abolished; but not in effect. "I will
+ransom them from the power of the grave,"[59] the Lord said of His
+Israel, with a meaning deeper than His prophet knew. When that is done,
+then God will have redeemed, in point of fact, those possessions in
+humanity which He so much prizes, that for their recovery He spared not
+His Son.
+
+So long as mortality afflicts us, God cannot be satisfied on our
+account. His children are suffering and tortured; His people mourn under
+the oppression of the enemy. They sigh, and creation with them, under
+the burdensome and infirm tabernacle of the flesh, this body of our
+humiliation for which the hungry grave clamours. God's new estate in us
+is still encumbered with the liabilities in which the sin of the race
+involved us, with the "ills that flesh is heir to." But this
+mortgage--that we call, with a touching euphemism, _the debt of
+nature_--will at last be discharged. Soon shall we be free for ever from
+the law of sin and death. "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and
+come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their
+heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall
+flee away."
+
+To God, as He looks down upon men, the seal of His Spirit upon their
+hearts anticipates this full emancipation. He sees already in the
+redeemed spirit of His children what will be manifest in their glorious
+heavenly form. The same token is to ourselves as believing men the
+"earnest of our inheritance." Note that at this point the apostle drops
+the "you" by which he has for several sentences distinguished between
+Jewish and Gentile brethren. He identifies them with himself and speaks
+of "_our_ inheritance." This sudden resumption of the first person, the
+self-assertion of the filial consciousness in the writer breaking
+through the grammatical order, is a fine trait of the Pauline
+manner.[60]
+
+_Arrhabon_, the _earnest_ (_fastening penny_), is a Phoenician word of
+the market, which passed into Greek and Latin,--a monument of the daring
+pioneers of Mediterranean commerce. It denotes the part of the price
+given by a purchaser in making a bargain, or of the wages given by the
+hirer concluding a contract of service, by way of assurance that the
+stipulated sum will be forthcoming. Such pledge of future payment is at
+the same time a bond between those concerned, engaging each to his part
+in the transaction.
+
+The earnest is the seal, and something more. It is an instalment, a
+_token in kind_, a foretaste of the feast to come. In the parallel
+passage, Romans viii. 23, the same earnest is called "the firstfruit of
+the Spirit." What the earliest sheaf is to the harvest, that the
+entrance of the Spirit of God into a human soul is to the glory of its
+ultimate salvation. The sanctity, the joy, the sense of recovered life
+is the same in kind then and now, differing only in degree and
+expression.
+
+Of the "earnest of the Spirit" St Paul has spoken twice already, in 2
+Corinthians i. 22 and v. 5, where he cites this inner witness to assure
+us, in the first instance, that God will fulfil to us His promises, "how
+many soever they be"; and in the second, that our mortal nature shall be
+"swallowed up of life"--assimilated to the living spirit to which it
+belongs--and that "God has wrought us for this very thing." These
+earlier sayings explain the apostle's meaning here. God has made us His
+sons, in accordance with His purpose formed in the depths of eternity
+(ver. 5). As sons, we are His heirs in fellowship with Christ, and
+already have received rich blessings out of this heritage (ver. 11). But
+the richest part of it, including that which concerns the bodily form of
+our life, is still unredeemed, notwithstanding that the price of its
+redemption is paid.
+
+For this we wait till the time appointed of the Father,--the time when
+He will reclaim His heritage in us, and give us full possession of our
+heritage in Christ. We do not wait, as did the saints of former ages,
+ignorant of the Father's purpose for our future lot. "Life and
+immortality are brought to light through the gospel." We see beyond the
+chasm of death. We enjoy in the testimony of the Holy Spirit the
+foretaste of an eternal and glorious life for all the children of
+God--nay, the pledge that the reign of evil and death shall end
+throughout the universe.
+
+With this hope swelling their hearts, the apostle's readers once more
+triumphantly join in the refrain: TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORY.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] Exod. xix. 3-6; Deut. iv. 20, 21; 1 Kings viii. 51, 53; Ps.
+lxxviii. 71, etc. With the above comp. Gen. xv. 8; Numb. xviii. 20; Jos.
+xiii. 33; Ps. xvi. 5.
+
+[48] Ch. iv. 30. The "seal" of 2 Tim. ii. 19 has both the first and
+third of these meanings.
+
+[49] Rom. iv. 11; 1 Cor. ix. 2; John iii. 33, vi. 27.
+
+[50] Matt. xxvii. 66; Rev. v. 1, etc.
+
+[51] Ch. ii. 11; comp. Rom. i. 28, 29; Gal. v, 5, 6; Phil. iii. 2, 3.
+
+[52] Comp. Rom. viii. 9-11; 2 Cor. v. 1-5.
+
+[53] Acts i. 4, ii. 33, 39, xiii. 32, xxvi. 6; Rom. iv. 13-20; Gal. iii.
+14-29.
+
+[54] See Rom. x. 14-18; Gal. iii. 2, 5; Col. i. 6, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 13;
+2 Tim. i. 13.
+
+[55] 1 Tim. ii. 1-7, iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11.
+
+[56] 1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. ii. 14; Heb. x. 39.
+
+[57] Comp. Chapter VIII.
+
+[58] For the former usage see, along with ver. 7 and ch. ii. 5, 8; Rom.
+iii, 24, x. 9; Titus iii. 5; 2 Tim. i. 9; Col. i. 14; Heb. ix. 15; for
+the latter, ch. iv. 30; Luke xxi. 28; Rom. v. 9, 10, viii. 23; Phil. ii.
+12; 1 Thess. v. 8, 9; 2 Tim. ii. 10, iv. 18. It may be doubted whether
+St Paul ever uses these terms to denote present salvation or redemption
+without the final issue being also in his thoughts. Perhaps he would
+have called the redemption of ver. 7, in contrast with that of Rom.
+viii. 23, "the redemption of the spirit."
+
+[59] Hosea xiii. 14; Isa. xxv. 8.
+
+[60] The same incoherence occurs in Gal. iv. 5-7: "that _we_ might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because _ye_ are sons, God sent forth
+the Spirit of His Son into _our_ hearts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART._
+
+    "For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
+    which is among you, and which _ye shew_ toward all the saints, cease
+    not to give thanks for you, making mention _of you_ in my prayers:
+
+    "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
+    give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
+    Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know
+    what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His
+    inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His
+    power toward us who believe, according to that working of the might
+    of His strength, which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him
+    from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly
+    _places_."--EPH. i. 15-20.
+
+
+_Because of this_: because you have heard the glad tidings, and
+believing it have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (vv. 13, 14). _I
+too_: I your apostle, with so great an interest in your salvation, in
+return give thanks for you. Thus St Paul, having extolled to the
+uttermost God's counsel of redemption unfolded through the ages, claims
+to offer especial thanksgiving for the faith of those who belong to his
+Gentile province and are, directly or indirectly, the fruit of his own
+ministry (iii. 1-13).
+
+The intermediate clause of verse 15, describing the readers' faith, is
+obscure. This form of expression occurs nowhere else in St Paul; but the
+construction is used by St Luke,--_e.g._, in Acts xxi. 21: "All the
+Jews _which are among_ the Gentiles," where it implies diffusion over a
+wide area. This being a circular letter, addressed to a number of
+Churches scattered through the province of Asia, of whose faith in many
+cases St Paul knew only by report, we can understand how he writes:
+"having heard of the faith that is [spread] amongst you."--_The love_,
+completing _faith_ in the ordinary text (as in Col. i. 4), is relegated
+by the Revisers to the margin, upon evidence that seems conclusive.[61]
+The commentators, however, feel so strongly the harshness of this
+ellipsis that, in spite of the ancient witnesses, they read, almost with
+one consent,[62] "_your love_ toward all the saints." The variation of
+the former clause prepares us, however, for something peculiar in this.
+In verse 13 we found St Paul's thought fixed on the decisive fact of his
+readers' _faith_. On this he still dwells lingeringly. The grammatical
+link needed between "faith" and "unto all the saints" is supplied in the
+Revised Version by _ye show_, after the analogy of Philemon 5. Perhaps
+it might be supplied as grammatically, and in a sense better suiting the
+situation, by _is come_. Then the co-ordinate prepositional phrases
+qualifying "faith" have both alike a local reference, and we paraphrase
+the clause thus: "since I heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is
+spread amongst you, and whose report has reached all the saints."
+
+We are reminded of the thanksgiving for the Roman Church, "that your
+faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world."[63] The success of the
+gospel in Asia gave encouragement to believers in Christ everywhere. St
+Paul loves in this way to link Church to Church, to knit the bonds of
+faith between land and land: in this letter most of all; for it is his
+catholic epistle, the epistle of the Church oecumenical.
+
+In verse 16 we pass from praise to prayer. God is invoked by a double
+title peculiar to this passage, as "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+the Father of glory." The former expression is in no way difficult. The
+apostle often speaks, as in verse 3, of "the God and Father of our Lord
+Jesus Christ": intending to qualify the Divine Fatherhood by another
+epithet, he writes for once simply of "_the God_ of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." This reminds us of the dependence of the Lord Jesus upon the
+eternal Father, and accentuates the Divine sovereignty so conspicuous in
+the foregoing Act of Praise. Christ's constant attitude towards the
+Father was that of His cry of anguish on the cross, "My God, my God!"
+Yet He never speaks to men of _our_ God. To us God is "the God of our
+Lord Jesus Christ," as He was to the men of old time "the God of Abraham
+and of Isaac and of Jacob."
+
+The key to the designation _Father of glory_ is in Romans vi. 4: "Christ
+was raised from the dead through _the glory of the Father_." In the
+light of this august manifestation of God's power to save His lost sons
+in Christ, we are called to see light (vv. 19, 20). Its glory shines
+already about God's blessed name of Father, thrice glorified in the
+apostle's praise (vv. 3-14). The title is the counterpart of "the Father
+of compassions" in 2 Corinthians i. 3.
+
+And now, what has the apostle to ask of the Father of men under these
+glorious appellations? He asks "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
+full-knowledge[64] of Him,--the eyes of your heart enlightened, in order
+that you may know," etc. This recalls the emphasis with which in verses
+8 and 9 he set "wisdom and intelligence" amongst the first blessings
+bestowed by Divine grace upon the Church. It was the gift which the
+Asian Churches at the present juncture most needed; this is just now the
+burden of the apostle's prayers for his people.
+
+The _spirit of wisdom and revelation_ desired will proceed from the Holy
+Spirit dwelling in these Gentile believers (ver. 13). But it must belong
+to their own spirit and direct their personal mental activity, the
+spirit of revelation becoming "the spirit of their mind" (iv. 23). When
+St Paul asks for "a spirit of wisdom and _revelation_," he desires that
+his readers may have amongst themselves a fountain of inspiration and
+share in the prophetic gifts diffused through the Church.[65] And "the
+knowledge--the full, deep knowledge of God" is the sphere "in" which
+this richer inspiration and spiritual wisdom are exercised and
+nourished. "Philosophy, taking man for its centre, says, _Know thyself_:
+only the inspired word, which proceeds from God, has been able to say,
+_Know God_."[66]
+
+The connexion of the first clause of verse 18 with the last of verse 17
+is not very clear in St Paul's Greek; there is a characteristic
+incoherence of structure. The continuity of thought is unmistakable. He
+prays that through this inspired wisdom his readers may have their
+reason enlightened to see the grandeur and wealth of their religion.
+This is a vision for "the eyes of the heart." It is disclosed to the eye
+behind the eye, to the heart which is the true discerner.
+
+                  "The seeing eyes
+    See best by the light in the heart that lies."
+
+Yonder is an ox grazing in the meadow on a bright summer's day. Round
+him is spread the fairest landscape,--a broad stretch of herbage
+embroidered with flowers, the river gleaming in and out amongst the
+distant trees, the hills on both sides bounding the quiet valley,
+sunshine and shadows chasing each other as they leap from height to
+height. But of all this what sees the grazing ox? So much lush pasture
+and cool shade and clear water where his feet may plash when he has done
+feeding. In the same meadow there stands a poet musing, or a painter
+busy at his easel; and on the soul of that gifted man there descends,
+through eyes outwardly discerning no more than those of the beast at his
+side, a vision of wonder and beauty which will make all time richer. The
+eyes of the man's heart are opened, and the spirit of wisdom and
+revelation is given him in the knowledge of God's work in nature.
+
+Like differences exist amongst men in regard to the things of religion.
+"So foolish was I and ignorant," says the Psalmist, speaking of his
+former dejection and unbelief, "I was as a beast before Thee!" There
+shall be two men sitting side by side in the same house of prayer, at
+the same gate of heaven. The one sees heaven opened; he hears the
+eternal song; his spirit is a temple filled with the glory of God. The
+other sees the place and the aspect of his fellow-worshippers; he hears
+the music of organ and choir, and the sound of some preacher's voice.
+But as for anything besides, any influence from another world, it is no
+more to him at that moment than is the music in the poet's soul or the
+colours on the painter's canvas to the ox that eateth grass.
+
+It is not the strangeness and distance of Divine things alone that cause
+insensibility; their familiarity has the same effect. We know all this
+gospel so well. We have read it, listened to it, gone over its points of
+doctrine a hundred times. It is trite and easy to us as a worn glove. We
+discuss without a tremor of emotion truths the first whisper and dim
+promise of which once lifted men's souls into ecstasy, or cast them down
+into depths of shame and bewilderment so that they forgot to eat their
+bread. The awe of things eternal, the mystery of our faith, the Spirit
+of glory and of God rest on us no longer. So there come to be, as one
+hears it said, _gospel-hardened_ hearers--and gospel-hardened preachers!
+The eyes see--and see not; the ears hear--and hear not; the lips speak
+without feeling; _the heart is waxen fat_. This is the nemesis of grace
+abused. It is the result that follows by an inevitable psychological
+law, where outward contact with spiritual truth is not attended with an
+inward apprehension and response. How do we need to pray, in handling
+these dread themes, for a true sense and savour of Divine things,--that
+there may be given, and ever given afresh to us "a spirit of wisdom and
+revelation in the knowledge of God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three things the apostle desires that his readers may see with the
+heart's enlightened eyes: the _hope to which God calls them_, the
+_wealth that He possesses in them,_ and the _power which He is prepared
+to exert upon them as believing men_.
+
+I. What, then, is our _hope_ in God? What is the ideal of our faith? For
+what purpose has God called us into the fellowship of His Son? What is
+our religion going to do for us and to make of us?
+
+It will bring us safe home to heaven. It will deliver us from the
+present evil world, and preserve us unto Christ's heavenly kingdom. God
+forbid that we should make light of "the hope laid up for us in the
+heavens," or cast it aside. It is an anchor of the soul, both sure and
+steadfast. But is it _the_ hope of our calling? Is this what St Paul
+here chiefly signifies? We are very sure that it is not. But it is the
+one thing which stands for the hope of the gospel in many minds. "We
+trust that our sins are forgiven: we hope that we shall get to heaven!"
+The experience of how many Christian believers begins and ends there. We
+make of our religion a harbour of refuge, a soothing anodyne, an escape
+from the anguish of guilt and the fear of death; not a life-vocation, a
+grand pursuit. The definition we have quoted may suffice for the
+beginning and the end; but we need something to fill out that formula,
+to give body and substance, meaning and movement to the life of faith.
+
+Let the apostle tell us what he regarded, for himself, as the end of
+religion, what was the object of his ambition and pursuit. "One thing I
+do," he writes to the Philippians, opening to them all his heart,--"One
+thing I do. I press towards the mark for the prize of my high calling of
+God in Christ Jesus." And what, pray, was that mark?--"that I may gain
+Christ and be found in Him!--that I may know Him, and the power of His
+resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to
+His death, if by any means I may attain unto the final resurrection from
+the dead." Yes, Paul hopes for heaven; but he hopes for something else
+first, and most. It is through Christ that he sees heaven. To know
+Christ, to love Christ, to serve Christ, to follow Christ, to be like
+Christ, to be with Christ for ever!--that is what St Paul lived for.
+Whatever aim he pursues or affection he cherishes, Christ lies in it and
+reaches beyond it. In doing or in suffering, in his intellect and his
+heart, in his thoughts for himself or for others, Christ is all things
+to him and in all. When life is thus filled with Christ, heaven becomes,
+as one may say, a mere circumstance, and death but an incident upon the
+way,--in the soul's everlasting pursuit of Christ.
+
+Behold, then, brethren, the hope of our calling. God could not call us
+to any destiny less or lower than this. It would have been unworthy of
+Him,--and may we not say, unworthy of ourselves, if we are in truth His
+sons? From eternity the Father of spirits has predestined you and me to
+be holy and without blemish before Him,--in a word, to be conformed to
+the image of His Son. Every other hope is dross compared to this.
+
+II. Another vision for the heart's eyes, still more amazing than that we
+have seen: "what is," St Paul writes, "the riches of the glory of God's
+inheritance in the saints."
+
+We saw, in considering the eleventh and fourteenth verses, how the
+apostle, in characteristic fashion, plays upon the double aspect of the
+_inheritance_, regarding it now as the heritage of the saints in God and
+again as His heritage in them. The former side of this relationship was
+indicated in the "hope of the Divine calling,"--which we live and strive
+for as it is promised us by God; and the latter comes out, by way of
+contrast, in this second clause. Verse 18 repeats in another way the
+antithesis of verse 14 between our inheritance and God's acquisition. We
+must understand that God sets great store by us His human children, and
+counts Himself rich in our affection and our service. How deeply it must
+affect us to know this, and to see the glory that in God's eyes belongs
+to His possession in believing men.
+
+What presumption is all this, some one says. How preposterous to imagine
+that the Maker of the worlds interests Himself in atoms like
+ourselves,--in the ephemera of this insignificant planet! But moral
+magnitudes are not to be measured by a foot-rule. The mind which can
+traverse the immensities of space and hold them in its grasp, transcends
+the things it counts and weighs. As it is amongst earthly powers, so the
+law may hold betwixt sphere and sphere in the system of worlds, in the
+relations of bodies terrestrial and celestial to each other, that "God
+has chosen the weak things to put to shame the mighty, and the things
+that are not to bring to nought the things that are." Through the Church
+He is "making known to the potentates in the heavenly places His
+manifold wisdom" (iii, 10). The lowly can sing evermore with Mary in the
+Magnificat: "He that is mighty hath magnified me." If it be true that
+God spared not His Son for our salvation and has sealed us with the seal
+of His Spirit, if He chose us before the world's foundation to be His
+saints, He must set upon those saints an infinite value. We may despise
+ourselves; but He thinks great things of us.
+
+And is this, after all, so hard to understand? If the alternative were
+put to some owner of wide lands and houses full of treasure: "Now, you
+must lose that fine estate, or see your own son lost and ruined! You
+must part with a hundred thousand pounds--or with your best friend!"
+there could be no doubt in such a case what the choice would be of a man
+of sense and worth, one who sees with the eyes of the heart. Shall we
+think less nobly of God than of a right-minded man amongst
+ourselves?--Suppose, again, that one of our great cities were so full of
+wealth that the poorest were housed in palaces and fared sumptuously
+every day, though its citizens were profligates and thieves and cowards!
+What would its opulence and luxury be worth? Is it not evident that
+_character_ is the only possession of intrinsic value, and that this
+alone gives worth and weight to other properties? "The saints that are
+in the earth and the excellent" are earth's riches.
+
+So far as we can judge of His ways, the great God who made us cares
+comparatively little about the upholstery and machinery of the universe;
+but He cares immensely about men, about the character and destiny of
+men. There is nothing in all that physical science discloses for God to
+_love_, nothing kindred to Himself. "Hast thou considered my servant
+Job?" the Hebrew poet pictures Him saying before heaven and hell!--"Hast
+thou considered my servant Job?--a perfect man and upright: there is
+none like him in the earth." How proud God is of a man like that, in a
+world like this. Who can tell the value that the Father of glory sets
+upon the tried fidelity of His humblest servant here on earth; the
+intensity with which He reciprocates the confidence of one timid,
+trembling human heart, or the simple reverence of one little child that
+lisps His awful name? "He _taketh pleasure_ in them that fear Him, in
+those that hope in His mercy!" Beneath His feet all the worlds lie
+spread in their starry splendour, our sun with its train of planets no
+more than one glimmering spot of light amongst ten thousand. But amidst
+this magnificence, what is the sight that wins His tender fatherly
+regard? "To that man will I look, that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
+and that trembles at my word." Thus saith the High and Lofty One that
+inhabiteth eternity. The Creator rejoices in His works as at the
+beginning, the Lord of heaven and earth in His dominion. But these are
+not His "inheritance." That is in the love of His children, in the
+character and number of His saints. _We_ are to be the praise of His
+glory.
+
+Let us learn, then, to respect ourselves. Let us not take the world's
+tinsel for wealth, and spend our time, like the man in Bunyan's dream,
+scraping with "the muck-rake" while the crown of life shines above our
+head. The riches of a Church--nay, of any human community--lies not in
+its moneyed resources, but in the men and women that compose it, in
+their godlike attributes of mind and heart, in their knowledge, their
+zeal, their love to God and man, in the purity, the gentleness, the
+truthfulness and courage and fidelity that are found amongst them. These
+are the qualities which give distinction to human life, and are
+beautiful in the eyes of God and holy angels. "Man that is in honour and
+understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish."
+
+III. One thing more we need to understand, or what we have seen already
+will be of little practical avail. We may see glorious visions, we may
+cherish high aspirations; and they may prove to be but the dreams of
+vanity. Nay, it is conceivable that God Himself might have wealth
+invested in our nature, a treasure beyond price, shipwrecked and sunk
+irrecoverably through our sin. What means exist for realizing this
+inheritance? what power is there at work to recover these forfeited
+hopes, and that glory of God of which we have come so miserably short?
+
+The answer lies in the apostle's words: "That ye may know what is the
+exceeding greatness of His power toward us that believe,"--a power
+measured by "the energy of the might of His strength[67] which He
+wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at
+His right hand in the heavenly places." This is the power that we have
+to count upon, the force that is yoked to the world's salvation and is
+at the service of our faith. Its energy has turned the tide and reversed
+the stream of nature--in the person of Jesus Christ and in the course of
+human history. It has changed death to life. Above all, it certifies the
+forgiveness of sin and releases us from its liabilities; it transforms
+the law of sin and death into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus.
+
+We preachers hear it said sometimes: "You live in a speculative world.
+Your doctrines are ideal and visionary,--altogether too high for men as
+they are and the world as we find it. Human nature and experience, the
+coarse realities of life are all against you."
+
+What would our objectors have said at the grave-side of Jesus? "The
+beautiful dreamer, the sublime idealist! He was too good for a world
+such as ours. It was sure to end like this. His ideas of life were
+utterly impracticable." So they would have moralized. "And the good
+prophet talked--strangest fanaticism of all--of rising again on the
+third day! One thing at least we know, that the dead are dead and gone
+from us. No, we shall never see Jesus or His like again. Purity cannot
+live in this infected air. The grave ends all hope for men." But,
+despite human nature and human experience, He has risen again, He lives
+for ever! That is the apostle's message and testimony to the world. For
+those "who believe" it, all things are possible. A life is within our
+reach that seemed far off as earth from heaven. _You_ may become a
+perfect saint.
+
+From His open grave Christ breathed on His disciples, and through them
+on all mankind, the Holy Spirit. This is the efficient cause of
+Christianity,--the Spirit that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. The
+limit to its efficacy lies in the defects of our faith, in our failure
+to comprehend what God gave us in His Son. Is anything now too hard for
+the Lord? Shall anything be called impossible, in the line of God's
+promise and man's spiritual need? Can we put an arrest upon the working
+of this mysterious force, upon the Spirit of the new life, and say to
+it: Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?
+
+Look at Jesus where He was--the poor, tortured, wounded body, slain by
+our sins, lying cold and still in Joseph's grave: then lift up your eyes
+and see Him _where He is_,--enthroned in the worship and wonder of
+heaven! Measure by that distance, by the sweep and lift of that almighty
+Arm, the strength of the forces engaged to your salvation, the might of
+the powers at work through the ages for the redemption of humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] See Westcott and Hort's _New Testament in Greek_, vol. ii., pp.
+124, 125.
+
+[62] Dr. Beet abides by the critical text. He solves the difficulty by
+giving =pistis= a double sense: "the faith among you in the Lord Jesus,
+and the _faithfulness_ towards all the saints." See his Commentary on
+_Ephesians, etc._, pp. 284-6.
+
+[63] In 1 Thess. i. 7-9; 2 Thess. i. 4, the same thought enters into
+Paul's thanksgiving; comp. 2 Cor. ix. 2.
+
+[64] This is the emphatic =epignosis=, so frequent in the later
+epistles. See Lightfoot's _note_ on Col. i. 9; or Cremer's _Lexicon to
+N.T. Greek_.
+
+[65] See ch. iii. 3-5, iv. 11; and comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 26-40, etc.
+
+[66] Adolphe Monod: _Explication de l'epitre de S. Paul aux Ephesiens_.
+A deeply spiritual and suggestive Commentary.
+
+[67] In this amplitude of expression there is no idle heaping up of
+words. The four synonyms for _power_ have each a distinct force in the
+sentence. =Dynamis= is _power_ in general, as that which is able to
+effect some purpose; =energeia= is _energy_, power in effective action
+and operation; =kratos= is _might_, _mastery_, sovereign power,--in the
+New Testament used chiefly of the power of God; =ischys= is _force_,
+_strength_, power resident in some person and belonging to him. This is
+the order in which the words follow each other. Compare vi. 10 in the
+Greek.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTRINE.
+
+CHAPTER i. 20-iii. 13.
+
+    =Hypselon sphodra gemei ton noematon kai hyperonkon. Ha gar medamou
+    schedon ephthenxato, tauta entautha phesin.=
+
+    JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: _In epistolam ad Ephesios._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST._
+
+    "He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand
+    in the heavenly _places_, far above all rule, and authority, and
+    power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
+    world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in
+    subjection under His feet, and Him He gave--the head over all
+    things--to the Church which is His body,--the fulness of Him that
+    filleth all in all."--EPH. i. 20-23.
+
+
+The division that we make at verse 20, marking off at this point the
+commencement of the Doctrine of the epistle, may appear somewhat forced.
+The great doxology of the first half of the chapter is intensely
+theological; and the prayer which follows it, like that of the letter to
+the Colossians, melts into doctrine imperceptibly. The apostle teaches
+upon his knees. The things he has to tell his readers, and the things he
+has asked on their behalf from God, are to a great extent the same.
+Still the writer's attitude in the second chapter is manifestly that of
+teaching; and his doctrine there is so directly based upon the
+concluding sentences of his prayer, that it is necessary for logical
+arrangement to place these verses within the doctrinal section of the
+epistle.
+
+The resurrection of Christ made men sensible that a new force of life
+had come into the world, of incalculable potency. This power was in
+existence before. In prelusive ways, it has wrought in the world from
+its foundation, and since the fall of man. By the incarnation of the Son
+of God it took possession of human flesh; by His sacrificial death it
+won its decisive triumph. But the virtue of these acts of Divine grace
+lay in their hiding of power, in the self-abnegation of the Son of God
+who emptied Himself and took a servant's form, and became obedient unto
+death.
+
+With what a rebound did the "energy of the might of God's strength" put
+forth itself in Him, when once this sacrifice was accomplished! Even His
+disciples who had seen Jesus still the tempest and feed the multitude
+from a handful of bread and call back the spirit to its mortal frame,
+had not dreamed of the might of Godhead latent in Him, until they beheld
+Him risen from the dead. He had promised this in words; but they
+understood His words only when they saw the fact, when He actually stood
+before them "alive after His passion." The scene of Calvary--the cruel
+sufferings of their Master, His helpless ignominy and abandonment by
+God, the malignant triumph of his enemies--gave to this revelation an
+effect beyond measure astonishing and profound in its impression. From
+the stupor of grief and despair they were raised to a boundless hope, as
+Jesus rose from the death of the cross to glorious life and Godhead.
+
+Of the same nature was the effect produced by His manifestation to Paul
+himself. The Nazarene prophet known to Saul by report as an attractive
+teacher and worker of miracles, had made enormous pretensions,
+blasphemous if they were not true. He put Himself forward as the Messiah
+and the very Son of God! But when brought to the test, His power utterly
+failed. God disowned and forsook Him; and He "was crucified of
+weakness." His followers declared, indeed, that He had returned from the
+grave. But who could believe them, a handful of Galilean enthusiasts,
+desperately clinging to the name of their disgraced leader! If He has
+risen, why does He not show Himself to others? Who can accept a
+crucified Messiah? The new faith is a madness, and an insult to our
+common Judaism! Such were Saul's former thoughts of the Christ. But when
+his challenge was met and the Risen One confronted him in the way to
+Damascus, when from that Form of insufferable glory there came a voice
+saying, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest!" it was enough. Instantly
+the conviction penetrated his soul, "He liveth by the power of God."
+Saul's previous reasonings against the Messiahship of Jesus by the same
+rigorous logic were now turned into arguments for Him.
+
+It is "_the_ Christ," let us observe, in whom God "wrought raising Him
+from the dead": the Christ of Jewish hope (ver. 12), the centre and sum
+of the Divine counsel for the world (ver. 10),[68] the Christ whom in
+that moment never to be forgotten the humbled Saul recognized in the
+crucified Nazarene.
+
+The demonstration of the power of Christianity Paul had found in the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ. The power which raised Him from the dead
+is the working energy of our faith. Let us see what this mysterious
+power wrought in the Redeemer Himself; and then we will consider how it
+bears upon us. There are two steps indicated in Christ's exaltation: He
+was raised _from the death of the cross to new life amongst men_; and
+again from the world of men He was raised _to the throne of God in
+heaven_. In the enthronement of Jesus Christ at the Father's right
+hand, verses 22, 23 further distinguish two separate acts: there was
+conferred on Him _a universal Lordship_; and He was made specifically
+_Head of the Church_, being given to her for her Lord and Life, He who
+contains the fulness of the Godhead. Such is the line of thought marked
+out for us.
+
+
+I. _God raised the Christ from the dead._
+
+This assertion is the corner-stone of St Paul's life and doctrine, and
+of the existence of Christendom. Did the event really take place? There
+were Christians at Corinth who affirmed, "There is no resurrection of
+the dead." And there are followers of Jesus now who with deep sadness
+confess, like the author of _Obermann once more_:
+
+    "Now He is dead! Far hence He lies
+      In the lorn Syrian town;
+    And on His grave, with shining eyes,
+      The Syrian stars look down."
+
+If we are driven to this surrender, compelled to think that it was an
+apparition, a creation of their own passionate longing and heated fancy
+that the disciples saw and conversed with during those forty days, an
+apparition sprung from his fevered remorse that arrested Saul on the
+Damascus road--if we no longer believe in Jesus and the resurrection, it
+is in vain that we still call ourselves Christians. The foundation of
+the Christian creed is struck away from under our feet. Its spell is
+broken; its energy is gone.
+
+Individual men may and do continue to believe in Christ, with no faith
+in the supernatural, men who are sceptics in regard to His resurrection
+and miracles. They believe in Himself, they say, not in His legendary
+wonders; in His character and teaching, in His beneficent influence--in
+the _spiritual_ Christ, whom no physical marvel can exalt above His
+intrinsic greatness. And such trust in Him, where it is sincere, He
+accepts for all that it is worth, from the believer's heart. But this is
+not the faith that saved Paul, and built the Church. It is not the faith
+which will save the world. It is the faith of compromise and transition,
+the faith of those whose conscience and heart cling to Christ while
+their reason gives its verdict against Him. Such belief may hold good
+for the individuals who profess it; but it must die with them. No skill
+of reasoning or grace of sentiment will for long conceal its
+inconsistency. The plain, blunt sense of mankind will decide again, as
+it has done already, that Jesus Christ was either a blasphemer, or He
+was the Son of the eternal God; either He rose from the dead in very
+truth, or His religion is a fable. Christianity is not bound up with the
+infallibility of the Church, whether in Pope or Councils, nor with the
+inerrancy of the letter of Scripture: it stands or falls with the
+reality of the facts of the gospel, with the risen life of Christ and
+His presence in the Spirit amongst men.
+
+The fact of Christ's resurrection is one upon which modern science has
+nothing new to say. The law of death is not a recent discovery. Men were
+as well aware of its universality in the first century as they are in
+the nineteenth, and as little disposed as we are ourselves to believe in
+the return of the dead to bodily life. The stark reality of death makes
+us all sceptics. Nothing is clearer from the narratives than the utter
+surprise of the friends of Jesus at His reappearance, and their complete
+unpreparedness for the event. They were not eager, but "_slow_ of heart
+to believe." Their very love to the Master, as in the case of Thomas,
+made them fearful of self-deception. It is a shallow and an unjust
+criticism that dismisses the disciples as interested witnesses and
+predisposed to faith in the resurrection of their dead Master. Should we
+be thus credulous in the case of our best-beloved dead? The instinctive
+feeling that meets any thought of the kind, after the fact of death is
+once certain, is rather that of deprecation and aversion, such as Martha
+expressed when Jesus went to call her brother from his grave. In all the
+long record of human imposture and illusion, no resurrection story has
+ever found general credence outside of the Biblical revelation. No
+system of faith except our own has ever been built on the allegation
+that a dead man rose from the grave.
+
+Christ's was not the only resurrection; but it is the only _final_
+resurrection. Lazarus of Bethany left his tomb at the word of Jesus, a
+living man; but he was still a mortal man, doomed to see corruption. He
+returned from the grave on this side, as he had entered it, "bound hand
+and foot with grave-clothes." Not so with the Christ. He passed through
+the region of death and issued on the immortal side, escaped from the
+bondage of corruption. Therefore He is called the "firstfruits" and "the
+firstborn _out of_ the dead."[69] Hence the alteration manifest in the
+risen form of Jesus. He was "changed," as St Paul conceives those will
+be who await on earth their Lord's return (1 Cor. xv. 51). The mortal in
+Him was swallowed up of life. The corpse that was laid in Joseph's tomb
+was there no longer. From it another body has issued, recognized for the
+same person by look and voice and movement, but indescribably
+transfigured. Visible and tangible as the body of the Risen One
+was--"Handle me, and see," He said--it was superior to material
+limitations; it belonged to a state whose laws transcend the range of
+our experience, in which the body is the pliant instrument of the
+animating spirit. From the Person of the risen Saviour the apostle
+formed his conception of the "spiritual body," the "house from heaven"
+with which, as he teaches, each of the saints will be clothed--the
+wasted form that we lay down in the grave being transformed into the
+semblance of His "body of glory, according to the mighty working whereby
+He is able to subdue all things to Himself" (Phil. iii. 20, 21).
+
+The resurrection of the Christ inaugurated a new order of things. It was
+like the appearance of the first living organism amidst dead matter, or
+of the first rational consciousness in the unconscious world. He "is,"
+says the apostle, the "beginning, first-begotten out of the dead" (Col.
+i. 18). With the harvest filling our granaries, we cease to wonder at
+the firstfruits; and in the new heavens and earth Christ's resurrection
+will seem an entirely natural thing. Immortality will then be the normal
+condition of human existence.
+
+That resurrection, nevertheless, did homage to the fundamental law of
+science and of reason, that every occurrence, ordinary or extraordinary,
+shall have an adequate cause. The event was not more singular and unique
+than the nature of Him to whom it befell. Looking back over the Divine
+life and deeds of Jesus, St Peter said: "It was not possible that He
+should be holden of death." How unfitting and repugnant to thought, that
+the common death of all men should come upon Jesus Christ! There was
+that in His Person, in its absolute purity and godlikeness, which
+repelled the touch of corruption. He was "marked out," writes our
+apostle, "as Son of God, _according to His spirit of holiness_, by His
+resurrection from the dead" (Rom. i. 4). These two signs of Godhead
+agree in Jesus; and the second is no more superhuman than the first. For
+Him the supernatural was natural. There was a mighty working of the
+being of God latent in Him, which transcended and subdued to itself the
+laws of our physical frame, even more completely than they do the laws
+and conditions of the lower realms of nature.
+
+II. The power which raised Jesus our Lord from the dead could not leave
+Him in the world of sin and death. Lifting Him from hades to earth, by
+another step it exalted the risen Saviour above the clouds, and _seated
+Him at God's right hand in the heavens_.
+
+The forty days were a halt by the way, a condescending pause in the
+operation of the almighty power that raised Him. "I ascend," He said to
+the first that saw Him,--"I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my
+God and your God." He must see His own in the world again; He must "show
+Himself alive after His passion by infallible proofs," that their hearts
+may be comforted and knit together in the assurance of faith, that they
+may be prepared to receive His Spirit and to bear their witness to the
+world. Then He will ascend up where He was before, returning to the
+Father's bosom. It was impossible that a spiritual body should tarry in
+a mortal dwelling; impossible that the familiar relations of
+discipleship should be resumed. No new follower can now ask of Him,
+"Rabbi, where dwellest Thou," under what roof amid the homes of men? For
+He dwells with those that love Him always and everywhere, like the
+Father (John xiv. 23). From this time Christ will not be known after the
+flesh, but as the "Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+"In the heavenlies" now abides the Risen One. This expression, so
+frequent in the epistle as to be characteristic of it,[70] denotes not
+locality so much as condition and sphere. It speaks of the bright and
+deathless world of God and the angels, of which the sky has always been
+to men the symbol. Thither Christ ascended in the eyes of His apostles
+on the fortieth day from His rising. Once before His death its
+brightness for a moment had irradiated His form upon the Mount of
+Transfiguration. Clad in the like celestial splendour He showed Himself
+to His future apostle Paul, as to one born out of due time, to make him
+His minister and witness. Since then, of all the multitudes that have
+loved His appearing, no other has looked upon Him with bodily eyes. He
+dwells with the Father in light unapproachable.
+
+But rest and felicity are not enough for Him. Christ sits at the right
+hand of power, that He may _rule_. In those heavenly places, it seems,
+there are thrones higher and lower, names more or less eminent, but His
+stands clear above them all. In the realms of space, in the epochs of
+eternity there is none to rival our Lord Jesus, no power that does not
+owe Him tribute. God "hath put all things under His feet." _The Christ_,
+who died on the cross, who rose in human form from the grave, is exalted
+to share the Father's glory and dominion, is filled with God's own
+fulness, and made without limitation or exception "Head over all
+things."
+
+In his enumeration of the angelic orders in verse 21, the apostle
+follows the phraseology current at the time, without giving any precise
+dogmatic sanction to it. The epistle to the Colossians furnishes a
+somewhat different list (ch. i. 16); and in 1 Corinthians xv. 24 we find
+the "principality, dominion, and power" without the "lordship." As
+Lightfoot says,[71] St Paul "brushes away all these speculations" about
+the ranks and titles of the angels, "without inquiring how much or how
+little truth there may be in them.... His language shows a spirit of
+impatience with this elaborate angelology." There is, perhaps, a passing
+reproof conveyed by this sentence to the "worshipping of the angels"
+inculcated at the present time in Colossae, to which other Asian Churches
+may have been drawn. "Paul's faith saw the Risen and Rising One passing
+through and beyond and above successive ranks of angelic powers, until
+there was in heaven no grandeur which He had not left behind. Then,
+after naming heavenly powers known to him, he uses a universal phrase
+covering 'not only' those known by men living on earth 'in the' present
+'age, but also' those names which will be needed and used to describe
+men and angels throughout the eternal future" (Beet).
+
+The apostle appropriates here two sentences of Messianic prophecy, from
+Psalms cx. and viii. The former was addressed to the Lord's Anointed,
+the King-Priest enthroned in Zion: "Sit thou on my right hand, until I
+make thine enemies thy footstool!" The latter text describes man in his
+pristine glory, as God formed him after His likeness and set him in
+command over His creation. This saying St Paul applies, with an
+unbounded scope, to the God-man raised from the dead, Founder of the new
+creation: "Thou madest Him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
+Thou hast put all things under His feet." To the former of these
+passages St Paul repeatedly alludes; indeed, since our Lord quoted it in
+this sense, it became the standing designation of His heavenly
+dignity.[72] The words of Psalm viii. are brought in evidence again in
+Hebrews ii. 5-10, and expounded from a somewhat different standpoint. As
+the writer of the other epistle shows, this coronation belongs to the
+human race, and it falls to the Son of man to win it. St Paul in quoting
+the same Psalm is not insensible of its human reference. It was a
+prophecy for Jesus and His brethren, for Christ and the Church. So it
+forms a natural transition from the thought of Christ's dominion over
+the universe (ver. 21) to that of His union with the Church (ver.
+22_b_).
+
+III. The second clause of verse 22 begins with an emphasis upon the
+_object_ which the English Version fails to recognize: "and _Him_ He
+gave"--the Christ exalted to universal authority--"_Him_ God gave, Head
+over all things [as He is], to the Church which is His body,--the
+fulness of Him who fills all things in all."
+
+At the topmost height of His glory, with thrones and princedoms beneath
+His feet, _Christ is given to the Church_! The Head over all things, the
+Lord of the created universe, He--and none less or lower--is the Head of
+redeemed humanity. For the Church "is His body" (this clause is
+interjected by way of explanation): she is the vessel of His Spirit, the
+organic instrument of His Divine-human life. As the spirit belongs to
+its body, by the like fitness the Christ in His surpassing glory is the
+possession of the community of believing men. The body claims its head,
+the wife her husband. No matter where Christ is, however high in heaven,
+He belongs to us. Though the Bride is lowly and of poor estate, He is
+hers! and she knows it, and holds fast His heart. She recks little of
+the people's ignorance and scorn, if their Master is her affianced Lord,
+and she the best-beloved in His eyes.
+
+How rich is this gift of the Father to the Church in the Son of His
+love, the concluding words of the paragraph declare: "Him He gave ... to
+the Church ... [gave] the fulness of Him that fills all in all." In the
+risen and enthroned Christ God bestowed on men a gift in which the
+Divine plenitude that fills creation is embraced. For this last clause,
+it is clear to us, does not qualify "the Church which is His body," and
+expositors have needlessly taxed their ingenuity with the incongruous
+apposition of "body" and "fulness"; it belongs to the grand Object of
+the foregoing description, to "the Christ" whom God raised from the dead
+and invested with His own prerogatives. The two separate designations,
+"Head over all things" and "Fulness of the All-filler," are parallel,
+and alike point back to _Him_ who stands with a weight of gathered
+emphasis--heaped up from verse 19 onwards--at the front of this last
+sentence (ver. 22_b_). There has been nothing to prepare the reader to
+ascribe the august title of the _pleroma_, the Divine fulness, to the
+Church--enough for her, surely, if she is His body and He God's gift to
+her--but there has been everything to prepare us to crown the Lord Jesus
+with this glory. To that which God had wrought in Him and bestowed on
+Him, as previously related, verse 23 adds something more and greater
+still; for it shows what God makes the Christ to be, not to the
+creatures, to the angels, to the Church, _but to God Himself_![73]
+
+Our text is in strict agreement with the sayings about "the fulness" in
+Colossians i. 15-20 and ii. 9, 10; as well as with the later references
+of this epistle, in chapter iii. 19, iv. 13; and with John i. 16. This
+title belongs to Christ as God is in Him and communicates to Him all
+Divine powers. It was, in the apostle's view, a new and distinct act by
+which the Father bestowed on the incarnate Son, raised by His power from
+the dead, the functions of Deity. Of this glory Christ had of His own
+accord "emptied Himself" in becoming man for our salvation (Phil. ii. 6,
+7). Therefore when the sacrifice was effected and the time of
+humiliation past, it "was the Father's pleasure that all the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him" (Col. i. 19). At no point did Christ
+exalt Himself, or arrogate the glory once renounced. He prayed, when the
+hour was come: "Now, Father, _glorify Thou me_ with Thine own self, with
+the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." It was for the
+Father to say, as He raised and enthroned Him: "Thou art my Son; I
+to-day have begotten Thee!" (Acts xiii. 33).
+
+Again there was poured into the empty, humbled and impoverished form of
+the Son of God the brightness of the Father's glory and the infinitude
+of the Father's authority and power. The majesty that He had foregone
+was restored to Him in undiminished measure. But how great a change
+meanwhile in Him who received it! This plenitude devolves not now on the
+eternal Son in His pure Godhead, but on the Christ, the Head and
+Redeemer of mankind. God who fills the universe with His presence, with
+His cherishing love and sustaining power, has conferred the fulness of
+all that He is upon our Christ. He has given Him, so replenished and
+perfected, to the body of His saints, that He may dwell and work in them
+for ever.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[68] See the note upon this definite article on p. 47.
+
+[69] =Prototokos ek ton nekron=, Col. i. 18: comp. Rom. vi. 13, x. 7,
+for the force of the preposition. Hence the peculiar =exanastasin te ek
+nekron= of Phil. iii. 10, 11,--the _out-and-out_ resurrection, which
+will utterly remove us from the sphere of death.
+
+[70] Ver. 3, ch. ii. 6, iii. 10, vi. 12; nowhere else in the New
+Testament. Comp., however, 1 Cor. xv. 40, 48; Phil. ii. 10; Heb. viii.
+5, ix. 23, xi. 16, xii. 22, where the adjective has the same kind of
+use.
+
+[71] _Note_ on Col. i. 16.
+
+[72] Matt. xxii. 41-46, also in Mark and Luke; Acts ii. 34, 35; Rom.
+viii. 34; Col. iii. 1; Heb. i. 13; 1 Peter iii. 22, etc.
+
+[73] The reader of the Old Testament, unless otherwise advertized, must
+inevitably have referred the words _who filleth all things in all_ to
+the Supreme God. See Jer. xxiii. 24; Isai. vi. 1, 3; Hag. ii. 7; Ps.
+xxxiii. 5, etc.; Exod. xxxi. 3. "That filleth all in all" is an
+attribute belonging to "the same God, that worketh all in all" (1 Cor.
+xii. 6). Comp. iv. 6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_FROM DEATH TO LIFE._
+
+    "And you _did He quicken_, when ye were dead through your trespasses
+    and sins, wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of
+    this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the
+    spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we
+    also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of
+    the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
+    even as the rest:--but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love
+    wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our
+    trespasses, quickened us together with the Christ (by grace have ye
+    been saved), and raised us up together and made us to sit together
+    in the heavenly _places_ in Christ Jesus."--EPH. ii. 1-6.
+
+
+We pass by a sudden transition, just as in Colossians i. 21, 22, from
+the thought of that which God wrought in Christ Himself to that which He
+works through Christ in believing men. So God raised, exalted, and
+glorified His Son Jesus Christ (i. 19-23)--_and you_! The finely woven
+threads of the apostle's thought are frequently severed, and awkward
+chasms made in the highway of his argument by our chapter and verse
+divisions. The words inserted in our Version (_did He quicken_) are
+borrowed by anticipation from verse 5; but they are more than supplied
+already in the foregoing context. "The same almighty Hand that was laid
+upon the body of the dead Christ and lifted Him from Joseph's grave to
+the highest seat in heaven, is now laid upon your soul. It has raised
+_you_ from the grave and death of sin to share by faith His celestial
+life."
+
+The apostle, in verse 3, pointedly includes amongst the "dead in
+trespasses and sins" himself and his Jewish fellow-believers as they
+"once lived," when they obeyed the motions and "volitions of the flesh,"
+and so were "by birth" not children of favour, as Jews presumed, but
+"children of anger, even as the rest."[74]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This passage gives us a sublime view of the event of our conversion. It
+associates that change in us with the stupendous miracle which took
+place in our Redeemer. The one act is a continuation of the other. There
+is an acting over again in us of Christ's crucifixion, resurrection and
+ascension, when we realize through faith that which was done for mankind
+in Him. At the same time, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus is no
+mere legacy, to be received or declined; it is not something done once
+for all, and left to be appropriated passively by our individual will.
+It is a "_power_ of God unto salvation," unceasingly operative and
+effective, that works "of faith and _unto faith_" that summons men to
+faith, challenging human confidence wherever its message travels and
+awakening the spiritual possibilities dormant in our nature.
+
+It is a supernatural force, then, which is at work upon us in the word
+of Christ. It is a resurrection-power, that turns death into life. And
+it is a power instinct with love. The love which went out towards the
+slain and buried Jesus when the Father stooped to raise Him from the
+dead, bends over us as we lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts
+itself with a might no less transcendent, that it may raise us from the
+dust of death to sit with Him in the heavenly places (vv. 4-6).
+
+Let us look at the two sides of the change effected in men by the
+gospel--at the death they leave, and the life into which they enter. Let
+us contemplate the task to which this unmatched power has set itself.
+
+I. _You that were dead_, the apostle says.
+
+Jesus Christ came into a dead world--He the one living man, alive in
+body, soul, and spirit--alive to God in the world. He was, like none
+besides, aware of God and of God's love, breathing in His Spirit,
+"living not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from His
+mouth." "This," He said, "is life eternal." If His definition was
+correct, if it be life to know God, then the world into which Christ
+entered by His human birth, the world of heathendom and Judaism, was
+veritably dying or dead--"dead indeed unto God."
+
+Its condition was visible to discerning eyes. It was a world rotting in
+its corruption, mouldering in its decay, and which to His pure sense had
+the moral aspect and odour of the charnel-house. We realize very
+imperfectly the distress, the inward nausea, the conflict of disgust and
+pity which the fact of being in such a world as this and belonging to it
+caused in the nature of Jesus Christ, in a soul that was in perfect
+sympathy with God. Never was there loneliness such as His, the solitude
+of life in a region peopled with the dead. The joy which Christ had in
+His little flock, in those whom the Father had given Him out of the
+world, was proportionately great. In them He found companionship,
+teachableness, signs of a heart awakening towards God--men to whom life
+was in some degree what it was to Him. He had come, as the prophet in
+his vision, into "the valley full of dry bones," and He "prophesied to
+these slain, that they might live." What a comfort to see, at His first
+words, a shaking in the valley,--to see some who stirred at His voice,
+who stood upon their feet and gathered round Him--not yet a great army,
+but a band of living men! In their breasts, inspired from His, was the
+life of the future. "I am come," He said, "that they might have life."
+It was the work of Jesus Christ to breathe His vital spirit into the
+corpse of humanity, to reanimate the world.
+
+When St Paul speaks of his readers in their heathen condition as "dead,"
+it is not a figure of speech. He does not mean that they were like dead
+men, that their state resembled death; "nor only that they were in peril
+of death; but he signifies a real and present death" (Calvin). They
+were, in the inmost sense and truth of things, _dead men_. We are
+twofold creatures, two-lived,--spirits cased in flesh. Our human nature
+is capable, therefore, of strange duplicities. It is possible for us to
+be alive and flourishing upon one side of our being, while we are
+paralyzed or lifeless upon the other. As our bodies live in commerce
+with the light and air, in the environment of house and food and daily
+exercise of the limbs and senses under the economy of material nature,
+so our spirits live by the breath of prayer, by faith and love towards
+God, by reverence and filial submission, by communion with things unseen
+and eternal. "With Thee," says the Psalmist to his God, "is the fountain
+of life: in Thy light we see light." We must daily resort to that
+fountain and drink of its pure stream, we must faithfully walk in that
+light, or there is no such life for us. The soul that wants a true faith
+in God, wants the proper spring and principle of its being. It sees not
+the light, it bears not the voices, it breathes not the air of that
+higher world where its origin and its destiny lie.
+
+The man who walks the earth a sinner against God, becomes by the act and
+fact of his transgression a dead man. He has imbibed the fatal poison;
+it runs in his veins. The doom of sin lies on his unforgiven spirit. He
+carries death and judgement about with him. They lie down with him at
+night and wake with him in the morning; they take part in his
+transactions; they sit by his side in the feast of life. His works are
+"dead works"; his joys and hopes are all shadowed and tainted. Within
+his living frame he bears a coffined soul. With the machinery of life,
+with the faculties and possibilities of a spiritual being, the man lies
+crushed under the activity of the senses, wasted and decaying for want
+of the breath of the Spirit of God. In its coldness and
+powerlessness--too often in its visible corruption--his nature shows the
+symptoms of advancing death. It is dead as the tree is dead, cut off
+from its root; as the fire is dead, when the spark is gone out; dead as
+a man is dead, when the heart stops.
+
+As it is with the departed saints sleeping in Christ,--"put to death,
+indeed, in the flesh, but living in the spirit,"--so by a terrible
+inversion with the wicked in this life. They are put to death, indeed,
+in the spirit, while they live in the flesh. They may be and often are
+powerfully alive and active in their relations to the world of sense,
+while on the unseen and Godward side utterly paralyzed. Ask such a man
+about his business or family concerns; touch on affairs of politics or
+trade,--and you deal with a living mind, its powers and susceptibilities
+awake and alert. But let the conversation pass to other themes; sound
+him on questions of the inner life; ask him what he thinks of Christ,
+how he stands towards God, how he fares in the spiritual conflict,--and
+you strike a note to which there is no response. You have taken him out
+of his element. He is a practical man, he tells you; he does not live in
+the clouds, or hunt after shadows; he believes in hard facts, in things
+that he can grasp and handle. "The natural man perceiveth not the things
+of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him." They are pictures to
+the eye of the blind, heavenly music to the stone-deaf.
+
+And yet that hardened man of the world--starve and ignore his own spirit
+and shut up its mystic chambers as he will--cannot easily destroy
+himself. He has not extirpated his religious nature, nor crushed out,
+though he has suppressed, the craving for God in his breast. And when
+the callous surface of his life is broken through, under some unusual
+stress, some heavy loss or the shock of a great bereavement, one may
+catch a glimpse of the deeper world within of which the man himself was
+so little conscious. And what is to be seen there? Haunting memories of
+past sin, fears of a conscience fretted already by the undying worm,
+forms of weird and ghostly dread flitting amid the gloom and dust of
+death through that closed house of the spirit,--
+
+    "The bat and owl inhabit here:
+      The snake nests on the altar stone:
+    The sacred vessels moulder near:
+      The image of the God is gone!"
+
+In this condition of death the word of life comes to men. It is the
+state not of heathendom alone; but of those also, favoured with the
+light of revelation, who have not opened to it the eyes of the heart, of
+all who are "doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts"--who are
+governed by their own impulses and ideas and serve no will above the
+world of sense.[75] Without distinction of birth or formal religious
+standing, "all" who thus live and walk are dead while they live. Their
+_trespasses and sins_ have killed them. From first to last Scripture
+testifies: "Your sins have separated between you and your God." We find
+a hundred excuses for our irreligion: there is the cause. There is
+nothing in the universe to separate any one of us from the love and
+fellowship of his Maker but his own unforsaken sin.
+
+It is true, there are other hindrances to faith, intellectual
+difficulties of great weight and seriousness, that press upon many
+minds. For such men Christ has all possible sympathy and patience. There
+is a real, though hidden faith that "lives in honest doubt." Some men
+have more faith than they suppose, while others certainly have much
+less. One has a name to live, and yet is dead; another, perchance, has a
+name to die, and yet is alive to God through Jesus Christ. There are
+endless complications, self-contradictions, and misunderstandings in
+human nature. "Many are first" in the ranks of religious profession and
+notoriety, "which shall be last, and the last first." We make the
+largest allowance for this element of uncertainty in the line that
+bounds faith from unfaith; "The Lord knoweth them that are His." No
+intellectual difficulty, no mere misunderstanding, will ultimately or
+for long separate between God and the soul that He has made.
+
+It is _antipathy_ that separates. "They did not like to retain God in
+their knowledge"; that is Paul's explanation of the ungodliness and vice
+of the ancient world. And it holds good still in countless instances.
+"Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion in order to
+encourage each other in sin, because they need encouragement. They know
+that they ought to be other than they are; but are glad to avail
+themselves of anything that looks like argument, to overcome their
+consciences withal" (Newman). The fashionable scepticism of the day too
+often conceals an inner revolt against the moral demands of the
+Christian life; it is the pretext of a carnal mind, which is "enmity
+against God, because it is not subject to His law." Christ's sentence
+upon unbelief as He knew it was this: "Light is come into the world; and
+men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." So
+said the keenest and the kindest judge of men. If we are refusing Him
+our faith, let us be very sure that this condemnation does not touch
+ourselves. Is there no passion that bribes and suborns the intellect? no
+desire in the soul that dreads His entrance? no evil deeds that shelter
+themselves from His accusing light?
+
+When the apostle says of his Gentile readers that they "once walked in
+the way of the age, according to the course of this world,[76] according
+to the prince of the power of the air," the former part of his statement
+is clear enough. The age in which he lived was godless to the last
+degree; the stream of the world's life ran in turbid course toward moral
+ruin. But the second clause is obscure. The "prince" (or "ruler") who
+guides the world along its career of rebellion is manifestly Satan, the
+spirit of darkness and hate whom St Paul entitles "the god of this
+world" (2 Cor. iv. 4), and in whom Jesus recognized, under the name of
+"the prince of the world," His great antagonist (John xiv. 30).
+
+But what has this spirit of evil to do with "the air"? The Jewish rabbis
+supposed that the terrestrial atmosphere was Satan's abode, that it was
+peopled by demons flitting about invisibly in the encompassing element.
+But this is a notion foreign to Scripture--certainly not contained in
+chapter vi. 12--and, in its bare physical sense, without point or
+relevance to this passage. There follows in immediate apposition to "the
+domain of the air, _the spirit_ that now works in the sons of
+disobedience." Surely, _the air_ here partakes (if it be only here) of
+the figurative significance of _spirit_ (i.e. _breath_). St Paul refines
+the Jewish idea of evil spirits dwelling in the surrounding atmosphere
+into an ethical conception of _the atmosphere of the world_, as that
+from which the sons of disobedience draw their breath and receive the
+spirit that inspires them. Here lies, in truth, the dominion of Satan.
+In other words, Satan constituted the _Zeitgeist_.
+
+As Beck profoundly remarks upon this text:[77] "The Power of the air is
+a fitting designation for the prevailing spirit of the times, whose
+influence spreads itself like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of
+the world. It manifests itself as a contagious nature-power; and a
+_spiritus rector_ works within it, which takes possession of the world
+of men, alike in individuals and in society, and assumes the direction
+of it. The form of expression here employed is based on the conception
+of evil peculiar to Scripture. In Scripture, evil and the principle of
+evil are not conceived in a purely spiritual way; nor could this be the
+case in a world of fleshly constitution, where the spiritual has the
+sensuous for its basis and its vehicle. Spiritual evil exists as a power
+immanent in cosmical nature."[78] Concerning great tracts of the earth,
+and large sections even of Christianized communities, we must still
+confess with St John: "The world lieth in the Evil One." The air is
+impregnated with the infection of sin;[79] its germs float about us
+constantly, and wherever they find lodgement they set up their deadly
+fever. Sin is the malarial poison native to our soil; it is an epidemic
+that runs its course through the entire "age of this world."
+
+Above this feverous, sin-laden atmosphere the apostle sees God's anger
+brooding in threatening clouds. For our trespasses and sins are, after
+all, not forced on us by our environment. Those offences by which we
+provoke God, lie in our nature; they are no mere casual acts, they
+belong to our bias and disposition. Sin is a constitutional malady.
+There exists a bad element in our human nature, which corresponds but
+too truly to the course and current of the world around us. This the
+apostle acknowledges for himself and his law-honouring Jewish kindred:
+"We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." So he wrote in
+the sad confession of Romans vii. 14-23: "I see a different law in my
+members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into
+captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
+
+It is upon this "other law," the contradiction of His own, upon the
+sinfulness beneath the sin, that God's displeasure rests. Human law
+notes the overt act: "the Lord looketh upon the heart." There is
+nothing more bitter and humiliating to a conscientious man than the
+conviction of this penetrating Divine insight, this detection to himself
+of his incurable sin and the hollowness of his righteousness before God.
+How it confounds the proud Pharisee to learn that he _is_ as other men
+are,--and even as this publican!
+
+"The sons of disobedience" must needs be "children of wrath." All sin,
+whether in nature or practice, is the object of God's fixed displeasure.
+It cannot be matter of indifference to our Father in heaven that His
+human children are disobedient toward Himself. Children of His favour or
+anger we are each one of us, and at every moment. We "keep His
+commandments, and abide in His love"; or we do not keep them, and are
+excluded. It is His smile or frown that makes the sunshine or the gloom
+of our inner life. How strange that men should argue that God's love
+forbids His wrath! It is, in truth, the cause of it. I could neither
+love nor fear a God who did not care enough about me to be angry with me
+when I sin. If my child does wilful wrong, if by some act of greed or
+passion he imperils his moral future and destroys the peace and
+well-being of the house, shall I not be grieved with him, with an anger
+proportioned to the love I bear him? How much more shall your heavenly
+Father--how much more justly and wisely and mercifully!
+
+St Paul feels no contradiction between the words of verse 3 and those
+that follow. The same God whose wrath burns against the sons of
+disobedience while they so continue, is "rich in mercy" and "loved us
+even when we were dead in our trespasses!" He pities evil men, and to
+save them spared not His Son from death; but Almighty God, the Father of
+glory, hates and loathes the evil that is in them, and has determined
+that if they will not let it go they shall perish with it.
+
+II. Such was the death in which Paul and his readers once had lain. But
+God in His "great love" has "_made them to live_ along with the Christ."
+
+How wonderful to have witnessed a resurrection: to see the pale cheek of
+the little maid, Jairus' daughter, flush again with the tints of life,
+and the still frame begin to stir, and the eyes softly open--and she
+looks upon the face of Jesus! or to watch Lazarus, four days dead,
+coming out of his tomb, slowly, and as one dreaming, with hands and feet
+bound in the grave-clothes. Still more marvellous to have beheld the
+Prince of Life at the dawn of the third day issue from Joseph's grave,
+bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen glory as one
+refreshed from slumber.
+
+But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for their marvel, that
+take place upon this earth day by day. When a human soul awakes from its
+trespasses and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart that
+was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God breathes into a spirit lying
+powerless and buried in the flesh, there is as true a rising from the
+dead as when Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was of this
+spiritual resurrection that He said: "The hour cometh, and now is, when
+the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
+shall live." Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily
+resurrection of mankind: "Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in
+which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come
+forth!" The second wonder only matches and consummates the first (John
+v. 24-28).
+
+"This is life eternal, to know God the Father,"--the life, as the
+apostle elsewhere calls it, that is "life indeed." It came to St Paul by
+a new creation, when, as he describes it, "God who said, Light shall
+shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
+knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ." We are born
+again--the God-consciousness is born within us: an hour mysterious and
+decisive as that in which our personal consciousness first emerged and
+the soul knew itself. Now it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: "I
+have seen God face to face; and my life is preserved." God and the soul
+have met in Christ--and are reconciled.
+
+The words the apostle uses--_gave us life_--_raised us up_--_seated us
+in the heavenly places_--embrace the whole range of salvation. "Those
+united with Christ are through grace delivered from their state of
+death, not only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation of
+Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed to them; but by the
+life-giving energy of God they are brought out of their condition of
+death into a new and actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of
+the Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration" (Beck).
+This comprehensive action of the Divine grace upon believing men takes
+place by a constant and constantly deepening union of the soul with
+Christ. This is well expressed by A. Monod: "The entire history of the
+Son of man is reproduced in the man who believes in Him, not by a simple
+moral analogy, but by a spiritual communication which is the true secret
+of our justification as well as of our sanctification, and indeed of our
+whole salvation."
+
+There is no repetition in the three verbs employed, which are alike
+extended by the Greek preposition _with_ (_syn_). The first sentence
+(raised us up _with the Christ_) virtually includes everything; it shows
+us one with Christ who lives evermore to God. The second sentence
+gathers into its scope all believers--the _you_ of verse 1 and the _we_
+of verse 3: "He raised us up together, and together made us sit in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Nothing is more characteristic of our
+epistle than this turn of thought. To the conception of our _union with
+Christ_ in His celestial life, it adds that of our _union with each
+other in Christ_ as sharers in common of that life. Christ "reconciles
+us in one body unto God" (ver. 16). We sit not alone, but together in
+the heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this completes our
+salvation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[74] For the antithesis of "you" and "we," comp. vv. 11-18, ch. i, 12,
+13; also Rom. iii. 19, 23 (_For there is no distinction_), Gal. ii. 15.
+
+[75] =Poiountes ta thelemata tes sarkos kai ton dianoion= (ver. 3).
+
+[76] Perhaps this double rendering may bring out the force of =kata to
+aiona tou kosmou toutou=.
+
+[77] In the posthumous _Erklaerung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser_--a
+valuable exposition, marked by Beck's theological acumen and lucidity.
+
+[78] The =physei= of verse 3 thus corresponds to the =exousia tou aeros=
+of verse 2. "Sin entered into _the world_" (=kosmos=), Rom. v. 12, which
+signifies more than the nature of individual men.
+
+[79] I John iii. 8; comp. John viii. 41-44.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_SAVED FOR AN END._
+
+    "That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
+    grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye
+    been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, _it is_ the
+    gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His
+    workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
+    prepared that we should walk in them."--EPH. ii. 7-10.
+
+
+The plan which God has formed for men in Christ is of great dimensions
+every way,--in its length no less than in its breadth and height. He
+"raised us up and seated us together [Gentiles with Jews] in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that _in the ages which are coming on_
+He might show the surpassing riches of His grace." All the races of
+mankind and all future ages are embraced in the redeeming purpose, and
+are to share in its boundless wealth. Nor are the ages past excluded
+from its operations. God "afore prepared the good works in which" He
+summons us to walk. The highway of the new life has been in building
+since time began.
+
+Thus large and limitless is the range of "the purpose and grace given us
+in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (2 Tim. i. 9). But what strikes us
+most in this passage is the exuberance of the grace itself. Twice over
+the apostle exclaims, "By grace you are saved": once in verse 5, in an
+eager, almost jealous parenthesis, where he hastens to assure the
+readers of their deliverance from the fearful condition just described
+(vv. 1-3, 5). Again, deliberately and with full definition he states the
+same fact, in verse 8: "For by grace you are saved, through faith; and
+this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It does not come of
+works, to the end that none may boast."
+
+These words place us on familiar ground. We recognize the Paul of
+Galatians and Romans, the dialect and accent of the apostle of salvation
+by faith. But scarcely anywhere do we find this wonder-working grace so
+affluently described. "God being rich in mercy, for the great love
+wherewith He loved us--the exceeding riches of His grace, shown in
+kindness toward us--the gift of God." _Mercy_, _love_, _kindness_,
+_grace_, _gift_: what a constellation is here! These terms present the
+character of God in the gospel under the most delightful aspects, and in
+vivid contrast to the picture of our human state outlined in the
+beginning of the chapter.
+
+_Mercy_ denotes the Divine pitifulness towards feeble, suffering men,
+akin to those "compassions of God" to which the apostle repeatedly
+appeals.[80] It is a constant attribute of God in the Old Testament, and
+fills much the same place there that grace does in the New. "Of mercy
+and judgement" do the Psalmists sing--of mercy most. Out of the thunder
+and smoke of Sinai He declared His name: "Jehovah, a God full of
+compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and
+truth, keeping mercy for thousands." The dread of God's justice, the
+sense of His dazzling holiness and almightiness threw His mercy into
+bright relief and gave to it an infinite preciousness. It is the
+contrast which brings in "mercy" here, in verse 4, by antithesis to
+"wrath" (ver. 3).[81] These qualities are complementary. The sternest
+and strongest natures are the most compassionate. God is "_rich_ in
+mercy." The wealth of His Being pours itself out in the exquisite
+tendernesses, the unwearied forbearance and forgivingness of His
+compassion towards men. The Judge of all the earth, whose hate of evil
+is the fire of hell, is gentler than the softest-hearted mother,--rich
+in mercy as He is grand and terrible in wrath.
+
+God's mercy regards us as we are weak and miserable: His _love_ regards
+us as we are, in spite of trespass and offence, His offspring,--objects
+of "much love" amid much displeasure, "even when we were dead through
+our trespasses." What does the story of the prodigal son mean but this?
+and what Christ's great word to Nicodemus (John iii. 16)?--_Grace_ and
+_kindness_ are love's executive. Grace is love in administration, love
+counteracting sin and seeking our salvation. Christ is the embodiment of
+grace; the cross its supreme expression; the gospel its message to
+mankind; and Paul himself its trophy and witness.[82] The "overpassing
+riches" of grace is that affluence of wealth in which through Christ it
+"superabounded" to the apostolic age and has outdone the magnitude of
+sin (Rom. v. 20), in such measure that St Paul sees future ages gazing
+with wonder at its benefactions to himself and his fellow-believers.
+Shown "in _kindness_ toward us," he says,--in a condescending
+fatherliness, that forgets its anger and softens its old severity into
+comfort and endearment. God's kindness is the touch of His hand, the
+accent of His voice, the cherishing breath of His Spirit. Finally, this
+generosity of the Divine grace, this infinite goodwill of God toward
+men, takes expression in _the gift_--the gift of Christ, the gift of
+righteousness (Rom. v. 15-18), the gift of eternal life (Rom. vi. 23);
+or--regarded, as it is here, in the light of experience and
+possession--_the gift of salvation_.
+
+The opposition of _gift_ and _debt_, of gratuitous salvation through
+faith to salvation earned by works of law, belongs to the marrow of St
+Paul's divinity. The teaching of the great evangelical epistles is
+condensed into the brief words of verses 8 and 9. The reason here
+assigned for God's dealing with men by way of gift and making them
+absolutely debtors--"lest any one should boast"--was forced upon the
+apostle's mind by the stubborn pride of legalism; it is stated in terms
+identical with those of the earlier letters. Men will glory in their
+virtues before God; they flaunt the rags of their own righteousness, if
+any such pretext, even the slightest, remains to them. We sinners are a
+proud race, and our pride is oftentimes the worst of our sins. Therefore
+God humbles us by His compassion. He makes to us a free gift of His
+righteousness, and excludes every contribution from our store of merit;
+for if we could supply anything, we should inevitably boast as though
+all were our own. We must be content to receive mercy, love, grace,
+kindness--everything, without deserving the least fraction of the
+immense sum. How it strips our vanity; how it crushes us to the
+dust--"the weight of pardoning love!"
+
+Concerning the office of _faith_ in salvation we have already spoken in
+Chapter IV.[83] It is on the objective fact rather than the subjective
+means of salvation that the apostle lays stress in this passage. His
+readers do not seem to have realized sufficiently what God has given
+them and the greatness of the salvation already accomplished. They
+measured inadequately the power which had touched and changed their
+lives (i. 19). St Paul has shown them the depth to which they were
+formerly sunk, and the height to which they have been raised (vv. 1-6).
+He can therefore assure them, and he does it with redoubled emphasis:
+"You _are saved_; By grace you are saved men!"[84] Not, "You will be
+saved"; nor, "You were saved"; nor, "You are in course of
+salvation,"--for salvation has many moods and tenses,--but, in the
+perfect passive tense, he asserts the glorious accomplished _fact_. With
+the same reassuring emphasis in chapter i. 7 he declared, "We have
+redemption in His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses."
+
+Here is St Paul's doctrine of Assurance. It was laid down by Christ
+Himself when He said: "He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal
+life." This sublime confidence is the ruling note of St John's great
+epistle: "We know that we are in Him.... We know that we have passed out
+of death into life.... This is the victory that overcometh the world,
+even our faith." It was this confidence of present salvation that made
+the Church irresistible. With its foundation secure, the house of life
+can be steadily and calmly built up. Under the shelter of the full
+assurance of faith, in the sunshine of God's love felt in the heart, all
+spiritual virtues bloom and flourish. But with a faith hesitant,
+distracted, that is sure of no doctrine in the creed and cannot plant a
+firm foot anywhere, nothing prospers in the soul or in the Church. Oh
+for the clear accent, the ringing, joyous note of apostolic assurance!
+We want a faith not loud, but deep; a faith not born of sentiment and
+human sympathy, but that comes from the vision of the living God; a
+faith whose rock and corner-stone is neither the Church nor the Bible,
+but Christ Jesus Himself.
+
+Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul and John, to
+"assure our hearts" before God. With death confronting us, with the
+hideous evil of the world oppressing us; when the air is laden with the
+contagion of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast of
+doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly through the haze of an
+all-encompassing scepticism and a hundred voices say, in mockery or
+grief, Where is now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our faith
+refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless,--then is the time for the
+Christian assurance to recover its first energy and to rise again in
+radiant strength from the heart of the Church, from the depths of its
+mystic life where it is hid with Christ in God.
+
+_You are saved!_ cries the apostle; not forgetting that his readers have
+their battle to fight, and many hazards yet to run (vi. 10-13). But they
+hold the earnest of victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit
+they sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death, temptation,
+persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly history, by these God means to
+perfect that which He has begun in His saints--"if you continue in the
+faith, grounded and firm" (Col. i. 23). That condition is expressed, or
+implied, in all assurance of final salvation. It is a condition which
+excites to watchfulness, but can never cause misgiving to a loyal heart.
+God is for us! He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus
+who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God, and there
+intercedes for us. _Quis separabit?_[85]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the epistle of the Church and of humanity. It dwells on the
+grand, objective aspects of the truth, rather than upon its subjective
+experiences. It does not invite us to rest in the comforts and delights
+of grace, but to lift up our eyes and see whither Christ has translated
+us and what is the kingdom that we possess in Him. God "quickened us
+together with the Christ": He "raised us up, He made us to sit _in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus_." Henceforth "our citizenship is in
+heaven" (Phil. iii. 20).
+
+This is the inspiring thought of the third group of St Paul's epistles;
+we heard it in the first note of his song of praise (i. 3). It supplies
+the principle from which St Paul unfolds the beautiful conception of the
+Christian life contained in the third chapter of the companion letter to
+the Colossians: "Your life is hid with the Christ in God"; therefore
+"seek the things that are above, where He is." We live in two worlds at
+once. Heaven lies about us in this new mystic childhood of our spirit.
+There our names are written; thither our thoughts and hopes resort. Our
+treasure is there; our heart we have lodged there, with Christ in God.
+_He_ is there, the Lord of the Spirit, from whom we draw each moment
+the life that flows into His members. In the greatness of His love
+conquering sin and death, time and space, He is with us to the world's
+end. May we not say that we, too, are with Him and shall be with Him
+always? So we reckon in the logic of our faith and at the height of our
+high calling, though the soul creeps and drudges upon the lower levels.
+
+    "With Him we are gone up on high,
+      Since He is ours and we are His;
+    With Him we reign above the sky,
+      We walk upon our subject seas!"
+
+In his lofty flights of thought the apostle always has some practical
+and homely end in view. The earthly and heavenly, the mystical and the
+matter-of-fact were not distant and repugnant, but interfused in his
+mind. From the celestial heights of the life hidden with Christ in God
+(ver. 6), he brings us down in a moment and without any sense of
+discrepancy to the prosaic level of "good works" (ver. 10). The love
+which viewed us from eternity, the counsels of Him who works all things
+in all, enter into the humblest daily duties.
+
+Grace, moreover, sets us great tasks. There should be something to show
+in deed and life for the wealth of kindness spent upon us, some visible
+and commensurate result of the vast preparations of the gospel plan. Of
+this result the apostle saw the earnest in the work of faith wrought by
+his Gentile Churches.
+
+St Paul was the last man in the world to undervalue human effort, or
+disparage good work of any sort. It is, in his view, the end aimed at in
+all that God bestows on His people, in all that He Himself works in
+them. Only let this end be sought in God's way and order. Man's doings
+must be the fruit and not the root of his salvation. "Not _of_ works,"
+but "_for_ good works" were believers chosen. "This little word _for_"
+says Monod, "reconciles St Paul and St James better than all the
+commentators." God has not raised us up to sit idly in the heavenly
+places lost in contemplation, or to be the useless pensioners of grace.
+He sends us forth to "walk in the works, prepared for us,"--equipped to
+fight Christ's battles, to till His fields, to labour in the service of
+building His Church.
+
+The "workmanship" of our Version suggests an idea foreign to the
+passage. The apostle is not thinking of the Divine art or skill
+displayed in man's creation; but of the simple fact that "God made man"
+(Gen. i. 27). "We are His _making_, created in Christ Jesus." The
+"preparation" to which he refers in verse 10 leads us back to that
+primeval election of God's sons in Christ for which we gave thanks at
+the outset (i. 3). There are not two creations, the second formed upon
+the ruin and failure of the first; but one grand design throughout.
+Redemption is creation re-affirmed. The new creation, as we call it,
+restores and consummates the old. When God raised His Son from the dead,
+He vindicated His original purpose in raising man from the dust a living
+soul. He has not forsaken the work of His hands nor forgone His original
+plan, which took account of all our wilfulness and sin. God in making us
+meant us to do good work in His world. From the world's foundation down
+to the present moment He who worketh all in all has been working for
+this end--most of all in the revelation of His grace in Jesus Christ.
+
+Far backward in the past, amid the secrets of creation, lay the
+beginnings of God's grace to mankind. Far onward in the future shines
+its lustre revealed in the first Christian age. The apostle has gained
+some insight into those "times and seasons" which formerly were veiled
+from him. In his earliest letters, to the Thessalonians and Corinthians,
+St Paul echoes our Lord's warning, never out of season, that we should
+"watch, for the hour is at hand." _Maran atha_ is his watchword: "Our
+Lord cometh; the time is short." Nor does that note cease to the end.
+But when in this epistle he writes of "the ages that are coming on," and
+of "all the generations of the age of the ages" (iii. 21), there is
+manifestly some considerable period of duration before his eyes. He sees
+something of the extent of the world's coming history, something of the
+magnitude of the field that the future will afford for the unfolding of
+God's designs.
+
+In those approaching aeons he foresees that the apostolic dispensation
+will play a conspicuous part. Unborn ages will be blessed in the
+blessing now descending upon Jews and Gentiles through Christ Jesus. So
+marvellous is the display of God's kindness toward them, that all the
+future will pay homage to it. The overflowing wealth of blessing poured
+upon St Paul and the first Churches had an end in view that reached
+beyond themselves, an end worthy of the Giver, worthy of the magnitude
+of His plans and of His measureless love. If all this was theirs--this
+fulness of God exceeding the utmost they had asked or thought--it is
+because God means to convey it through them to multitudes besides! There
+is no limit to the grace that God will impart to men and to Churches who
+thus reason, who receive His gifts in this generous and communicative
+spirit. The apostolic Church chants with Mary at the Annunciation:
+"For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!"
+
+Never was any prediction better fulfilled. This spot of history shines
+with a light before which every other shows pale and commonplace. The
+companions of Jesus, the humble fraternities of the first Christian
+century have been the object of reverent interest and intent research on
+the part of all centuries since. Their history is scrutinized from all
+sides with a zeal and industry which the most pressing subjects of the
+day hardly command. For we feel that these men hold the secret of the
+world's life. The key to the treasures we all long for is in their
+hands. As time goes on and the stress of life deepens, men will turn
+with yet fonder hope to the age of Jesus Christ. "And many nations will
+say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of
+the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways; and we will walk in
+His paths."
+
+The stream will remember its fountain; the children of God will gather
+to their childhood's home. The world will hear the gospel in the
+recovered accents of its prophets and apostles.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[80] Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The
+=oiktirmoi tou Theou, splanchna kai oiktirmoi=, rendered in our Version
+"mercies of God," denotes something even more affecting,--God's sense of
+the woefulness of human life,--"the pitying tenderness Divine."
+
+[81] Comp. Rom. ix. 22, 23.
+
+[82] On _grace_, comp. _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's
+Bible), Chapter X.
+
+[83] Compare also, on Faith, _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's
+Bible), Chapters X.-XII. and XV.
+
+[84] =Este sesosmenoi=: for the peculiar emphasis of this form of the
+verb, implying a settled fact, an assured state, compare ver. 12, =ete
+... apellotriomenoi=; Col. ii. 10; Gal. ii. 11, iv. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 3,
+etc.
+
+[85] Rom. viii. 31-39; comp. vv. 9-17; also 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2 Thess.
+iii. 3-5; 1 Cor. i. 4-9; Phil. i. 6, iii. 13, 14; 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 18,
+for St Paul's doctrine of Assurance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_THE FAR AND NEAR._
+
+    "Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh,
+    who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision
+    in the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from
+    Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
+    from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
+    the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off are
+    made nigh in the blood of Christ."--EPH. ii. 11-13.
+
+
+The apostle's _Wherefore_ sums up for his readers the record of their
+salvation rehearsed in the previous verses. "You were buried in your
+sins, sunk in their corruption, ruined by their guilt, living under
+God's displeasure and in the power of Satan. All this has passed away.
+The almighty Hand has raised you with Christ into a heavenly life. God
+has become your Father; His love is in your heart; by the strength of
+His grace you are enabled to walk in the way marked out for you from
+your creation. _Wherefore remember_: think of what you were, and of what
+you are!"
+
+To such recollections we do well to summon ourselves. The children of
+grace love to recall, and on fit occasions recount for God's glory and
+the help of their fellows, the way in which God led them to the
+knowledge of Himself. In some the great change came suddenly. He "made
+speed" to save us. It was a veritable resurrection, as signal and
+unlooked for as the rising of Christ from the dead. By a swift passage
+we were "translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of the
+Son of His love." Once living without God in the world, we were arrested
+by a strange providence--through some overthrow of fortune or shock of
+bereavement, or by a trivial incident touching unaccountably a hidden
+spring in the mind--and the whole aspect of life was altered in a
+moment. We saw revealed, as by a lightning flash at night, the emptiness
+of our own life, the misery of our nature, the folly of our unbelief,
+the awful presence of _God_--God whom we had forgotten and despised! We
+sought, and found His mercy. From that hour the old things passed away:
+we lived who had been dead,--made alive to God through Jesus Christ.
+
+This instant conversion, such as Paul experienced, this sharp and abrupt
+transition from darkness to light, was common in the first generation of
+Christians, as it is wherever religious awakening takes place in a
+society that has been largely dead to God. The advent of Christianity in
+the Gentile world was much after this fashion,--like a tropical sunrise,
+in which day leaps on the earth full-born. This experience gives a stamp
+of peculiar decision to the convictions and character of its subjects.
+The change is patent and palpable; no observer can fail to mark it. And
+it burns itself into the memory with an ineffaceable impression. The
+violent throes of such a spiritual birth cannot be forgotten.
+
+But if our entrance into the life of God was gradual, like the dawn of
+our own milder clime, where the light steals by imperceptible advances
+upon the darkness--if the glory of the Lord has thus risen upon us, our
+certainty of its presence may be no less complete, and our remembrance
+of its coming no less grateful and joyous. One leaps into the new life
+by a single eager bound; another reaches it by measured, thoughtful
+steps: but both are _there_, standing side by side on the common ground
+of salvation in Christ. Both walk in the same light of the Lord, that
+floods the sky from east to west. The recollections which the latter has
+to cherish of the leading of God's kindly light--how He touched our
+childish thought, and checked gently our boyish waywardness, and mingled
+reproof with the first stirrings of passion and self-will, and wakened
+the alarms of conscience and the fears of another world, and the sense
+of the beauty of holiness and the shame of sin,--
+
+    "Shaping to truth the froward will
+        Along His narrow way,"--
+
+such remembrances are a priceless treasure, that grows richer as we grow
+wiser. It awakens a joy not so thrilling nor so prompt in utterance as
+that of the soul snatched like a brand from the burning, but which
+passes understanding. Blessed are the children of the kingdom, those who
+have never roamed far from the fold of Christ and the commonwealth of
+Israel, whom the cross has beckoned onwards from their childhood. But
+however it was--by whatever means, at whatever time it pleased God to
+call you from darkness to His marvellous light, _remember_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But we must return to Paul and his Gentile readers. The old death in
+life was to them a sombre reality, keenly and painfully remembered. In
+that condition of moral night out of which Christ had rescued them,
+Gentile society around them still remained. Let us observe its features
+as they are delineated in contrast with the privileges long bestowed on
+Israel. The Gentile world was _Christless_, _hopeless_, _godless_. It
+had no share in the Divine polity framed for the chosen people; the
+outward mark of its uncircumcision was a true symbol of its irreligion
+and debasement.
+
+Israel had a _God_. Besides, there were only "those who are called
+gods." This was the first and cardinal distinction. Not their race, not
+their secular calling, their political or intellectual gifts, but their
+faith formed the Jews into a nation. They were "the people of God," as
+no other people has been--of _the_ God, for theirs was "the true and
+living God"--Jehovah, the I AM, the One, the Alone. The monotheistic
+belief was, no doubt, wavering and imperfect in the mass of the nation
+in early times; but it was held by the ruling minds amongst them, by the
+men who have shaped the destiny of Israel and created its Bible, with
+increasing clearness and intensity of passion. "All the gods of the
+nations are idols--vapours, phantoms, nothings!--but Jehovah made the
+heavens." It was the ancestral faith that glowed in the breast of Paul
+at Athens, amidst the fairest shrines of Greece, when he "saw the city
+wholly given to idolatry"--man's highest art and the toil and piety of
+ages lavished on things that were no gods; and in the midst of the
+splendour of a hollow and decaying Paganism he read the confession that
+God was "unknown."
+
+Ephesus had her famous goddess, worshipped in the most sumptuous pile of
+architecture that the ancient world contained. Behold the proud city,
+"temple-keeper of the great goddess Artemis," filled with wrath!
+Infuriate Demos flashes fire from his thousand eyes, and his brazen
+throat roars hoarse vengeance against the insulters of "her
+magnificence, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth"! Without
+God--_atheists_, in fact, the apostle calls this devout Asian
+population; and Artemis of Ephesus, and Athene, and Cybele of Smyrna,
+and Zeus and Asclepius of Pergamum, though all the world worship them,
+are but "creatures of art and man's device."
+
+The Pagans retorted this reproach. "Away with _the atheists_!" they
+cried, when Christians were led to execution. Ninety years after this
+time the martyr Polycarp was brought into the arena before the
+magistrates of Asia and the populace gathered in Smyrna at the great
+Ionic festival. The Proconsul, wishing to spare the venerable man, said
+to him: "Swear by the Fortune of Caesar; and say, Away with the
+atheists!" But Polycarp, as the story continues, "with a grave look
+gazing on the crowd of lawless Gentiles in the stadium and shaking his
+hand against them, then groaning and looking up to heaven, said, _Away
+with the atheists_!" Pagan and Christian were each godless in the eyes
+of the other. If visible temples and images, and the local worship of
+each tribe or city made a god, then Jews and Christians had none: if God
+was a Spirit--One, Holy, Almighty, Omnipresent--then polytheists were in
+truth atheists; their many gods, being many, were no gods; they were
+idols,--_eidola_, illusive shows of the Godhead.
+
+The more thoughtful and pious among the heathen felt this already. When
+the apostle denounced the idols and their pompous worship as "these
+vanities," his words found an echo in the Gentile conscience. The
+classical Paganism held the multitude by the force of habit and local
+pride, and by its sensuous and artistic charms; but such religious power
+as it once had was gone. In all directions it was undermined by mystic
+Oriental and Egyptian rites, to which men resorted in search of a
+religion and sick of the old fables, ever growing more debased, that had
+pleased their fathers. The majesty of Rome in the person of the Emperor,
+the one visible supreme power, was seized upon by the popular instinct,
+even more than it was imposed by state policy, and made to fill the
+vacuum; and temples to Augustus had already risen in Asia, side by side
+with those of the ancient gods.
+
+In this despair of their ancestral religions many piously disposed
+Gentiles turned to Judaism for spiritual help; and the synagogue was
+surrounded in the Greek cities by a circle of earnest proselytes. From
+their ranks St Paul drew a large proportion of his hearers and converts.
+When he writes, "Remember that you were at that time _without God_," he
+is within the recollection of his readers; and they will bear him out in
+testifying that their heathen creed was dead and empty to the soul. Nor
+did philosophy construct a creed more satisfying. Its gods were the
+Epicurean deities who dwell aloof and careless of men; or the supreme
+Reason and Necessity of the Stoics, the _anima mundi_, of which human
+souls are fleeting and fragmentary images. "Deism finds God only in
+heaven; Pantheism, only on earth; Christianity alone finds Him both in
+heaven and on earth" (Harless). The Word made flesh reveals _God in the
+world_.
+
+When the apostle says "without God _in the world_," this qualification
+is both reproachful and sorrowful. To be without God in the world that
+He has made, where His "eternal power and Godhead" have been visible
+from creation, argues a darkened and perverted heart.[86] To be without
+God in the world is to be in the wilderness, without a guide; on a
+stormy ocean, without harbour or pilot; in sickness of spirit, without
+medicine or physician; to be hungry without bread, and weary without
+rest, and dying with no light of life. It is to be an orphaned child,
+wandering in an empty, ruined house.
+
+In these words we have an echo of Paul's preaching to the Gentiles, and
+an indication of the line of his appeals to the conscience of the
+enlightened pagans of his time. The despair of the age was darker than
+the human mind has known before or since. Matthew Arnold has painted it
+all in one verse of those lines, entitled _Obermann once more_, in which
+he so perfectly expresses the better spirit of modern scepticism.
+
+    "On that hard Pagan world disgust
+      And secret loathing fell;
+    Deep weariness and sated lust
+      Made human life a hell."
+
+The saying by which St Paul reproved the Corinthians, "Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die," is the common sentiment of pagan epitaphs
+of the time. Here is an extant specimen of the kind: "Let us drink and
+be merry; for we shall have no more kissing and dancing in the kingdom
+of Proserpine. Soon shall we fall asleep, to wake no more." Such were
+the thoughts with which men came back from the grave-side. It is
+needless to say how depraving was the effect of this hopelessness. At
+Athens, in the more religious times of Socrates, it was even considered
+a decent and kindly thing to allow a criminal condemned to death to
+spend his last hours in gross sensual indulgence. There is no reason to
+suppose that the extinction of the Christian hope of immortality would
+prove less demoralizing. We are "saved by hope," said St Paul: we are
+ruined by despair. Pessimism of creed for most men means pessimism of
+conduct.
+
+Our modern speech and literature and our habits of feeling have been for
+so many generations steeped in the influence of Christ's teaching, and
+it has thrown so many tender and hallowed thoughts around the state of
+our beloved dead, that it is impossible even for those who are
+personally without hope in Christ to realize what its general decay and
+disappearance would mean. To have possessed such a treasure, and then to
+lose it! to have cherished anticipations so exalted and so dear,--and to
+find them turn out a mockery! The age upon which this calamity fell
+would be of all ages the most miserable.
+
+The hope of Israel which Paul preached to the Gentiles was a hope for
+the world and for the nations, as well as for the individual soul. "The
+commonwealth [or _polity_] of Israel" and "the covenants of promise"
+guaranteed the establishment of the Messianic kingdom upon earth. This
+expectation took amongst the mass of the Jews a materialistic and even a
+revengeful shape; but in one form or other it belonged, and still
+belongs to every man of Israel. Those noble lines of Virgil in his
+fourth Eclogue[87]--like the words of Caiaphas, an unintended Christian
+prophecy--which predicted the return of justice and the spread of a
+golden age through the whole world under the rule of the coming heir of
+Caesar, had been signally belied by the imperial house in the century
+that had elapsed. Never were human prospects darker than when the
+apostle wrote as Nero's prisoner in Rome. It was an age of crime and
+horror. The political world and the system of pagan society seemed to be
+in the throes of dissolution. Only in "the commonwealth of Israel" was
+there a light of hope and a foundation for the future of mankind; and of
+this in its wisdom the world knew nothing.
+
+The Gentiles were "alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,"--that is
+to say, treated as aliens and made such by their exclusion. By the very
+fact of Israel's election, the rest of mankind were shut out of the
+visible kingdom of God. They became mere _Gentiles_, or _nations_,--a
+herd of men bound together only by natural affinity, with no "covenant
+of promise," no religious constitution or destiny, no definite
+relationship to God, Israel being alone the acknowledged and organized
+"_people_ of Jehovah."
+
+These distinctions were summed up in one word, expressing all the pride
+of the Jewish nature, when the Israelites styled themselves "the
+Circumcision." The rest of the world--Philistines or Egyptians, Greeks,
+Romans, or Barbarians, it mattered not--were "the Uncircumcision." How
+superficial this distinction was in point of fact, and how false the
+assumption of moral superiority it implied in the existing condition of
+Judaism, St Paul indicates by saying, "those who are _called_
+Uncircumcision by that which is _called_ Circumcision, in flesh, wrought
+by human hands." In the second and third chapters of his epistle to the
+Romans he exposed the hollowness of Jewish sanctity, and brought his
+fellow-countrymen down to the level of those "sinners of the Gentiles"
+whom they so bitterly despised.
+
+The destitution of the Gentile world is put into a single word, when the
+apostle says: "You were at that time _separate from Christ_"--without a
+Christ, either come or coming. They were deprived of the world's one
+treasure,--shut out, as it appeared, for ever[88] from any part in Him
+who is to mankind all things and in all.--_Once far off!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But now in Christ Jesus ye were _made nigh_." What is it that has
+bridged the distance, that has transported these Gentiles from the
+wilderness of heathenism into the midst of the city of God? It is "the
+blood of Christ." The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ transformed the
+relations of God to mankind, and of Israel to the Gentiles. In Him God
+reconciled not a nation, but "a world" to Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). The
+death of the Son of man could not have reference to the sons of Abraham
+alone. If sin is universal and death is not a Jewish but a human
+experience, and if one blood flows in the veins of all our race, then
+the death of Jesus Christ was a universal sacrifice; it appeals to every
+man's conscience and heart, and puts away for each the guilt which comes
+between his soul and God.
+
+When the Greeks in Passion week desired to see Him, He exclaimed: "I, if
+I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all_ unto me." The cross of
+Jesus was to draw humanity around it, by its infinite love and sorrow,
+by the perfect apprehension there was in it of the world's guilt and
+need, and the perfect submission to the sentence of God's law against
+man's sin. So wherever the gospel was preached by St Paul, it won
+Gentile hearts for Christ. Greek and Jew found themselves weeping
+together at the foot of the cross, sharing one forgiveness and baptized
+into one Spirit.
+
+The union of Caiaphas and Pilate in the condemnation of Jesus and the
+mingling of the Jewish crowd with the Roman soldiers at His execution
+were a tragic symbol of the new age that was coming. Israel and the
+Gentiles were accomplices in the death of the Messiah--the former of the
+two the more guilty partner in the counsel and deed. If this Jesus whom
+they slew and hanged on a tree was indeed the Christ, God's chosen, then
+what availed their Abrahamic sonship, their covenants and law-keeping,
+their proud religious eminence? They had killed their Christ; they had
+forfeited their calling. His blood was on them and on their children.
+
+Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of Christ were found far
+off,--that both together, the far and the near, might be reconciled and
+brought back to God. "He shut up all unto disobedience, that He might
+have mercy upon all."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Rom. i. 19-23; comp. John i. 10: "He [the true Light] was _in the
+world_, and the world knew Him not."
+
+[87]
+
+    Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
+    Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
+    Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.
+    Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
+    Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
+    Casta, fave, Lucina.
+
+[88] Observe the perfect participle =apellotriomenoi=, which signifies
+an abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in
+ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION._
+
+    "For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle
+    wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, _even_
+    the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances, that He might
+    create in Himself of the twain one new man, _so_ making peace; and
+    might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
+    having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good
+    tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that
+    were nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit
+    unto the Father."--EPH. ii. 14-18.
+
+
+_Peace, peace--to the far off, and to the near!_ Such was God's promise
+to His scattered people in the times of the exile (Isai. lvii. 19). St
+Paul sees that peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and
+terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the prophet had
+foreseen. Christ is "our peace"--not for the divided members of Israel
+alone, but for all the tribes of men. He brings about a universal
+pacification.
+
+There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to be overcome by Christ,
+in preaching to the world His good tidings of peace (ver. 17). There was
+the hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its cause and
+principle when Christ "in His flesh" (by His incarnate life and death)
+"abolished the law of commandments in decrees"--_i.e._, the law of Moses
+as it constituted a body of external precepts determining the way of
+righteousness and life. This abolition of the law by the evangelical
+principle "dissolved the middle wall of partition." The occasion of
+quarrel between Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier
+disappeared that had for so long fenced off the privileged ground of the
+sons of Abraham (vv. 14, 15). But behind this human enmity, underneath
+the feud and rancour existing between the Jews and the nations, there
+lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God. Both enmities centred in the
+law; both were slain by one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross
+(ver. 16).
+
+The Jewish and Gentile peoples formed two distinct types of humanity.
+Politically, the Jews were insignificant and had scarcely counted
+amongst the great powers of the world. Their religion alone gave them
+influence and importance. Bearing his inspired Scriptures and his
+Messianic hope, the wandering Israelite confronted the vast masses of
+heathenism and the splendid and fascinating classical civilization with
+the proudest sense of his superiority. To his God he knew well that one
+day every knee would bow and every tongue confess. The circumstances of
+the time deepened his isolation and aggravated to internecine hate his
+spite against his fellow-men, the _adversus omnes alios hostile odium_
+stigmatized by the incisive pen of Tacitus. Within three years of the
+writing of this letter the Jewish war against Rome broke out, when the
+enmity culminated in the most appalling and fateful overthrow recorded
+in the pages of history. Now, it is this enmity at its height--the most
+inveterate and desperate one can conceive--that the apostle proposes to
+reconcile; nay, that he sees already slain by the sacrifice of the
+cross, and within the brotherhood of the Christian Church. It was slain
+in the heart of Saul of Tarsus, the proudest that beat in Jewish
+breast.
+
+In his earlier writings the apostle has been concerned chiefly to guard
+the position and rights of the two parties within the Church. He has
+abundantly maintained, especially in the epistle to the Galatians, the
+claims of Gentile believers in Christ against Judaic assumptions and
+impositions. He has defended the just prerogative of the Jew and his
+hereditary sentiments from the contempt to which they were sometimes
+exposed on the part of the Gentile majority.[89] But now that this has
+been done, and that Gentile liberties and Jewish dignity have been
+vindicated and safeguarded on both sides, St Paul advances a step
+further: he seeks to amalgamate the Jewish and Gentile section of the
+Church, and to "make of the twain one new man, so making peace." This,
+he declares, was the end of Christ's mission; this a chief purpose of
+His atoning death. Only by such union, only through the burying of the
+old enmity slain on the cross, could His Church be built up to its
+completeness. St Paul would have Gentile and Jewish believers everywhere
+forget their differences, efface their party lines, and merge their
+independence in the oneness of the all-embracing and all-perfecting
+Church of Jesus Christ, God's habitation in the Spirit. Instead of
+saying that a catholic ideal like this belongs to a later and
+post-apostolic age, we maintain, on the contrary, that a catholic mind
+like St Paul's, under the conditions of his time, could not fail to
+arrive at this conception.
+
+It was his confidence in the victory of the cross over all strife and
+sin that sustained St Paul through these years of captivity. As he
+looks out from his Roman prison, under the shadow of Nero's palace, the
+future is invested with a radiance of hope that makes the heart of the
+chained apostle exult within him. The world is lost, to all outward
+seeming: he knows it is saved! Jew and Gentile are about to close in
+mortal conflict: he proclaims peace between them, assured of their
+reconcilement, and knowing that in their reunion the salvation of human
+society is assured.
+
+The enmity of Jew and Gentile was representative of all that divides
+mankind. In it were concentrated most of the causes by which society is
+rent asunder. Along with religion, race, habits, tastes and culture,
+moral tendencies, political aspirations, interests of trade, all helped
+to widen the breach. The cleavage ran deep into the foundations of life;
+the enmity was the growth of two thousand years. It was not a case of
+local friction, nor a quarrel arising from temporary causes. The Jew was
+ubiquitous, and everywhere was an alien and an irritant to Gentile
+society. No antipathy was so hard to subdue. The grace that conquers it,
+can and will conquer all enmities.
+
+St Paul's view embraced, in fact, a world-wide reconcilement. He
+contemplates, as the Hebrew prophets themselves did, the fraternization
+of mankind under the rule of the Christ. After this scale he laid down
+the foundation of the Church, "wise master-builder" that he was. It was
+destined to bear the weight of an edifice in which all the races of men
+should dwell together, and every order of human faculty should find its
+place. His thoughts were not confined within the Judaic antithesis.
+"There is no Jew and Greek," he says in another place; yes, and "no
+barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, male or female. Ye are all one in
+Christ Jesus."[90] Birth, rank, office in the Church, culture, even sex
+are minor and subordinate distinctions, merged in the unity of redeemed
+souls in Christ. That which He "creates in Himself of the twain" is _one
+new man_--one incorporate humanity, neither Jew nor Gentile, Englishman
+nor Hindu, priest nor layman, male nor female; but simply _man_, and
+_Christian_.
+
+At the present time we are better able to enter into these views of the
+apostle than at any intervening period of history. In his day almost the
+whole visible world, lying round the Mediterranean shores, was brought
+under the government and laws of Rome. This fact made the establishment
+of one religious polity a thing quite conceivable. The Roman empire did
+not, as it proved, allow Christianity to conquer it soon enough and to
+leaven it sufficiently to save it. That huge construction, the mightiest
+fabric of human polity, fell and covered the earth with its ruins. In
+its fall it reacted disastrously upon the Church, and has bequeathed to
+it the corrupt and despotic unity of Papal Rome. Now, in these last
+days, the whole world is opened to the Church, a world stretching far
+beyond the horizon of the first century. Science and Commerce, those two
+strong-winged angels and giant ministers of God, are swiftly binding the
+continents together in material ties. The peoples are beginning to
+realize their brotherhood, and are feeling their way in many directions
+towards international union; while in the Churches a new, federal
+catholicity is taking shape, that must displace the false catholicism of
+external uniformity and the disastrous absolutism inherited from Rome.
+The spread of European empire and the marvellous expansion of our
+English race are carrying forward the world's unification with enormous
+strides,--towards some end or other. What end is this to be? Is the
+kingdom of the world about to become the kingdom of our Lord and His
+Christ? and are the nations preparing to be "reconciled in one body unto
+God"?
+
+If Christendom were worthy of her Master and her name, this question
+would be answered with no doubtful affirmative. The Church is well able,
+if she were prepared, to go up and possess the whole earth for her Lord.
+The way is open; the means are in her hand. Nor is she ignorant, nor
+wholly negligent of her opportunity and of the claims that the times
+impose upon her. She is putting forth new strength and striving to
+overtake her work, notwithstanding the weight of ignorance and sloth
+that burdens her. Soon the reconciling cross will be planted on every
+shore, and the praises of the Crucified sung in every human language.
+
+But there are dark as well as bright auguries for the future. The
+advance of commerce and emigration has been a curse and not a blessing
+to many heathen peoples. Who can read without shame and horror the story
+of European conquest in America? And it is a chapter not yet closed.
+Greed and injustice still mark the dealings of the powerful and
+civilized with the weaker races. England set a noble example in the
+abolition of negro slavery; but she has since inflicted, for purposes of
+gain, the opium curse on China, putting poison to the lips of its vast
+population. Under our Christian flags fire-arms are imported, and
+alcohol, amongst tribes of men less able than children to resist their
+evils. Is this "preaching peace to those far off"? It is likely that
+the commercial profits made in the destruction of savage races as yet
+exceed all that our missionary societies have spent in saving them. One
+of these days Almighty God may have a stern reckoning with modern Europe
+about these things. "When He maketh inquisition for blood, He will
+remember."
+
+And what shall we say of ourselves at home, in our relation to this
+great principle of the apostle? The old "middle wall of partition," the
+temple-barrier that sundered Jew and Gentile, is "broken down,"--visibly
+levelled by the hand of God when Jerusalem fell, as it had been
+virtually and in its principle destroyed by the work of Christ. But are
+there no other middle walls, no barriers raised within the fold of
+Christ? The rich man's purse, and the poor man's penury; aristocratic
+pride, democratic bitterness and jealousy; knowledge and refinement on
+the one hand, ignorance and rudeness on the other--how thick the veil of
+estrangement which these influences weave, how high the party walls
+which they build in our various Church communions!
+
+It is the duty of the Church, as she values her existence, with gentle
+but firm hands to pull down and to keep down all such partitions. She
+cannot abolish the natural distinctions of life. She cannot turn the Jew
+into a Gentile, nor the Gentile into a Jew. She will never make the poor
+man rich in this world, nor the rich man altogether poor. Like her
+Master, she declines to be "judge or divider" of our secular
+inheritance. But she can see to it that these outward distinctions make
+no difference in her treatment of the men as men. She can combine in her
+fellowship all grades and orders, and teach them to understand and
+respect each other. She can soften the asperities and relieve many of
+the hardships which social differences create. She can diffuse a
+healing and purifying influence upon the contentions of society around
+her.
+
+Let us labour unweariedly for this, and let our meeting at the Lord's
+table be a symbol of the unreserved communion of men of all classes and
+conditions in the brotherhood of the redeemed sons of God. "_He_ is our
+peace"; and if He is in our hearts, we must needs be sons of peace.
+"Behold the secret of all true union! It is not by others coming to us,
+nor by our going over to them; but it is by both them and ourselves
+coming to Christ" that peace is made (Monod).
+
+Thus within and without the Church the work of atonement will advance,
+with Christ ever for its preacher (ver. 17). He speaks through the words
+and the lives of His ten thousand messengers,--men of every order, in
+every age and country of the earth. The leaven of Christ's peace will
+spread till the lump is leavened. God will accomplish His purpose of the
+ages, whether in our time, or in another worthier of His calling. His
+Church is destined to be the home of the human family, the universal
+liberator and instructor and reconciler of the nations. And Christ shall
+sit enthroned in the loyal worship of the federated peoples of the
+earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the question remains: What is the foundation, what the warrant of
+this grand idealism of the apostle Paul? Many a great thinker, many an
+ardent reformer before and since has dreamed of some such millennium as
+this. And their enthusiastic plans have ended too often in conflict and
+destruction. What surer ground of confidence have we in Paul's
+undertaking than in those of so many gifted visionaries and
+philosophers? The difference lies here: his expectation rests on the
+word and character of God; his instrument of reform is the cross of
+Jesus Christ.
+
+God is the centre of His own universe. Any reconciliation that is to
+stand, must include Him first of all. Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile
+"both in one body _to God_." There is the meeting point, the true focus
+of the orbit of human life, that can alone control its movements and
+correct its wild aberrations. Under the shadow of His throne of justice,
+in the arms of His fatherly love, the kindreds of the earth will at last
+find reconciliation and peace. Humanitarian and secularist systems make
+the simple mistake of ignoring the supreme Factor in the scheme of
+things; they leave out the All in all.
+
+"Be ye _reconciled to God_," cries the apostle. For Almighty God has had
+a great quarrel with this world of ours. The hatred of men towards each
+other is rooted in the "carnal mind which is enmity against God." The
+"law of commandments contained in ordinances," in whose possession the
+Jew boasted over the lawless and profane Gentile, in reality branded
+both as culprits.
+
+The secret disquiet and dread lurking in man's conscience, the pangs
+endured in his body of humiliation, the groaning frame of nature declare
+the world unhinged and out of course. Things have gone amiss, somehow,
+between man and his Creator. The face of the earth and the field of
+human history are scarred with the thunderbolts of His displeasure. God,
+the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King of the ages, is not the
+amiable, almighty Sentimentalist that some pious people would make Him
+out to be. The men of the Bible felt and realized, if we do not, the
+grave and tremendous import of the Lord's controversy with all flesh. He
+is unceasingly at war with the sins of men. "God is _love_"--oh yes;
+but then He is also "a consuming fire"! There is no anger so crushing as
+the anger of love, for there is none so just; no wrath to be feared like
+"the wrath of the Lamb." God is not a man, weak and passionate, whom a
+spark of anger might set all on fire, burning out His justice and
+compassion. "In His wrath He remembers mercy." Within that infinite
+nature there is room for an absolute loathing and resentment towards
+sin, in consistence with an immeasurable pity and yearning towards His
+sinful children. Hence the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+Look at it from what side you will (and it has many sides), propound it
+in what terms you may (and it translates itself anew into the dialect of
+every age), you must not explain the cross of Christ away nor cause its
+offence to cease. "The atonement has always been a scandal and a folly
+to those who did not receive it; it has always contained something which
+to formal logic is false and to individualistic ethics immoral; yet in
+that very element which has been branded as immoral and false, has
+always lain the seal of its power and the secret of its truth." The Holy
+One of God, the Lamb without spot and blemish, He died by His own
+consent a sinner's death. That sacrifice, undergone by the Son of God
+and Son of man dying as man for men, in love to His race and in
+obedience to the Divine will and law, gave an infinite satisfaction to
+God in His relation to the world, and there went up to the Divine throne
+from the anguish of Calvary a "savour of sweet smell." The moral glory
+of the act of Jesus Christ in dying for His guilty brethren outshone its
+horror and disgrace; and it redeemed man's lost condition, and clothed
+human nature with a new character and aspect in the eyes of God
+Himself. "Now therefore there is no more condemnation to them that are
+in Christ Jesus." The mercy of God, if we may so say, is set free to act
+in forgiveness and restoration, without any compromise of justice and
+inflexible law. No peace without this: no peace that did not _satisfy
+God_, and satisfy that law, deep as the deepest in God, that binds
+suffering to wrong-doing and death to sin.
+
+Perhaps you say: This is immoral, surely, that the just should suffer
+for the unjust; that one commits the offence, and another bears the
+penalty.--Stay a moment: that is only half the truth. We are more than
+individuals; we are members of a race; and vicarious suffering runs
+through life. Our sufferings and wrong-doings bind the human family
+together in an inextricable web. We are _communists in sin and death_.
+It is the law and lot of our existence. And Christ, the Lord and centre
+of the race, has come within its scope. He bound Himself to our sinking
+fortunes. He became co-partner in our lost estate, and has redeemed it
+to God by His blood. If He was true and perfect man, if He was the
+creative Head and Mediator of the race, the eternal Firstborn of many
+brethren, He could do no other. He who alone had the right and the
+power,--"_One_ died for all." He took upon His Divine heart the sin and
+curse of the world, He fastened it to His shoulders with the cross; and
+He bore it away from Caiaphas' hall and Pilate's judgement-seat, away
+from guilty Jerusalem; He took away the sin of the world, and expiated
+it once for all. He quenched in His blood the fires of wrath and hate it
+kindled. He slew _the enmity_ thereby.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still, we are individuals, as you said, not lost after all in the
+world's solidarity. Here your personal right and will must come in. What
+Christ has done for you is yours, so far as you accept it. He has died
+your death beforehand, trusting that you would not repudiate His act,
+that you would not let His blood be spilt in vain. But He will never
+force His mediation upon you. He respects your freedom and your manhood.
+Do you now endorse what Jesus Christ did on your behalf? Do you renounce
+the sin, and accept the sacrifice? Then it is yours, from this moment,
+before the tribunal of God and of conscience. By the witness of His
+Spirit you are proclaimed a forgiven and reconciled man. Christ
+crucified is yours--if you will have Him, if you will identify your
+sinful self with the sinless Mediator, if as you see Him lifted up on
+the cross you will let your heart cry out, "Oh my God, He dies for
+_me_!"
+
+Coming "in one Spirit to the Father," the reconciled children join hands
+again with each other. Social barriers, caste feelings, family feuds,
+personal quarrels, national antipathies, alike go down before the virtue
+of the blood of Jesus.
+
+            "Neither passion nor pride
+              His cross can abide,
+    But melt in the fountain that streams from His side!"
+
+"Beloved," you will say to the man that hates or has wronged you
+most,--"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
+In these simple words of the apostle John lies the secret of universal
+peace, the hope of the fraternization of mankind. Nations will have to
+say this one day, as well as men.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[89] See to this effect such passages as Rom. i. 16 (_to the Jew
+first_), ix. 4, 5; and especially xi. 13-32.
+
+[90] Gal. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11. Comp. John x. 16, xi. 52. See _The
+Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible), Chapter XV.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_GOD'S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY._
+
+    "So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are
+    fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being
+    built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus
+    Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building,
+    fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in
+    whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the
+    Spirit."--EPH. ii. 19-22.
+
+
+Not unfrequently it is the last word or phrase of the paragraph that
+gives us the clue to St Paul's meaning and discloses the point at which
+he has aimed all along. So in this instance. "For a habitation of God in
+the Spirit": behold the goal of God's ways with mankind! For this end
+the Divine grace has wrought through countless ages and has made its
+great sacrifice. For this end Jew and Gentile are being gathered into
+one and compacted into a new humanity.
+
+I. The Church is a house built for an _Occupant_. Its quality and size,
+and the mode of its construction are determined by its destination. It
+is built to suit the great Inhabitant, who says concerning the new Zion
+as He said of the old in figure: "This is my rest for ever! Here will I
+dwell, for I have desired it." God, who is spirit, cannot be satisfied
+with the fabric of material nature for His temple, nor does "the Most
+High dwell in houses made by men's hands." He seeks our spirit for His
+abode, and
+
+                            "Doth prefer
+    Before all temples the upright heart and pure."
+
+In the collective life and spirit of humanity God claims to reside, that
+He may fill it with His glory and His love. "Know you not," cries the
+apostle to the once debased Corinthians, "that you are God's temple, and
+that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"
+
+Nothing that is bestowed upon man terminates in himself. The deliverance
+of Jewish and Gentile believers from their personal sins, their
+re-instatement into the broken unity of mankind and the destruction in
+them of their old enmities, of the antipathies generated by their common
+rebellion against God--these great results of Christ's sacrifice were
+means to a further end. "Hallowed be Thy name" is our first petition to
+the Father in heaven; "Glory to God in the highest" is the key-note of
+the angels' song, that runs through all the harmonies of "peace on
+earth," through every strain of the melody of life. Religion is the
+mistress, not the handmaid in human affairs. She will never consent to
+become a mere ethical discipline, an instrument and subordinate stage in
+social evolution, a ladder held for men to climb up into their
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The old temptation of the Garden, "Ye shall be as gods," has come upon
+our age in a new and fascinating form, "You shall be as gods," it is
+whispered: "nay, you _are_ God, and there is no other. The supernatural
+is a dream. The Christian story is a fable. There is none to fear or
+adore above yourselves!" Man is to worship his collective self, his own
+humanity. "I am the Lord thy God," the great idol says, "that brought
+thee up out of animalism and savagery, and me only shalt thou
+serve!--Love and faithful service to one's kind, a holy passion for the
+welfare of the race, for the relief of human ignorance and poverty and
+pain, this is the true religion; and you need no other. Its obligation
+is instinctive, its benefits immediate and palpable; and it gives a
+consecration to individual life that dignifies and chastens, while it
+calls into exercise all our faculties."
+
+Yes, we willingly admit, such human service is "religion pure and
+undefiled, _before our God and Father_." If service is rendered to our
+kind as worship to the Father of men; if we reverence in each man the
+image of God and the shrine of His Spirit; if we are seeking to cleanse
+and adorn in men the temple where the Most High shall dwell, the
+humblest work done for our fellows' good is done for Him. The best human
+charity is rendered for the love of God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
+God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. This," said Jesus, "is
+the first and great commandment. And the second is _like unto it_: Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
+the law and the prophets." On these two hangs the welfare of men and
+nations.
+
+But the first commandment must come first. The second law of Jesus never
+has been or will be kept to purpose without the first. Humanitarian
+sentiments, dreams of universal brotherhood, projects of social reform,
+may seem for the moment to gain by their independence of religion a
+certain zest and emphasis; but they are without root and vitality. Their
+energy fails, or spends itself in revolt; their glow declines, their
+purity is stained. The leaders and first enthusiasts trained in the
+school of Christ, whose spirit, in vain repudiated, lives on in them,
+find themselves betrayed and alone. The coarse selfishness and
+materialism of the human heart win an easy triumph over a visionary
+altruism. "Without me," says Jesus Christ, "ye can do nothing."
+
+In the light of God's glory man learns to reverence his nature and
+understand the vocation of his race. The love of God touches the deep
+and enduring springs of human action. The kingdom of Christ and of God
+commands an absolute devotion; its service inspires unfaltering courage
+and invincible patience. There is a grandeur and a certainty, of which
+the noblest secular aims fall short, in the hopes of those who are
+striving together for the faith of the gospel, and who work to build
+human life into a dwelling-place for God.
+
+II. God's temple in the Church of Jesus Christ, while it is one, is also
+manifold. "In whom _each several building_ [or _every part of the
+building_[91]], while it is compacted together, grows into a holy temple
+in the Lord."
+
+The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient
+temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points
+over a wide area. The builders work in concert, upon a common plan. The
+several parts of the work are adjusted to each other; and the various
+operations in process are so harmonized, that the entire construction
+preserves the unity of the architect's design. Such an edifice was the
+apostolic Church--one, but of many parts--in its diverse gifts and
+multiplied activities animated by one Spirit and directed towards one
+Divine purpose.
+
+Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome--what a various scene of
+activity these centres of Christian life presented! The Churches
+founded in these great cities must have differed in many features. Even
+in the communities of his own province the apostle did not, so far as we
+can judge, impose a uniform administration. St Peter and St Paul carried
+out their plans independently, only maintaining a general understanding
+with each other. The apostolic founders, inspired by one and the
+self-same Spirit, could labour at a distance, upon material and by
+methods extremely various, with entire confidence in each other and with
+an assurance of the unity of result which their teaching and
+administration would exhibit. The many buildings rested on the one
+foundation of the apostles. "Whether it were I or they," says our
+apostle, "so we preach, and so you believed." Where there is the same
+Spirit and the same Lord, men do not need to be scrupulous about visible
+conformity. Elasticity and individual initiative admit of entire harmony
+of principle. The hand may do its work without irritating and
+obstructing the eye; and the foot run on its errands without mistrusting
+the ear.
+
+Such was the catholicism of the apostolic age. The true reading of verse
+21, as it is restored by the Revisers, is an incidental witness to the
+date of the epistle. A churchman of the second century, writing under
+Paul's name in the interests of catholic unity as it was then
+understood, would scarcely have penned such a sentence without attaching
+to the subject the definite article: he must have written "all the
+building," as the copyists from whom the received text proceeds very
+naturally have done. From that time onwards, as the system of the
+ecclesiastical hierarchy was developed, external unity was more and more
+strictly imposed. The original "diversity of operations" became a rigid
+uniformity. The Church swallowed up the Churches. Finally, the spiritual
+bureaucracy of Rome gathered all ecclesiastical power into one centre,
+and placed the direction of Western Christendom in the hands of a single
+priest, whom it declared to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ and endowed
+with the Divine attribute of infallibility.
+
+Had not Jerusalem been overthrown and its Church destroyed, the
+hierarchical movement would probably have made that city, rather than
+Rome, its centre. This was in fact the tendency, if not the express
+purpose of the Judaistic party in the Church. St Paul had vindicated in
+his earlier epistles the freedom of the Gentile Christian communities,
+and their right of non-conformity to Jewish usage. In the words "each
+several building, fitly framed together," there is an echo of this
+controversy. The Churches of his mission claim a standing side by side
+with those founded by other apostles. For himself and his Gentile
+brethren he seems to say, in the presence of the primitive Church and
+its leaders: "As they are Christ's, so also are we."
+
+The co-operation of the different parts of the body of Christ is
+essential to their collective growth. Let all Churches beware of
+crushing dissent. Blows aimed at our Christian neighbours recoil upon
+ourselves. Undermining their foundation, we shake our own. Next to
+positive corruption of doctrine and life, nothing hinders so greatly the
+progress of the kingdom of God as the claim to exclusive legitimacy made
+on behalf of ancient Church organizations. Their representatives would
+have every part of God's temple framed upon one pattern. They refuse a
+place on the apostolic foundation to all Churches, however numerous,
+however rich in faith and good works, however strong the historical
+justification for their existence, however clear the marks they bear of
+the Spirit's seal, which do not conform to the rule they themselves have
+received. Their rites and ministry, they assert, are those alone
+approved by Christ and authorized by His apostles, within a given area.
+They refuse the right hand of fellowship to men who are doing Christ's
+work by their side; they isolate their flocks, as far as possible, from
+intercourse with the Christian communities around them.
+
+This policy on the part of any Christian Church, or Church party, is
+contrary to the mind of Christ and to the example of His apostles. Those
+who hold aloof from the comity of the Churches and prevent the many
+buildings of God's temple being fitly framed together, must bear their
+judgement, whosoever they be. They prefer conquest to peace, but that
+conquest they will never win; it would be fatal to themselves. Let the
+elder sister frankly allow the birthright of the younger sisters of
+Christ's house in these lands, and be our example in justice and in
+charity. Great will be her honour; great the glory won for our common
+Lord.
+
+"Every building fitly framed together _groweth into a holy temple_ in
+the Lord." The subject is distributive; the predicate collective. The
+parts give place to the whole in the writer's mind. As each several
+piece of the structure, each cell or chapel in the temple, spreads out
+to join its companion buildings and adjusts itself to the parts around
+it, the edifice grows into a richer completeness and becomes more fit
+for its sacred purpose. The separate buildings, distant in place or
+historical character, approximate by extension, as they spread over the
+unoccupied ground between them and as the connecting links are
+multiplied. At last a point is reached at which they will become
+continuous. Growing into each other step by step and forming across the
+diminishing distance a web of mutual attachment constantly thickening,
+they will insensibly, by a natural and vital growth, become one in
+visible communion as they are one in their underlying faith.
+
+When each organ of the body in its own degree is perfect and holds its
+place in keeping with the rest, we think no longer of their individual
+perfection, of the charm of this feature or of that; they are forgotten
+in the beauty of the perfect frame. So it will be in the body of Christ,
+when its several communions, cleansed and filled with His Spirit, each
+honouring the vocation of the others, shall in freedom and in love by a
+spontaneous movement be gathered into one. Their strength will then be
+no longer weakened and their spirit chafed by internal conflict. With
+united forces and irresistible energy, they will assail the kingdom of
+darkness and subjugate the world to Christ.
+
+For this consummation our Saviour prayed in the last hours before His
+death: "that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in
+Thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that Thou
+didst send me" (John xvii. 21). Did He fear that His little flock of the
+Twelve would be parted by dissensions? Or did He not look onward to the
+future, and see the "offences that must come," the alienations and
+fierce conflicts that would arise amongst His people, and the blood that
+would be shed in His name? Yet beyond these divisions, on the horizon of
+the end of the age, He foresaw the day when the wounds of His Church
+would be healed, when the sword that He had brought on the earth would
+be sheathed, and through the unity of faith and love in His people all
+mankind would at last come to acknowledge Him and the Father who had
+sent Him.
+
+III. To appearance, we are many rather than one who bear the name of
+Christ. But we are one notwithstanding, if below the variety of
+superstructure our faith rests upon the witness of the apostles, and the
+several buildings have Christ Jesus Himself for chief corner-stone. The
+_one foundation_ and the _one Spirit_ constitute the unity of God's
+temple in the Church.
+
+"The apostles and prophets" are named as a single body, _the prophets_
+being doubtless, in this passage and in chapters iii. 5 and iv. 11, the
+existing prophets of the apostolic Church, whose inspired teaching
+supplemented that of the apostles and helped to lay down the foundation
+of revealed truth. That foundation has been, through the providence of
+God, preserved for later ages in the Scriptures of the New Testament, on
+which the faith of Christians has rested ever since. Such a prophet
+Barnabas was in the first days (Acts xiii. 1), and such was the unknown,
+but deeply inspired writer of the epistle to the Hebrews; such prophets,
+again, were SS. Mark and Luke, the Evangelists. Prophecy was not a
+stated gift of office. Just as there were "teachers" in the early Church
+whose knowledge and eloquence did not entitle them to bear rule, so
+prophecy was frequently exercised by private persons and carried with it
+no such official authority as belonged in the highest degree to the
+apostles.
+
+It is thought surprising that St Paul should write thus, in so general
+and distant a fashion, of the order to which he belonged (comp. iii. 5).
+This, it is said, is the language of a later generation, which looks
+back with reverence to the inspired Founders. But this letter is
+written, as we observed at the outset, from a peculiarly objective and
+impersonal standpoint. It differs in this respect from other epistles of
+St Paul. He is addressing a number of Churches, with some of which his
+personal relations were slight and distant. He is contemplating the
+Church in its most general character. He is not the only founder of
+Churches; he is one of a band of colleagues, working in different
+regions. It is natural that he should use the plural here. He sets his
+successors an example of the recognition due to fellow-labourers whose
+work bears the seal of Christ's Spirit.
+
+These men have laid _the foundation_--Peter and Paul, John and James,
+Barnabas and Silas, and the rest. They are our spiritual progenitors,
+the fathers of our faith. We see Jesus Christ through their eyes; we
+read His teaching, and catch His Spirit in their words. Their testimony,
+in its essential facts, stands secure in the confidence of mankind. Nor
+was it their word alone, but the men themselves--their character, their
+life and work--laid for the Church its historical foundation. This
+"glorious company of the apostles" formed the first course in the new
+building, on whose firmness and strength the stability of the entire
+structure depends. Their virtues and their sufferings, as well as the
+revelations made through them, have guided the thoughts and shaped the
+life of countless multitudes of men, of the best and wisest men in all
+ages since. They have fixed the standard of Christian doctrine and the
+type of Christian character. At our best, we are but imitators of them
+as they were of Christ.
+
+In regard to the chief part of their teaching, both as to its meaning
+and authority, the great bulk of Christians in all communions are
+agreed. The keen disputes which engage us upon certain points, testify
+to the cardinal importance which is felt on all hands to attach to the
+words of Christ's chosen apostles. Their living witness is in our midst.
+The self-same Spirit that wrought in them, works amongst men and dwells
+in the communion of saints. He still reveals the things of Christ, and
+guides into truth the willing and obedient.
+
+So "the firm foundation of God standeth"; though men, shaken themselves,
+seem to see it tremble. On that basis we may labour confidently and
+loyally, with those amongst whom the Master has placed us. Some of our
+fellow-workmen disown and would hinder us: that shall not prevent us
+from rejoicing in their good work, and admiring the gold and precious
+stones that they contribute to the fabric. The Lord of the temple will
+know how to use the labour of His many servants. He will forgive and
+compose their strife, who are jealous for His name. He will shape their
+narrow aims to His larger purposes. Out of their discords He will draw a
+finer harmony. As the great house grows to its dimensions, as the
+workmen by the extension of their labours come nearer to each other and
+their sectional plans merge in Christ's great purpose, reproaches will
+cease and misunderstandings vanish. Over many who followed not with us
+and whom we counted but as "strangers and sojourners," as men whose
+place within the walls of Zion was doubtful and unauthorized, we shall
+hereafter rejoice with a joy not unmixed with self-upbraiding, to find
+them in the fullest right our fellow-citizens amongst the saints and of
+the household of God.
+
+The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder of the Church, as He is the
+supreme witness to Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words _in the
+Spirit_, closing the verse with solemn emphasis, denote not the mode of
+God's habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency engaged in
+building this new house of God. With one "chief corner-stone" to rest
+upon and one Spirit to inspire and control them, the apostles and
+prophets laid their foundation and the Church was "builded together" for
+a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But for this sovereign influence
+the primitive founders of Christianity, like later Church leaders, would
+have fallen into fatal discord. Modern critics, reasoning upon natural
+grounds and not understanding the grace of the Holy Spirit, assume that
+they did thus quarrel and contend. Had this been so, no foundation could
+ever have been laid; the Church would have fallen to pieces at the very
+beginning.
+
+In the hands of these faithful and wise stewards of God's dispensation,
+"the stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner."
+Their work has been tried by fire and by flood; and it abides. The rock
+of Zion stands unworn by time, unshaken by the conflict of ages,--amidst
+the movements of history and the shifting currents of thought the one
+foundation for the peace and true welfare of mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[91] =Pasa oikodome=, according to the well-established critical
+reading. For =pas= without the article, implying a various whole,
+compare =pases ktiseos= in Col. i. 15; =pasa graphe=, 2 Tim. iii. 16;
+=en pase anastrophe=, 1 Peter i. 15; and =Theos pases charitos=, 1 Peter
+v. 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_THE SECRET OF THE AGES._
+
+    "For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of
+    you Gentiles,--if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of
+    that grace of God which was given me toward you; how that by
+    revelation was made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in
+    few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding
+    in the mystery of Christ), which in other generations was not made
+    known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His
+    holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; _to wit_, that the
+    Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and
+    fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
+    whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace
+    of God which was given me according to the working of His power.
+    Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
+    given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
+    Christ; and to bring to light what is the dispensation of the
+    mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all
+    things."--EPH. iii. 1-9.
+
+
+Verses 2-13 are in form a parenthesis. They interrupt the prayer which
+appears to be commencing in the first verse and is not resumed until
+verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical, however, in
+appearance more than in reality. The matter it contains is so weighty
+and so essential to the argument and structure of the epistle, that it
+is impossible to treat it as a mere _aside_. The writer intends, at the
+pause which occurs after the paragraph just concluded (ii. 22), to
+interpose a few words of prayer before passing on to the next topic.
+But in the act of doing so, this subject of which his mind is
+full--viz., that of his own relation to God's great purpose for
+mankind--forces itself upon him; and the prayer that was on his lips is
+pent up for a few moments longer, until it flows forth again, in richer
+measure, in verses 14-19.
+
+Like chapter i. 3-14, this passage is an extreme instance of St Paul's
+amorphous style. His sentences are not composed; they are spun in a
+continuous thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial, and
+relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes like living things, putting
+forth new processes every moment, now in this and now in that direction.
+Within the main parenthesis we soon come upon another parenthesis
+including verses 3_b_ and 4 ("as I wrote afore," etc.); and at several
+points the grammatical connexion is uncertain. In its general scope,
+this intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of _what God
+has wrought in the apostle_ toward the accomplishment of His great plan.
+It thus completes the exposition given already of that which _God
+wrought in Christ for the Church_, and that which _He has wrought
+through Christ in Gentile believers_ in fulfilment of the same end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 1-9 speak (1) of the mystery itself--God's gracious intention
+toward the human race, unknown in earlier times; and (2) of the man to
+whom, above others, it was given to make known the secret.
+
+I. _The mystery_ is defined twice over. First, it consists in the fact
+that "in Christ Jesus through the gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and
+co-incorporate and co-partners in the promise" (ver. 6); and secondly,
+it is "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (ver. 8). The latter phrase
+gathers to a point what is diversely expressed in the former.
+
+Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of the mysteries of Divine
+truth, of the whole enigma of existence. In the parallel epistle he
+calls Him "the mystery of God--in whom are all the treasures of wisdom
+and knowledge hidden" (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.). The mystery of God,
+discovered in Christ, was hidden out of the sight and reach of previous
+times. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common
+property of mankind (Col. i. 25-28).
+
+In close connexion with these statements, St Paul speaks there, as he
+does here, of his own heavy sufferings endured on this account and the
+joy they gave him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose worthy of
+God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation waiting to be spoken since the
+world began, that is addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along
+with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate with the
+greatness of the truth given him to announce.
+
+The mystery, as we have said, consists in _Christ_. This we learned from
+chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and
+laid His plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness of the
+times dispenses. The Old Testament, the reservoir of previous
+revelation, had Him for its close-kept secret, "held in silence through
+eternal times" (Rom. xvi. 25-27). The drift of its prophecies, the focus
+of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards which its spiritual
+indications pointed, was "Christ." He "was the spiritual rock that
+followed" Israel in its wanderings, from whose springs the people
+drank, as it answered to the touch of one and now another of the holy
+men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ gives unity, substance, and
+meaning to the history of Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without
+goal, a problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law and sacrifice;
+the kingly Son of David, and the suffering Servant of Jehovah; the Seed
+of the woman with bruised foot bruising the serpent's head; the Lord
+whom His people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone hewn from
+the mountains without hands, that grows till it fills the earth--the
+manifold representations of Israel's ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus
+Christ. The lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of
+prophecy--disconnected as they seemed and without a plan, giving rise to
+a thousand dreams and speculations--are filled out and drawn into shape
+and take life and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of a
+consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment or of that
+belonging to the consummate Person and the comprehensive plan manifest
+in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
+
+But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated wealth of former
+revelation, His fulness is not measured thereby or exhausted. He solves
+the problems of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But He
+creates new and deeper problems, some explained in the continued
+teaching of His Spirit and His providence, others that remain, or emerge
+from time to time to tax the faith and understanding of His Church.
+There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person, with which the Greek
+Church struggled long--His eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation
+to mankind and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial reign
+and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty of God. These depths
+St Paul sounded with his plummet; but he found them unfathomable.
+Theological science has explored and defined them, and illuminated them
+on many sides, but cannot reach to their inmost mystery. Then there is
+the problem of the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching
+the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt, touching the
+adjustment of law and grace, the method of justification, the extent and
+efficacy of Christ's redeeming work, touching the future destiny and
+eternal state of souls. Another class of questions largely occupies the
+minds of thoughtful men to-day. They are studying the relation of Christ
+and His Church to nature and the outward world, the bearings of
+Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of the Spirit of God
+in communities, and the place of man's collective life in the progress
+and upbuilding of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to those
+who humbly seek His light. He is given afresh in every age. Out of
+Christ's unsearchable riches ever-new resources are forthcoming at His
+Church's need, new treasures lying hidden in the old for him who can
+extract them. But His riches, however far they are investigated, remain
+unsearchable, and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God's ways
+may be tracked further and further in each generation; they will remain
+to the end, as they were to the mind of Paul at the limit of his bold
+researches, "past finding out." The inspired apostle confesses himself a
+child in Divine learning: "We know in part," he says, "we prophesy in
+part." Oh the depths of "hidden wisdom" unimagined now, that are in
+store for us in Christ, "foreordained before the worlds unto our
+glory!"
+
+The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with which the apostle is
+concerned, is that of His relationship to the Gentile world. "The grace
+of God," he says in verse 2, "was given me _for you_." Such is "the
+dispensation" in which God is now engaged. Upon this lavish and
+undreamed-of scale He is dealing forth salvation to men. St Paul
+describes this revelation of God's goodness to the Gentiles by three
+parallel but distinct terms in verse 6. They "are fellow-heirs"--a word
+that carries us back to chapter i. 11-13, and assures the Gentile
+readers of their final redemption and heavenly glory.[92] They "are of
+the same body"--which sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii.
+11-22. And they "are fellow-partakers of the promise"--receiving upon a
+footing of equal privilege with Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit
+and the blessings promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.
+
+In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St Paul formally
+proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles into the body of Christ,
+their investiture with the franchise of faith. The forgiveness of sins
+is theirs, the light of God's smile, the breath of His Spirit, the
+worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and honours of His
+service. The incarnation of Christ is theirs; His life, teaching, and
+miracles; His cross is theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His
+second coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom--all made their
+own on the bare condition of a penitent and obedient faith. The past is
+theirs--is ours, along with the present and the future. The God of
+Israel is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons after the
+flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets prophesied of the grace that
+should come unto us. Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile
+peoples in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and praises. In
+their words we find expression for our heart-griefs and joys. At the
+wedding-feast or by the grave-side, amidst "the multitude that keep holy
+day" and in "dry lands" where the soul thirsts for God's ordinances, we
+carry the Psalmists with us and the teachers of Israel.
+
+What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by Jesus Christ, have
+discovered in the Jewish Bible! When will the Jewish people understand
+that their greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the
+Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept their part in the
+riches of which they have made all the world partakers? The mystery of
+our participation in their Christ has now been "revealed to the sons of
+men" long enough. Is it not time that they themselves should see it,
+that the veil should be lifted from the heart of Israel? The disclosure
+was in the first instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished
+expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was at first rejected.
+But God the King of the ages has been asserting and re-asserting the
+fact in the course of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him!
+how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!
+
+II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,--men of unveiled heart
+to whom the mystery of ages was disclosed. "The secret of Jehovah is
+with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant." Such is
+the rule of revelation. To the like effect Christ said: "The pure in
+heart shall see God. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the
+doctrine."
+
+The light of God's universal love had come into the world; but where it
+fell on cold or impure hearts, it shone in vain. The mystery "was made
+manifest to His _saints_," writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So in
+this passage: "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets in the
+Spirit." The pure eye sees the true light. This was the condition which
+made it possible for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be
+the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere and devoted
+men, willing to be taught of God, willing to surrender every prejudice
+and the preconceptions of flesh and blood, in order to receive and
+convey to the world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than the
+thoughts of men. To such men--true disciples, loyal at all costs to God
+and truth, holy and humble of heart--Jesus Christ gave His great
+commission and bade them "go and make disciples of all the nations."
+
+The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the
+house of Cornelius "not to call any man common or unclean." He saw, and
+the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God "gave the like gift"
+to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had "purified their
+hearts by faith." Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this
+revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors
+in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when
+he speaks of "holy apostles and prophets" in verse 5. His readers would
+naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original
+apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine
+of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance
+to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown
+by the stress which is laid upon it and the prominence given to it in
+the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.
+
+The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never
+claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It
+was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. "Whereof," he says, in
+verse 7, "I _became minister_"; again, "to me was this grace given, to
+_preach to the Gentiles_ Christ's unsearchable riches." The leaders of
+the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for
+all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the
+practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came
+upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to
+it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then "it pleased God
+to reveal His Son" in him, that he might "preach Him among the
+Gentiles."
+
+The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and
+continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him
+to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative,
+to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds
+itself: "To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace
+given." That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and
+most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ's
+riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for
+this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness
+that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that
+this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped
+in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew
+better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the
+house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of
+that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its
+precious things and make them at home within its walls.
+
+To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the
+gospel--a commonplace of our modern rhetoric--had burst upon his mind in
+its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an
+undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are
+opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the
+promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the
+largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of
+the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine
+impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the
+disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.
+
+St Paul's work, in carrying out the dispensation of this mystery, was
+twofold. It was both external and internal. He was a "herald and
+apostle"; he was also "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth" (1
+Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry the good tidings
+from one end to the other of the Roman empire, to spread it abroad as
+far as his feet could travel and his voice reach, and thus "to fulfil
+the gospel of Christ." But there was another, mental task, as necessary
+and still more difficult, which likewise fell to his lot. He had to
+_think out_ the gospel. It was his office to unfold and apply it to the
+wants of a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted
+him as evangelist and pastor,--questions that contained the seed and
+beginning of the intellectual difficulties of the Church in future
+times. He had to free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism,
+to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical and legal
+interpretation. On the other hand, he had equally to guard the truth as
+it is in Jesus from the dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and
+theosophy. Fighting his way through fierce and incessant opposition on
+both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind of the Church onwards and
+guides it still in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. These
+noble epistles are the fruit and record of St Paul's theological work.
+Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience of the world
+than any one man besides, except the Master of truth who was more than
+man.
+
+The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence he now possessed, and
+that must accrue to him in the future from the transcendent interest of
+the doctrines committed to his charge. There is no false modesty about
+this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only to "preach to the
+Gentiles the good news of Christ's unsearchable riches"; but more than
+that, "to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery that
+has been hidden away from the ages in God who created all things." The
+great secret was out while Saul of Tarsus was still a persecutor and
+blasphemer. But as to the _management_ and _dispensation_ of the
+mystery, the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in which
+God would convey and apply it to the world at large, and as to the
+bearings and consequences of this momentous truth,--the apostle Paul,
+and no one but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He was, in
+fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.
+
+Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul's debtors; and are
+included amongst the "all men" of verse 9 (if this reading of the text
+is correct). St John had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the
+mind of Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation; but
+the labours and the logic of St Paul provided the field into which he
+entered in his ripe old age spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and
+assimilated everything that belonged to Christ and found for everything
+its principle and centre in the Master of his youth--"the way, the
+truth, and the life"--passed through the school of Paul. With the rest,
+he learnt through the new apostle to see more perfectly "what is the
+dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this letter in the
+Asian towns, if they have not known it before, will now "perceive" his
+"understanding in the mystery of Christ." All ages have discerned it
+since. And the ages to come will measure its value better than we can do
+now.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[92] See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14-25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN._
+
+    "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the
+    heavenly _places_ might be made known through the Church the
+    manifold wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages which
+    He formed in the Christ, _even_ Jesus our Lord: in whom we have
+    boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him.
+    Wherefore I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which
+    are your glory."--EPH. iii. 10-13.
+
+
+_The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God who created all
+things_: so the last paragraph concluded. The added phrase "through
+Jesus Christ" is a comment of the pious reader, that has been
+incorporated in the received text; but it is wanting in the oldest
+copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not concerned with the
+prerogatives of Christ, but with the scope of the Christian economy. He
+is displaying the breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace, the
+infinite range of the Divine plans and operations of which it forms the
+centre. Its secret was cherished in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations
+are laid in the very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now
+being made brings new light and wisdom to the powers of the celestial
+realms.
+
+"There is nothing covered," said Jesus, "which shall not be revealed,
+and hidden which shall not be known." The mysteries which God sets
+before His intelligent creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are
+drafts, to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of wisdom hidden
+in Christ. So this great secret of the destiny of the Gentile world was
+"from all ages hidden, in order that now through the Church it might be
+made known," and by its means God's wisdom, to these sublime
+intelligences. This intention was a part of the "plan of the ages"
+formed in Christ (ver. 11). God designed by our redemption to bless
+higher races along with our own. The elder sons of God, those "morning
+stars" of creation, are schooled and instructed by what is transpiring
+here upon earth.
+
+To some this will appear to be mere extravagance. They see in such
+expressions the marks of an unrestrained enthusiasm, of theological
+speculation pushed beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge
+of the physical universe. This censure would be plausible and it might
+seem that the apostle had extended the mission of the gospel beyond its
+province, were it not for what he says in verse 11: This "purpose of the
+ages" God "made in _the Christ_, even _Jesus our Lord_." Jesus Christ
+links together angels and men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of
+heaven. Christ's coming to this world and identification with it unite
+to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The scenes enacted upon this
+planet and the events of its religious history have sent their shock
+through the universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to human
+life a boundless interest and significance. It is idle to oppose to this
+conviction the fact of the littleness of the terrestrial globe.
+Spiritual and physical magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot
+measure a man's soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science teaches
+us that the most powerful forces may exist and operate within the
+narrowest space. A microscopic cell may contain the potential life of a
+world. If our earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has
+been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which God spared not to
+give His own Son!
+
+Here, then, lies the centre of the apostle's thoughts in this paragraph:
+_God's all-comprehending purpose in Christ_. The magnitude and
+completeness of this plan are indicated by the fact that it embraces in
+its purview _the angelic powers and their enlightenment_. So
+understanding it, our _human faith gains confidence and courage_ (vv.
+12, 13).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. The textual critics restore the definite article which later copyists
+had dropped before the word _Christ_ in verse 11. We have already
+remarked the frequency of "the Christ" in this epistle.[93] Once besides
+this peculiar combination of the names of our Saviour occurs--in
+Colossians ii. 6, where Lightfoot renders it _the Christ, even Jesus the
+Lord_. So it should be rendered in this place. St Paul sets forth the
+purpose of "God who created all things." He is looking back through "the
+ages" during which the Divine plan was kept secret. God was all the time
+designing His work of mercy, pointing meanwhile the hopes of men by
+token and promise to the Coming One. The Messiah was the burden of those
+prophetic ages. That inscrutable Christ of the Old Testament, the veiled
+mystery of Jewish hope, stands manifested before us and challenges our
+faith in the glorious person of "Jesus our Lord." This singular turn of
+expression identifies the ideal and the real, the promise and
+fulfilment, the dream of Old Testament prophecy and the fact of New
+Testament history. For Jesus our Lord is the very Christ to whom the
+generations before His coming looked forward out of their twilight with
+wistful expectancy.
+
+Not without meaning is He called "Jesus _our Lord_." The "principalities
+and powers" of the heavenly places are in our view (ver. 10). These
+potentates some of the Asian Christians were fain to worship. "See ye do
+it not," Paul seems to say. "Jesus, the Christ of God, is alone our
+Lord; not these. He is our Lord _and theirs_ (i. 21, 22). As our Lord He
+commands their homage, and gives them lessons through His Church in
+God's deep counsels." Everything that the apostle says tends to exalt
+our Redeemer and to enhance our confidence in Him. His position is
+central and supreme, in regard alike to the ages of time and the powers
+of the universe. In His hand is the key to all mysteries. He is the
+Alpha and Omega, the beginning, middle, and end of God's ways. He is the
+centre of Israel, Israel of the world and the human ages; while the
+world of men is bound through Him to the higher spheres of being, over
+which He too presides.
+
+There is a splendid intellectual courage, an incredible boldness and
+reach of thought in St Paul's conception of the sovereignty of Christ.
+Remember that He of whom these things are said, but thirty years before
+died a felon's death in the sight of the Jewish people. It is not _our_
+Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is hallowed by the lips of millions and
+glorified by the triumphs of centuries upon centuries past, but the
+Nazarene with the obscurity of His life and the cruel shame of Calvary
+fresh in the recollection of all men. With what immense force had the
+facts of His glorification wrought upon men's minds--His resurrection
+and ascension, the witness of His Spirit and the virtue of His
+gospel--for it to be possible to speak of Him thus, within a generation
+of His death! While "the foolishness of preaching" such a Christ and the
+weakness in which He was crucified were patent to all eyes, unrelieved
+by the influence of time and the glamour of success, how was it that the
+first believers raised Jesus to this limitless glory and dominion? It
+was through the conviction, certified by outward fact and inward
+experience, that "He liveth by the power of God." Thus Peter on the day
+of Pentecost: "By the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this
+which ye now see and hear." The resurrection from the dead, the
+demonstration of the Spirit proved Jesus Christ to be that which He had
+claimed to be, the Saviour of men and the eternal Son of God.
+
+The supremacy here assigned to Christ is a consequence of the exaltation
+described at the close of the first chapter. There we see the height,
+here the breadth and length of His dominion. If He is raised from the
+grave so high that all created powers and names are beneath His feet, we
+cannot wonder that the past ages were employed in preparing His way,
+that the basis of His throne lies in the foundation of the world.
+
+II. The universe is one. There is a solidarity of rational and moral
+interests amongst all intelligences. Granting the existence of such
+beings as the angels of Scripture, we should expect them to be
+profoundly concerned in the redeeming work of Christ. They are the
+"watchers" and "holy ones" spoken of by the later Isaiah and Daniel,
+whom the Lord has "set upon the walls of Jerusalem" and who survey the
+affairs of nations. Such was "the angel who talked" with Zechariah in
+his vision, and whom the prophet overheard pleading for Jerusalem. In
+the Apocalypse, again, we find the angels acting as God's unseen
+executive. We decline to believe that these superhuman creatures are
+nothing more than apocalyptic machinery, that they are creations of
+fancy employed to give a livelier aspect to spiritual truth. "Cannot I
+pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve
+legions of angels?" So Jesus said, in the most solemn hour of His life.
+And who can forget His tender words concerning the little children,
+whose "angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven"?
+
+The apostle Paul, who denounces "worship of the angels" in the fellow
+epistle to this, earnestly believed in their existence and their
+interest in human affairs. If he did not write the words of Hebrews i.
+14, he certainly held that "they are ministering spirits sent forth to
+do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation." Most
+clearly is their relationship to the Church affirmed by the words of the
+revealing angel to the apostle John: "I am a fellow-servant with thee
+and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them that keep the words of
+this book."
+
+Christ's service is the high school of wisdom for the universe. These
+princes of heaven win by their ministry to Christ and His Church a great
+reward. Their intelligence, however lofty its range, is finite. Their
+keen and burning intuition could not penetrate the mystery of God's
+intentions toward this world. The revelations of the latter days--the
+incarnation, the cross, the publication of the gospel, the outpouring
+of the Spirit--were full of surprises to the heavenly watchers. They
+sang at Bethlehem; they hid their faces and shrouded heaven in blackness
+at the sight of Calvary. They bent down with eager observation and
+searching thought "desiring to look into" the things made known to men
+(1 Peter i. 12),--close and sympathetic students of the Church's
+history. The apostle felt that there were other eyes bent upon him than
+those of his fellow-men, and that he was acting in a grander arena than
+the visible world. "We are a spectacle," he says, "_to angels_ and to
+men." So he enjoins faithfulness on Timothy, and with Timothy on all who
+bear the charge of the gospel, "before God and Christ Jesus, and the
+elect angels." What is public opinion, what the applause or derision of
+the crowd, to him who lives and acts in the presence of these august
+spectators?
+
+"Through the Church," we are told, the angels of God are "now" having
+His "manifold wisdom made known" to them. It is not from the abstract
+scheme of salvation, from the theory or theology of the Church that they
+get this education, but through the living Church herself. The Saviour's
+mission to earth created a problem for them, the development of which
+they follow with the most intense and sympathetic interest. With what
+solicitude they watch the conflict between good and evil and the varying
+progress of Christ's kingdom amongst men! Many things, doubtless, that
+engage our attention and fill a large space in our Church records, are
+of little account with them; and much that passes in obscurity, names
+and deeds unchronicled by fame, are written in heaven and pondered in
+other spheres. No brave and true blow is struck in Christ's battle, but
+it has the admiration of these high spectators. No advance is made in
+character and habit, in Christian intelligence and efficiency and the
+application of the gospel to human need, but they notice and approve.
+When the cause of the Church and the salvation of mankind go forward,
+when righteousness and peace triumph, the morning stars sing together
+and the sons of God shout for joy. The joy that there is in the presence
+of the angels of God over the repenting sinner, is not the joy of
+sympathy or pity only; it is the delight of growing wisdom, of deepening
+insight into the ways of God, into the heart of the Father and the love
+that passes knowledge.
+
+One would suppose from what the apostle hints, that our world presents a
+problem unique in the kingdom of God, one which raises questions more
+complicated and crucial than have elsewhere arisen. The heavenly
+princedoms are learning through the Church "the _manifold_ wisdom of
+God." His love, in its pure essence, those happy and godlike beings
+know. They have lived for ages in its unclouded light. His power and
+skill they may see displayed in proportions immensely grander than this
+puny globe of ours presents. God's justice, it may be, and the thunders
+of His law have issued forth in other regions clothed with a splendour
+of which the scenes of Sinai were but a faint emblem. It is in the
+combination of the manifold principles of the Divine government that the
+peculiarity of the human problem appears to lie. The delicate and
+continuous balancing of forces in God's plan of dealing with this world,
+the reconciliation of seeming incompatibilities, the issue found from
+positions of hopeless contradiction, the accord of goodness with
+severity, of inflexible rectitude and truth with fatherly compassion,
+afford to the greatest minds of heaven a spectacle and a study
+altogether wonderful. So amongst ourselves the child of a noble house,
+reared in cultured ease and shielded from moral peril, in visiting the
+homes of poverty in the crowded city finds a new world opened to him,
+that can teach him Divine lessons if he has the heart to learn. His mind
+is awakened, his sympathies enriched. He hears the world's true voice,
+"the still, sad music of humanity." He measures the heights and depths
+of man's nature. A host of questions are thrust upon him, whose urgency
+he had scarcely guessed; and wide ranges of truth are lighted up for
+him, which before were distant and unreal. The highest have ever to
+learn from the lowest in Christ's school, the seeming-wise from the
+simple; even the pure and good, from contact with the fallen whom they
+seek to save.
+
+And "the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places" are, it
+seems, willing to learn from those below them. As they traced the course
+of human history in those "eternal times" during which the mystery lay
+wrapped in silence, the angel watchers were too wise to play the
+sceptic, too cautious to criticize an unfinished plan and arraign a
+justice they could not yet understand. With a dignified patience they
+waited the uplifting of the curtain and the unravelling of the entangled
+plot. They looked for the coming of the Promised One. So in due time
+they witnessed and, for their reward, assisted in His manifestation.
+With the same docility these high sharers of our theological inquiries
+still wait to see the end of the Lord and to take their part in the
+denouement of the time-drama, in the revelation of the sons of God. Let
+us copy their long patience. God has not made us to mock us. "What thou
+knowest not now," said the great Revealer, the Master of all mysteries,
+to His disciple, "thou shalt know hereafter."
+
+These wise elder brothers of ours, rich in the lore of eternity, foresee
+the things to come as we cannot do. They are far above the smoke and
+dust of the earthly conflict. The doubts that shake the strongest souls
+amongst us, the cries of the hour which confuse and deceive us, do not
+trouble them. They behold us in our weakness, our fears and our
+divisions; but they also look on Him who "sits expecting till His
+enemies are made His footstool." They see how calmly He sits, how
+patiently expectant, while the sound of clashing arms and the rage and
+tumult of the peoples go up from the earth. They mark the steadiness
+with which through century after century, in spite of refluent waves,
+the tide of mercy rises, and still rises on the shores of earth.
+Thrones, systems, civilizations have gone down; one after another of the
+powers that strove to crush or to corrupt Christ's Church has
+disappeared; and still the name of Jesus lives and spreads. It has
+traversed every continent and sea; it stands at the head of the living
+and moving forces of the world. Those who come nearest to the angelic
+point of view, and judge of the progress of things not by the froth upon
+the surface but by the trend of the deeper currents, are the most
+confident for the future of our race. The kingdom of Satan will not fall
+without a struggle--a last struggle, perhaps more furious than any in
+the past--but it is doomed, and waning to its end. So far has the
+kingdom of Christ advanced, so mightily does the word of God grow and
+prevail in the earth, that faith may well assure itself of the promised
+triumph. Soon we shall shout: "Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent
+reigneth!"
+
+III. Suddenly, according to his wont, the apostle drops down from the
+heights of contemplation to the level of ordinary fact. He descends in
+verse 12 from the thought of the eternal purpose and the education of
+the angels to the struggling Church. The assurance of its life in the
+Spirit corresponds to the grandeur of that Divine order to which it
+belongs. "In whom," he says--in this Christ, the revealed mystery of
+ages past, the Teacher of angels and archangels--"we have our freedom
+and confident access to God through faith in Him."
+
+If it be "Jesus our Lord" to whom these attributes belong, and He is not
+ashamed of us, well may we draw near with _confidence_ to the Father,
+unashamed in the presence of His holy angels. We have no need to be
+abashed, if we approach the Divine Majesty with a true faith in Christ.
+His name gives the sinner access to the holiest place. The cherubim
+sheathe their swords of flame. The heavenly warders at this passport
+open the golden gates. We "come unto Mount Sion, the city of the living
+God, and to an innumerable company of angels." Not one of these
+mightinesses and ancient peers of heaven, not Gabriel or Michael
+himself, would wish or dare to bar our entrance.
+
+"We _have_ boldness and access," says the apostle, as in chapter i. 7:
+"We have redemption in His blood." He insists upon the conscious fact.
+This freedom of approach to God, this sonship of faith, is no hope or
+dream of what may be; it is a present reality, a filial cry heard in a
+multitude both of Gentile and Jewish hearts (comp. ii. 18).
+
+This sentence exhibits the richness of synonyms characteristic of the
+epistle. There is _boldness_ and _access_, _confidence_ as well as
+_faith_. The three former terms Bengel nicely distinguishes: "libertatem
+_oris_ in orando," and "admissionem in fiducia _in re_, et
+_corde_"--freedom of _speech_ (in prayer), of _status_, and of
+_feeling_. The second word (as in chapter ii. 18 and Romans v. 2)
+appears to be active rather than passive in its force, denoting
+_admittance_ rather than _access_. So that while the former of the
+parallel terms (_boldness_) describes the liberty with which the
+new-born Church of the redeemed address themselves to God the Father and
+the unchecked freedom of their petitions, the latter (_admittance_)
+takes us back to the act of Christ by which He introduced us to the
+Father's presence and gave us the place of sons in the house. Being thus
+admitted, we may come with confidence of heart, though we be less than
+the least of saints. Accepted in the Beloved, we are within our right if
+we say to the Father:--
+
+    "Yet in Thy Son divinely great,
+    We claim Thy providential care.
+    Boldly we stand before Thy seat;
+    Our Advocate hath placed us there!"
+
+"Wherefore," concludes the imprisoned apostle, "I beg you not to lose
+heart at my afflictions for you." Assuredly Paul did not pray that _he_
+should not lose heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew how
+his friends were fretting and wearying over his long captivity. Hence he
+writes to the Philippians: "I would have you know that the things which
+have happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the
+gospel." Hence, too, he assures the Colossians earnestly of his joy in
+suffering for their sake (ch. i. 24).
+
+The Church was fearful for Paul's life and distressed by his prolonged
+sufferings. It missed his cheering presence and the inspiration of his
+voice. But if the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this letter
+show, and grounded in His eternal purposes, then let all friends of
+Christ take courage. The ark freighted with such fortunes cannot sink.
+St Paul is a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom! Every
+stroke that falls upon him, every day added to the months of his
+imprisonment helps to show the worth of the cause he has espoused and
+gives to it increased lustre: "my afflictions for you, which are your
+glory."
+
+Those that love him should _boast_ rather than grieve over his
+afflictions. "We make our boast in you amongst the Churches of God," he
+wrote to the distressed Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), "for your patience
+and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions"; so he would have
+the Churches think of him. When good men suffer in a good cause, it is
+not matter for pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[93] See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.
+
+
+
+
+_PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    =To hyperechon tes gnoseos Christou Iesou tou Kyriou mou.=--PHIL.
+    iii. 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST._
+
+    "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every
+    family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you,
+    according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened
+    with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may
+    dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted
+    and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the
+    saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth."--EPH.
+    iii. 14-18.
+
+
+In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer
+at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts
+carried him away. The supplication is offered "for this cause" (vv. 1,
+14),--it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of
+all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of
+His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them
+to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His
+Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much
+he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to
+pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into
+this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose
+upon the writer's mind before his prayer could find expression. He has
+told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the
+interest it excites amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,--thoughts
+full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment
+and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to
+the "For this cause" repeated from verse 1.
+
+The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his
+epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God
+as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow
+the readers in a manner corresponding to _the wealth of His glory_--in
+other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal
+Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed
+Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the
+Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are
+one,--viz., _the inward strength of the Holy Spirit_ (ver. 16), and _the
+permanent indwelling of Christ_ (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his
+readers' behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings,
+which are also one,--viz., _the power to understand the Divine plan_
+(ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and so _to know the
+love of Christ_ (ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the
+distance a further end for man and the Church: _the reception of the
+entire fulness of God_. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit;
+they grasp at the infinite.
+
+In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle's prayer to the end
+of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches
+the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all
+believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of
+Christ in which they participate.
+
+Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul's invocation: "I bow my
+knees to the Father, of whom [not _the whole family_, but] _every
+family_ in heaven and upon earth is named." The point of St Paul's
+original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for
+_family_ (_patria_) is based on that for _father_ (_pater_). A
+distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and
+this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the
+title which ennobled the race. So we have "the sons of Israel," the
+"sons of Aaron" or "of Korah"; and in Greek history, the Atridae, the
+Alcmaeonidae, who form a family of many kindred households--a _clan_, or
+_gens_, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4)
+is described as "being of the house and family [_patria_] of David"; and
+Jesus is "the Son of David." Now Scripture speaks also of _sons of God_;
+and these of two chief orders. There are those "in heaven," who form a
+race distinct from ourselves in origin--divided, it may be, amongst
+themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in
+the heavenly places.
+
+Of these are "the sons of God" whom the Book of Job pictures appearing
+in the Divine court and forming a "family in heaven." When Christ
+promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will
+be "equal to the angels," because they are "sons of God," it is implied
+that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in
+Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as "the festal gathering
+and assembly of _the firstborn_ enrolled in heaven." We, the sons of
+Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder
+Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and
+permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the
+Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the "family on earth
+named" from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our
+wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike
+God's offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.
+
+This passage gives to God's Fatherhood the same extension that chapter
+i. 21 has given to Christ's Lordship. Every order of creaturely
+intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to
+Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God's name of Father the entire wealth
+of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured
+worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the
+blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His
+needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are
+barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to
+meet temptation. _Strength_ is their first necessity: "I bow my knees to
+the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according
+to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the
+Spirit into your inward man." The apostle asked them in verse 13, in
+view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his
+account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour
+into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in
+them. The _strengthening_ of which he speaks is the opposite of the
+_faintness of heart_, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13.
+Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians "Quit themselves
+like men, _be strong_" (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian
+believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger
+without quailing.
+
+The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be
+"strengthened _with_ [or _by_] _power_,"--by "the power" of God "working
+in us" (ver. 20), the very same "power, exceeding great," that raised
+Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God
+operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: "by power made
+strong," he says, "_through the Spirit_." Nothing is more familiar in
+Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the
+source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel
+Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. "Ye shall receive power," He
+said to His disciples, "after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you."
+Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good
+soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and
+indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for
+righteousness' sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a
+brave and enterprising man as a _man of spirit_. All high and commanding
+qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are
+inspirations. In the human will, with its _vis vivida_, its elasticity
+and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest
+type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is
+animated and filled with "the Spirit," the man so possessed is the
+embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and
+constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,--all the
+elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such
+power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under
+their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. "My grace
+is sufficient for thee," said Christ to His disabled servant; "for
+power is perfected in weakness." In privation and loneliness, in old age
+and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with
+its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral
+ascendency as at the time when he was "smitten down" and all but
+destroyed by persecution and affliction. "That the excellency of the
+power," he says, "may be of God, and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. iv.
+7-11).
+
+The apostle points to "the inner man" as the seat of this invigoration,
+thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the
+Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface
+waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a
+spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God.
+Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of
+the prisoner Paul--a mark for the world's scorn--there lives a strength
+of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Caesars, a power of
+the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent
+power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of
+his readers may partake.
+
+II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it,
+is the second: "that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in
+your hearts." Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17.
+Christ's residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result,
+nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward
+man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a
+varying light.
+
+We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which
+marks the doxology of chapter i., and other leading passages in this
+epistle.[94] The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the
+object of the apostle's devout supplication.
+
+As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and
+conveys the point of St Paul's entreaty; he asks that "the Christ may
+_take up His abode_,--may _settle_ in your hearts." The word signifies
+to _set up one's house_ or _make one's home_ in a place, by way of
+contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same
+verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ "_dwells_ all the
+fulness of the Godhead"; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in
+the same tense as here, how it was God's "pleasure that all the fulness
+should _make its dwelling_ in Him" now raised from the dead, who had
+emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father's love.
+So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never
+again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and
+disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His
+own. Let Him become the heart's fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him,
+if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there
+rest in His love. For He promised: "If any man love me, my Father will
+love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
+
+And "_the_ Christ," not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this?
+There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found
+elsewhere.[95] The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something
+beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true
+Christian,--more even than the permanence and certainty of this
+indwelling indicated by the verb. "The Christ" is Christ in the
+significance of His _name_. It is Christ not only possessed, but
+understood,--Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of
+His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the
+Christ of the Church and the ages--known and accepted for all this--that
+St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile
+disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension
+of the greatness of the Redeemer's person and offices; he longs to have
+their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.
+
+_The heart_, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional
+nature by itself. The antithesis of "heart and head," the divorce of
+feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture.
+The heart is our interior, conscious self--thought, feeling, will in
+their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the
+whole heart,--a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of
+the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.
+
+The difference in significance between "Christ" or "Christ Jesus" and
+"the Christ" in such a sentence as this, is not unlike the difference
+between "Queen Victoria" and "the Queen." The latter phrase brings Her
+Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour of her Queenship. We
+think of her vast dominion, of her line of royal and famous ancestry, of
+her beneficent and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to
+apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the breadth of His
+humanity, in the plenitude of His nature and His powers. And this is the
+object to which the teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches
+at the present time are directed. Understanding in this larger sense the
+indwelling of the Christ for which he prays, we see how naturally his
+supplication expands into the "height and depth" of the ensuing verse.
+
+But however large the mental conception of Christ that St Paul desires
+to impart to us, it is to be grasped "through faith." All real
+understanding and appropriation of Christ, the simplest and the most
+advanced, come by this channel,--through the faith of the heart in which
+knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one act of trustful
+apprehension of the truth concerning Jesus Christ by which the soul
+commits itself to Him.
+
+How much is contained in this petition of the apostle that we need to
+ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus dwells now as then in the hearts of all
+who love Him. But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how poor a
+Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul's experience! how slight
+and empty a word is His name to multitudes of those who bear it! If men
+have once attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of their
+interest in His atonement and their right to hope for eternal life
+through Him, their minds are at rest. They have accepted Christ and
+received what He has to give them; they turn their attention to other
+things. They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They have other
+mental interests,--scientific, literary, political or industrial; but
+the knowledge of Christ has no intellectual attraction for them. With St
+Paul's passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind to "know
+Him," these complacent believers have no sympathy whatever. This, they
+think, belongs only to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of
+religious genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as a
+subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentable and disastrous
+neglect, leave the study of Christian doctrine to the ministry. The
+Christ cannot take His due place in His people's heart, He will not
+reveal to them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little and
+care to know so little of Him. How many can be found, outside the ranks
+of the ordained, that make a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to
+meditate on Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man of affairs
+is there who will spare an hour each day from his other gains "for the
+excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord"?--"If at the
+present time the religious life of the Church is languid, and if in its
+enterprises there is little of audacity and vehemence, a partial
+explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in
+the contents of the Christian Faith which has characterized the last
+hundred or hundred and fifty years of our history."[96]
+
+It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the mind without limit.
+St Paul, who knew so much, for that reason felt that all he had attained
+was but in the bud and beginning. "The Christ" is a subject infinite as
+nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged apprehension of
+Him, the heart enlarges in capacity and moral power. Not unfrequently,
+the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men,
+to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an
+intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that
+trained scholars might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship
+with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction are sustained,
+that the apostle first asked from God on behalf of his anxious Gentile
+friends.
+
+III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul were concerned
+only for the individual needs of those to whom he writes and their
+personal advancement in the new life. But it is otherwise. _The Church_
+fills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our
+attention. This is God's holy temple and the habitation of His Spirit;
+it is the body in which Christ dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The
+Church is the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it the
+angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons of God's wisdom. Round
+this centre the apostle's intercession must needs revolve. When he asks
+for his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship with
+Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into
+the Church's life and to apprehend God's great designs for mankind.
+
+This object so much absorbs the writer's thoughts and has been so
+constantly in view from the outset, that it does not occur to him, in
+verse 18, to say precisely _what_ that is whose "breadth and length and
+height and depth" the readers are to measure. The vast building stands
+before us and needs not to be named; we have only not to look away from
+it, not to forget what we have been reading all this time. It is _God's
+plan for the world in Christ_; it is the purpose of the ages realized in
+the building of His Church. This conception was so impressive to the
+original readers and has held their attention so closely since the
+apostle unfolded it in the course of the second chapter, that they would
+have no difficulty in supplying the ellipsis which has given so much
+trouble to the commentators since.
+
+If we are asked to interpret the four several magnitudes that are
+assigned to this building of God, we may say with Hofmann[97]: "It
+stretches _wide_ over all the world of the nations, east and west. In
+its _length_, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. In
+_depth_, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death
+[comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven's _height_, where Christ lives."
+In the like strain Bernardine a Piconio, most genial and spiritual of
+Romanist interpreters: "_Wide_ as the furthest limits of the inhabited
+world, _long_ as the ages of eternity through which God's love to His
+people will endure, _deep_ as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He
+has raised us, _high_ as the throne of Christ in the heavens where He
+has placed us." Such is the commonwealth to which we belong, such the
+dimensions of this city of God built on the foundation of the
+apostles,--"that lieth four-square."
+
+Do we not need to be _strong_--to "gain full strength," as the apostle
+prays, in order to grasp in its substance and import this immense
+revelation and to handle it with practical effect? Narrowness is
+feebleness. The greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches the
+greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm spiritual faith, a
+far-seeing intelligence, and a charity broad as the love of Christ to
+comprehend this mystery. From many believing eyes it is still hidden.
+Alas for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements! alas for the
+materialism that infects our Church theories, and that limits God's free
+grace and the sovereign action of His Spirit to visible channels and
+ministrations "wrought by hand." Those who call themselves Churchmen
+and Catholics contradict the titles they boast when they bar out their
+loyal Christian brethren from the covenant rights of faith, when they
+deny churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ as warm and
+fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure and saving, a discipline at
+least as faithful as their own. Who are we that we dare to forbid those
+who are doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because they follow
+not with us? When we are fain to pull down every building of God that
+does not square with our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend
+"what is the breadth!"
+
+We draw close about us the walls of Christ's wide house, as if to
+confine Him in our single chamber. We call our particular communion "the
+Church," and the rest "the sects"; and disfranchise, so far as our word
+and judgement go, a multitude of Christ's freemen and God's elect, our
+fellow-citizens in the New Jerusalem--saints, some of them, whose feet
+we well might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church theory that
+leads to such results as these, that condemns Nonconformists to be
+strangers in the House of God, is self-condemned. It will perish of its
+own chillness and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the
+doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist or Presbyterian
+legitimacy, are in feeling and practice more catholic than in their
+creed.
+
+"With _all_ the saints" the Asian Christians are called to enter into St
+Paul's wider view of God's work in the world. For this is a collective
+idea, to be shared by many minds and that should sway all Christian
+hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity that St Paul
+wants his readers to understand, its mission to save humanity and to
+reconstruct the world for a temple of God. This is a calling for _all
+the saints_; but only for _saints_,--for men devoted to God and renewed
+by His Spirit. It was "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets"
+(ver. 5); and it needs men of the same quality for its bearers and
+interpreters.
+
+But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that
+stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an
+emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: "in love being fast
+rooted and grounded." Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love
+enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which
+our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. _Love_
+is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom
+Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike
+man, loves him and counts him a brother.
+
+When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their
+depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to
+master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the
+courage to adopt Christ's simple rule of fellowship: "Whosoever shall
+do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
+and mother."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[94] See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4-6.
+
+[95] See pp. 47, 83, 169.
+
+[96] _Lectures on Ephesians_, pp. 235-8. No one who has read Dr. R. W.
+Dale's noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject
+without being deeply in his debt.
+
+[97] _Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser_, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those
+writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often
+differ from him as agree with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+_KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE._
+
+    "[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong
+    to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
+    height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth
+    knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God."--EPH.
+    iii. 17-19.
+
+
+We were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostle's
+comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its
+connexion. Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of verse 18.
+The catholic love which embraces "all the saints" and "comprehends" in
+its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemer's kingdom, admits us to a
+deeper knowledge of Christ's own love. The breadth and length, the
+height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a
+worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. "In the
+Church" at once "and in Christ Jesus" God's glory is revealed. Our
+Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love.
+Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards
+Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the
+Divine grace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. St Paul prays that we may "_know_ [not _comprehend_] the love of
+Christ"; for it "passes knowledge." Amongst the Greek words denoting
+mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the
+acquisition rather than possession--_getting to know_. Hence it is
+rightly, and often used of things Divine that "we know in part," our
+knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to
+it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostle's wish disappears.
+We know the unknowable, just as we "clearly see the invisible things of
+God" (Rom. i. 20). The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our
+observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches
+apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived
+before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the
+Philippians the aged apostle writes: "I do not reckon myself to have
+apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly
+to the goal. I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for
+it,--that I may _win Christ_!"
+
+In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past
+finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in
+daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all
+the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand
+it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.
+
+Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part
+assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of
+time. The apostle's doctrine of the Church is not beyond the
+comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though
+we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the
+mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us.
+Our principles of judgement and standards of comparison fail us when
+applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed
+heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and
+tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the
+side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and
+dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers
+the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold
+it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our
+definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through
+history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most
+generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a
+wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. "Never
+man spake like this man," said one; but verily never man loved like
+Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His
+love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its
+features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels,
+and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the
+cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great
+sight--the love that passeth knowledge.
+
+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
+principalities,--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 ambassador 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 God_. 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 God," 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 God 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 God."
+
+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 God." When we
+have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of
+men is once more a family of God 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 participate. God'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 God's children. "Ye shall be holy, for I am
+holy" is God'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 God gathers up into one stream of white radiance
+the revelation of His character, "the fulness of God" 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 surpassing all,--these objects of
+the soul's desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in
+pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal
+Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end; Christ, when He has "put
+down all rule and authority," will at last "yield it up to His God and
+Father"; and "the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all
+things under Him, that God 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 God 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 God's purposes,
+it falls short of them. This assurance 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 God'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.
+God's giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there
+must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. 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 God'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
+debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about
+Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God!
+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 noble" amongst them, some of them before
+their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and
+godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But "with God," as Jesus
+said, "all things are possible." _Faex urbis, lux orbis_: "the scum of
+the city is made the light of the world!" The force at work upon the
+minds of these degraded pagans--slaves, thieves, prostitutes, 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 anticipate 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 surpassed
+the utmost that the Church asked or thought.
+
+St Paul's reliance is not upon the "ability" alone, upon the abstract
+omnipotence of God. 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 God 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. God
+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 God. 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 God "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 God 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 God'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 God." 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 God a dimmed and partial glory. "With one accord, with one
+mouth" we are called to "glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." Wherefore the apostle bids us "receive one another, as Christ
+also received us, to the glory of God" (Rom. xv. 6, 7).
+
+The Church, being the creation of God'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 God'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 multitude,
+and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders,
+saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!" Each
+soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up
+the multitudinous harmony of the Church's praise to God.
+
+Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto
+God. The display of God'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 God 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 God. "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 God 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 God.
+
+The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is
+expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the
+passage 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 God'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 God's praise may
+resound in the Church "unto _all generations_," he no longer supposes
+that the mystery of God 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 God, 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: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought,
+Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God 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 God, 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 circumstance 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 God 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 God 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 God" (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?"
+
+(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes _ambition_:
+"Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness," he continues. Between
+the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man
+_of lowly mind_ habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his
+unworthiness as a sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a
+wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his temper and
+motives.--The _meek_ man thinks as little of his personal claims, as the
+humble man of his personal merits. He is willing to give place to others
+where higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest room
+and to be in men's eyes of no account. How many seeds of strife and
+roots of bitterness would be destroyed, if this mind were in us all.
+Self-importance, the love of office and power and the craving for
+applause must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the unity of
+the Spirit in the bond of peace.
+
+(3) When St Paul adds "with longsuffering, forbearing one another in
+love," he is opposing a cause of division quite different from the
+last,--to wit, _impatience and resentfulness_. A high Christian ideal
+and a strict self-judgement will render us more sensitive to wrong-doing
+in the world around us. Unless tempered with abundant charity, they may
+lead to harsh and one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to
+condemn, are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness. Humbleness and
+meekness are choice graces of the Spirit. But they are self-regarding
+virtues at the best, and may be found in a cold nature that has little
+of the patience which bears with men's infirmities, of the sympathetic
+insight that discovers the good often lying close to their faults.
+"Above all things"--above kindness, meekness, longsuffering,
+forgivingness--"put on love, which is the bond of perfectness" (Col.
+iii. 14). Love is the last word of St Paul's definition of the Christian
+temper in verse 2; it is the sum and essence of all that makes for
+Christian unity. In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter
+provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse,--offences that
+must needs arise in the purest society composed of infirm and sinful
+men. "Bind thyself to thy brother. Those who are bound together in love,
+bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. Both are
+in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend"
+(Chrysostom).
+
+Verses 1-3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of the Church is to be
+maintained. Verses 4-6 set forth the basis upon which it rests. This
+passage is a brief summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the
+"foundation of the apostles and prophets" asserted in chapter ii.
+20,--the groundwork of "every building" in God's holy temple, the
+foundation upon which Paul's Gentile readers, along with the Jewish
+saints, were growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven elements of
+unity St Paul enumerates: one _body_, _Spirit_, _hope_; one _Lord_,
+_faith_ and _baptism_; one _God and Father of all_. They form a chain
+stretching from the Church on earth to the throne and being of the
+universal Father in heaven.
+
+Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves
+into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity--the Spirit, the
+Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by
+two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed
+alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures--by His
+sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: "Who is over
+all, and through all, and in all" (comp. i. 23).
+
+The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to
+some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Paul's later epistles
+betray the same character;[98] and we know from chapter v. 19 and
+Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody.
+This epistle shows that St Paul was touched with the poetic as well as
+the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no
+reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have
+taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith
+in "hymns and spiritual songs." These lines, we could fancy, belonged to
+some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical
+creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.
+
+I. _One body_ there is, _and one Spirit_.
+
+The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single
+body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from
+their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now
+existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and
+the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much
+less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those "who
+profess and call themselves Christians" throughout the world. As against
+the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and
+Mohammedan rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics
+and all deniers of the Lord, we are "one body," and should feel and act
+as one.
+
+In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible
+evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realize their unity;
+they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the
+Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold
+in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force,
+the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our
+contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and
+present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in
+Christ--their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and
+discipline--is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and
+systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is
+there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It
+is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive
+creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different
+Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian
+literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and
+general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the
+increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to
+the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men,
+the more we realize the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and
+innumerable sects of Christendom.
+
+There is "one body and one Spirit": one body because, and so far as
+there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical
+frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What
+I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more
+than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body's
+shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward
+presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that
+clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the
+raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it,
+however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however
+diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life
+that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with
+one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand
+delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one
+body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit
+depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ,
+and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the
+Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and
+the furniture that are about it? "If any man have not the Spirit of
+Christ, he is none of His."
+
+He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The
+Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of
+God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and
+sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct
+of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to
+the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in
+God's dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which
+it received spiritual life and that travailed for its birth claim it by
+a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced
+without loss and peril.
+
+Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing, formative principle,
+it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit
+of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I
+prefer to walk with God.--God will not walk with men who do not care to
+walk with His people. He "loved the world"; and we must love it, or we
+displease Him. "This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God
+love his brother also."
+
+The oneness of communion amongst the people of Christ is governed by a
+unity of aim: "Even as also you were called in _one hope_ of your
+calling." Our fellowship has an object to realize, our calling a prize
+to win. All Christian organization is directed to a practical end. The
+old Pagan world fell to pieces because it was "without hope"; its
+golden age was in the past. No society can endure that lives upon its
+memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its privileges.
+Nothing holds men together like work and hope. This gives energy,
+purpose, progress to the fellowship of Christian believers. In this
+imperfect and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race still in
+bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for any purpose that does
+not bear on human improvement and salvation. The Church of Christ is a
+society for the abolition of sin and death. That this will be
+accomplished, that God's will shall be done on earth as in heaven, is
+_the hope of our calling_. To this hope we "were called" by the first
+summons of the gospel. "Repent," it cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is
+at hand!"
+
+For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity holds out a
+splendid crown of life. It promises our complete restoration to the
+image of God, the redemption of the body with the spirit from death, and
+our entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven. This
+hope, shared by us in common and affecting all the interests and
+relationships of daily life, is the ground of our communion. The
+Christian hope supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature in
+her most exalted forms,
+
+    "The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse,
+    The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul
+    Of all their moral being."
+
+Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master and servants, happy the
+circle of friends who live and work together as "joint-heirs of the
+grace of life." Well says Calvin here: "If this thought were fixed in
+our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of God may no more
+quarrel than the kingdom of heaven can be divided, how much more careful
+we should be in cultivating brotherly goodwill! What a dread we should
+have of dissensions, if we considered, as we ought to do, that those who
+separate from their brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God."
+
+But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind,--nay, for the entire
+universe. We labour for the regeneration of humanity. "We look for a new
+heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;" for the actual
+gathering into one in Christ of all things in all worlds, as they are
+already gathered in God's eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal
+salvation that we had to seek, Christian communion might appear to be an
+optional thing, and the Church no more than a society for mutual
+spiritual benefit. But seen in this larger light, Church membership is
+of the essence of our calling. As children of the household of faith, we
+are heirs to its duties with its possessions. We cannot escape the
+obligations of our spiritual any more than of our natural birth. One
+Spirit dwelling in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all
+our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the fellowship of Christ?
+This hope of our calling it is our calling to breathe into the dead
+world. Its virtue alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age.
+From the fountain of God's love in Christ springing up in the heart of
+the Church, there shall pour forth
+
+    "One common wave of thought and joy,
+    Lifting mankind again!"
+
+II. The first group of unities leads us to the second. If one Spirit
+dwells within us, it is _one Lord_ who reigns over us. We have one hope
+to work for; it is because we have _one faith_ to live by. A common
+fellowship implies a common creed.
+
+Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth in this list of
+unities, between hope and faith, between the Spirit and the Father. He
+is the centre of centres, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the
+Christ in the midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity
+with God and with our fellow-men. We find in Him the fulcrum of the
+forces that are raising the world, the corner-stone of the temple of
+humanity.
+
+But let us mark that it is the one _Lord_ in whom we find our unity. To
+think of Him as Saviour only is to treat Him as a means to an end. It is
+to make ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret of much of
+the isolation and sectarianism of modern Churches. Individualism is the
+negation of Church life. Men value Christ for what they can get from Him
+for themselves. They do not follow Him and yield themselves up to Him,
+for the sake of what He is. "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and
+I will give you rest": they listen willingly so far. But when He goes on
+to say "Take my yoke upon you," their ears are deaf. There is a subtle
+self-seeking and self-pleasing even in the way of salvation.
+
+From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection for the Church,
+the indifference to all Christian interests beyond the personal and
+local, which is worse than strife; for it is death to the body of
+Christ. The name of the "one Lord" silences party clamours and rebukes
+the voices that cry, "I am of Apollos, I of Cephas." It recalls
+loiterers and stragglers to the ranks. It bids each of us, in his own
+station of life and his own place in the Church, serve the common cause
+without sloth and without ambition.
+
+Christ's Lordship over us for life and death is signified by our
+_baptism_ in His name. We have received, most of us in infancy through
+our parents' reverent care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ.
+The baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from His apostles,
+has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this be in vain? Or do you now, by
+the faith of your heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith of
+your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf? If so, your faith
+saves you. Your obedience is at once accepted by the Lord to whom it is
+tendered; and the sign of God's redemption of the race which greeted you
+at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance and
+worth. It is the seal upon your brow, now stamped upon your heart, of
+your eternal covenant with Christ.
+
+But it is the seal of a _corporate_ life in Him. Christian baptism is no
+private transaction; it attests no mere secret vow passing between the
+soul and its Saviour. "For in one Spirit we were all baptized _into one
+body_, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made
+to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 13). Our baptism is the sign of a
+common faith and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His Church.
+
+_One_ baptism there has been through all the ages since the ascending
+Lord said to His disciples: "Go, make disciples of all the nations,
+baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
+Holy Spirit." The ordinance has been administered in different ways and
+under varying regulations; but with few exceptions, it has been observed
+from the beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment of the
+word of Christ, and in acknowledgement of His dominion. Those who
+insist on the sole validity of this or that mode or channel of
+administration, recognize at least the intention of Churches baptizing
+otherwise than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing His
+name; and so far admit that there is in truth "one baptism." Wherever
+Christ's sacraments are observed with a true faith, they serve as
+visible tokens of His rule.
+
+In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for men, and for all
+creatures. Our fellowship in the faith of Christ is deep as the nature
+of God; its blessedness rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal
+as His power.
+
+III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains. Add to our
+fellowship in the one Spirit and confession of the one Lord, our
+adoption by the _one God and Father of all_.
+
+To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was a new and
+marvellous thought. "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians," they had been
+used to shout; or haply, "Great is Aphrodite of the Pergamenes," or
+"Bacchus of the Philadelphians." Great they knew was "Jupiter Best and
+Greatest" of conquering Rome; and great the _numen_ of the Caesar, to
+which everywhere in this rich and servile province shrines were rising.
+Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering hill had its
+local _genius_ or _daimon_, requiring worship and sacrificial honours.
+Every office and occupation, every function in life--navigation,
+midwifery, even thieving--was under the patronage of its special deity.
+These petty godships by their number and rivalries distracted the pious
+heathen with continual fear lest one or other of them might not have
+received due observance.
+
+With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception of "the one God
+and Father" rose above this vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley
+deities--some gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed
+beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness--which filled
+the imagination of the Graeco-Asiatic pagans. What rest there was for the
+mind, what peace and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities
+to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as tribute-payers, and needing
+to be served by human hands. He is the Father of men, pitying us as His
+children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our God is no local
+divinity, to be honoured here but not there, tied to His temple and
+images and priestly mediators; but the "one God and Father of all, who
+is above all, and through all, and in all." This was the very God whom
+the logic of Greek thought and the practical instincts of Roman law and
+empire blindly sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to the
+people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst the nations to bear His
+light. At last He declared His full name and purpose to the world in
+Jesus Christ. So the gods many and lords many have had their day. By His
+manifestation the idols are utterly abolished. The proclamation of one
+God and Father signifies the gathering of men into one family of God.
+The one religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.
+
+God is _over all_, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of
+His beneficent dominion. He is _through all_, and _in all_: an
+Omnipresence of love, righteousness and wisdom, actuating the powers of
+nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You
+need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His
+temple.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[98] See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii.
+11-13.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+_THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST._
+
+    "But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+    measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith: 'When He ascended
+    on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.' Now
+    this, 'He ascended,' what is it but that He also descended into the
+    lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that
+    ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
+    And He gave some _to be_ apostles; and some, prophets; and some
+    evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of
+    the saints for work of ministration, for the building up of the body
+    of Christ."--EPH. iv. 7-12.
+
+
+In verse 7 the apostle passes from the unities of the Church to its
+diversities, from the common foundation of the Christian life to the
+variety presented in its superstructure. "To each single one of us was
+the grace given." The great gift of God in Christ is manifold in its
+distribution. Its manifestations are as various and fresh as the
+idiosyncrasies of human personality. There is no capacity of our nature,
+no element of human society which the gospel of Christ cannot sanctify
+and turn to good account.
+
+All this the apostle keeps in view and allows for in his doctrine of the
+Church. He does not merge man in humanity, nor sacrifice the individual
+to the community. He claims for each believer direct fellowship with
+Christ and access to God. The earnestness with which in his earlier
+epistles St Paul insisted on the responsibilities of conscience and on
+the personal experience of salvation, leads him now to press the claims
+of the Church with equal vigour. He understands well that the person has
+no existence apart from the community, that our moral nature is
+essentially social and the religious life essentially fraternal. Its
+vital element is "the _communion_ of the Holy Spirit." Hence, to gather
+the real drift of this passage we must combine the first words of verse
+7 with the last of verse 12: "To each single one of us was the grace
+given--in order to build up the body of Christ." God's grace is not
+bestowed upon us to diffuse and lose itself in our separate
+individualities; but that it may minister to one life and work towards
+one end and build up one great body in us all. The diversity subserves a
+higher unity. Through ten thousand channels, in ten thousand varied
+forms of personal influence and action, the stream of the grace of God
+flows on to the accomplishment of the eternal purpose.
+
+Like a wise master in his household and sovereign in his kingdom, the
+Lord of the Church distributes His manifold gifts. His bestowments and
+appointments are made with an eye to the furtherance of the state and
+house that He has in charge. As God dispenses His wisdom, so Christ His
+gifts "according to plan" (iii. 11). The purpose of the ages, God's
+great plan for mankind, determines "the measure of the gift of Christ."
+Now, it is to illustrate this _measure_, to set forth the style and
+scale of Christ's bestowments within His Church, that the apostle brings
+in evidence the words of Psalm lxviii. 18. He interprets this ancient
+verse as he cites it, and weaves it into the texture of his argument.
+In the original it reads thus:
+
+    "Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led Thy captivity captive,
+    Thou hast received gifts among men,--
+    Yea, among the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell with
+        them." (R.V.)
+
+Let us go back for a moment to the occasion of the old Hebrew song.
+Psalm lxviii, is, as Ewald says, "the greatest, most splendid and
+artistic of the temple-songs of Restored Jerusalem." It celebrates
+Jehovah's entry into Zion. This culminating verse records, as the
+crowning event of Israel's history, the capture of Zion from the rebel
+Jebusites and the Lord's ascension in the person of His chosen to take
+His seat upon this holy hill. The previous verses, in which fragments of
+earlier songs are embedded, describe the course of the Divine Leader of
+Israel through former ages. In the beat and rhythm of the Hebrew lines
+one hears the footfall of the Conqueror's march, as He "arises and His
+enemies are scattered" and "kings of armies flee apace," while nature
+trembles at His step and bends her wild powers to serve His
+congregation. The sojourn in the wilderness, the scenes of Sinai, the
+occupancy of Canaan, the wars of the Judges were so many stages in the
+progress of Jehovah, which had Zion always for its goal. To Zion, the
+new and more glorious sanctuary, Sinai must now give place. Bashan and
+all mountains towering in their pride in vain "look askance at the hill
+which God has desired for His abode," where "Jehovah will dwell for
+ever." So the day of the Lord's desire has come! From the Kidron valley
+David leads Jehovah's triumph up the steep slopes of Mount Zion. A train
+of captives defiles before the Lord's anointed, who sits down on the
+throne that God gives him and receives in His name the submission of the
+heathen. The vanquished chiefs cast their spoil at his feet; it is laid
+up in treasure to build the future temple; while, upon this happy day of
+peace, "the rebellious also" share in Jehovah's grace and become His
+subjects.
+
+In this conquest David "gave to men" rather than "received"--gave even
+to his stubborn enemies (witness his subsequent transaction with Araunah
+the Jebusite for the site of the temple); for that which he took from
+them served to build amongst them God's habitation: "that," as the
+Psalmist sings, "the Lord God might dwell with them." St Paul's
+adaptation of the verse is both bold and true. If he departs from the
+letter, he unfolds the spirit of the prophetic words. That David's
+_giving_ signified a higher _receiving_, Jewish interpreters themselves
+seem to have felt, for this paraphrase was current also amongst them.
+
+The author of this Hebrew song has in no way exaggerated the importance
+of David's victory. The summits of the elect nation's history shine with
+a supernatural and prophetic light. The spirit of the Christ in the
+unknown singer "testified beforehand of the glory that should follow"
+His warfare and sufferings. From this victorious height, so hardly won,
+the Psalmist's verse flashes the light of promise across the space of a
+thousand years; and St. Paul has caught the light, and sends it on to us
+shining with a new and more spiritual brightness. David's "going up on
+high" was, to the apostle's mind, a picture of the ascent of Christ, his
+Son and Lord. David rose from deep humiliation to a high dominion; his
+exaltation brought blessing and enrichment to his people; and the spoil
+that he won with it went to build God's house amongst rebellious men.
+All this was true in parable of the dispensation of grace to mankind
+through Jesus Christ; and His ascension disclosed the deeper import of
+the words of the ancient Scripture. "Wherefore God saith" (and St Paul
+takes the liberty of putting in his own words _what_ He
+saith)--"wherefore He saith: He ascended on high; He led captivity
+captive; He gave gifts to men."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three short clauses of the citation supply, in effect, a threefold
+measure of the gifts of Christ to His Church. They are gifts _of the
+ascended Saviour_. They are gifts bestowed _from the fruit of His
+victory_. And they are gifts _to men_. Measure them, first, by the
+height to which He has risen--from what a depth! Measure them, again, by
+the spoils He has already won. Measure them, once more, by the wants of
+mankind, by the need He has undertaken to supply.--As He is, so He
+gives; as He has, so He gives; as He has given, so He will give till we
+are filled unto all the fulness of God.
+
+I. Think first, then, of Him. Think of what, and _where_ He is! Consider
+"what is the height" of His exaltation; and then say, if you can, "what
+is the breadth" of His munificence.
+
+We know well how He gave as a poor and suffering man upon earth--gave,
+with what affluence, pity and delight, bread to the hungry thousands,
+wine to the wedding-feast, health to the sick, sight to the blind,
+pardon to the sinful, sometimes life to the dead! Has His elevation
+altered Him? Too often it is so with vain and weak men like ourselves.
+Their wealth increases, but their hearts contract. The more they have to
+give, the less they love to give. They go up on high as men count it,
+and climb to places of power and eminence; and they forget the friends
+of youth and the ranks from which they sprang--low-minded men. Not so
+with our exalted Friend. "It is not one that went down, and another that
+went up," says Theodoret. "He that descended, _it is He_ also that
+ascended up far above all the heavens!" (ver. 10). Jesus of Nazareth is
+on the throne of God,--"the same yesterday and to-day!" But now the
+resources of the universe are at His disposal. Out of that treasure He
+can choose the best gifts for you and me.
+
+Mere authority, even Omnipotence, could not suffice to save and bless
+moral beings like ourselves; nor even the best will joined to
+Omnipotence. Christ gained by His humiliation, in some sense, a new
+fulness added to the fulness of the Godhead. This gain of His sufferings
+is implied in what the apostle writes in Colossians i. 19 concerning the
+risen and exalted Redeemer: "It was well-pleasing that _all_ the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him." His plenitude is that of the Ascended
+One _who had descended_. "If He ascended, what does it mean but that He
+also descended into the under regions of the earth?" (ver. 9). If He
+went up, why then He had been down!--down to the Virgin's womb and the
+manger cradle, wrapping His Godhead within the frame and the brain of a
+little child; down to the home and the bench of the village carpenter;
+down to the contradiction of sinners and the level of their scorn; down
+to the death of the cross,--to the nether abyss, to that dim populous
+underworld into which we look shuddering over the grave's edge! And from
+that lower gulf He mounted up again to the solid earth and the light of
+day and the world of breathing men; and up, and up again, through the
+rent clouds and the ranks of shouting angels, and under the lifted heads
+of the everlasting doors, until He took His seat at the right hand of
+the Majesty in the heavens.
+
+Think of the regions He has traversed, the range of being through which
+the Lord Jesus passed in descending and ascending, "that He might fill
+all things." Heaven, earth, hades--hades, earth, heaven again are His;
+not in mere sovereignty of power, but in experience and communion of
+life. Each He has annexed to His dominion by inhabitation and the right
+of self-devoting love, as from sphere to sphere He "travelled in the
+greatness of His power, mighty to save." He is Lord of angels; but still
+more of men,--Lord of the living, and of the dead. To them that sleep in
+the dust He has proclaimed His accomplished sacrifice and the right of
+universal judgement given Him by the Father.
+
+Nor did Abraham alone and Moses and Elijah have the joy of "seeing His
+day," but all the holy men of old, who had embraced its promise and
+"died in faith," who looked forward through their imperfect sacrifices
+"which could never quite take away sins" to the better thing which God
+provided for us, and for their perfection along with us.[99] On the two
+side-posts of the gate of death our great High Priest sprinkled His
+atoning blood. He turned the abode of corruption into a sweet and quiet
+sleeping chamber for His saints. Then at His touch those cruel doors
+swung back upon their hinges, and He issued forth the Prince of life,
+with the keys of death and hades hanging from His girdle. From the
+depths of the grave to the heaven of heavens His Mastership extends.
+With the perfume of His presence and the rich incense of His sacrifice
+Jesus Christ has "filled all things." The universe is made for us one
+realm of redeeming grace, the kingdom of the Son of God's love.
+
+    "So there crowns Him the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown;
+    And His love fills infinitude wholly, nor leaves up nor down
+    One spot for the creature to stand in!"[100]
+
+So "Christ is all things, and in all." And we are nothing; but we have
+everything in Him.
+
+How, pray, will He give who has thus given Himself,--who has thus
+endured and achieved on our behalf? Let our hearts consider; let our
+faith and our need be bold to ask. One promise from His lips is enough:
+"If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it."
+
+II. A second estimate of the gifts to be looked for from Christ, we
+derive from _His conquests already won_. David as he entered Zion's
+gates "led captivity captive,"--led, that is in Hebrew phrase, a great,
+a notable captivity. Out of the gifts thus received he enriched his
+people. The resources that victory placed at his disposal, furnished the
+store from which to build God's house. In like fashion Christ builds His
+Church, and blesses the human race. With the spoils of His battle He
+adorns His bride. The prey taken from the mighty becomes the strength
+and beauty of His sanctuary. The prisoners of His love He makes the
+servants of mankind.
+
+This "captivity" implies a warfare, even as the ascent of Christ a
+previous descending. The Son of God came not into His earthly kingdom as
+kings are said to have come sometimes disguised amongst their subjects,
+that they might learn better of their state and hear their true mind;
+nor as the Greeks fabled of their gods, who wandered unknown on earth
+seeking adventure and wearied haply of the cloying felicities of heaven,
+suffering contempt and doing to men hard service. He came, the Good
+Shepherd, to seek lost sheep. He came, the Mighty One of God, to destroy
+the works of the devil, to drive out "the strong one armed" who held the
+fortress of man's soul. He had a war to wage with the usurping prince of
+the world. In the temptations of the wilderness, in the strife with
+disease and demoniac powers, in the debate with Scribes and Pharisees,
+in the anguish of Gethsemane and Calvary that conflict was fought out;
+and by death He abolished him who holds the power of death, by His blood
+He "bought us for God." But with the spoils of victory, He bears the
+scars of battle,--tokens glorious for Him, humbling indeed to us, which
+will tell for ever how they pierced His hands and feet!
+
+For Him pain and conflict are gone by. It remains to gather in the spoil
+of His victory of love, the harvest sown in His tears and His blood. And
+what are the trophies of the Captain of our salvation? what the fruit of
+His dread passion? For one, there was the dying thief, whom with His
+nailed hands the Lord Jesus snatched from a felon's doom and bore from
+Calvary to Paradise. There was Mary the Magdalene, out of whom He had
+cast seven demons, the first to greet Him risen. There were the three
+thousand whom on one day, in the might of His Spirit, the ascended Lord
+and Christ took captive in rebel Jerusalem, "lifted from the earth" that
+He might draw all men unto Him. And there was the writer of this letter,
+once His blasphemer and persecutor. By a look, by a word, Jesus
+arrested Saul at the height of his murderous enmity, and changed him
+from a Pharisee into an apostle to the Gentiles, from the destroyer into
+the wise master-builder of His Church.
+
+St Paul's own case suggested, surely, the application he makes of this
+ancient text of the Psalter and lighted up its Messianic import. In the
+glory of His triumph Jesus Christ had appeared to make him captive, and
+put him at once to service. From that hour Paul was led along
+enthralled, the willing bond-slave of the Lord Jesus and celebrant of
+His victory. "Thanks be unto God," he cries, "who ever triumphs over us
+in the Christ, and makes manifest through us the savour of His knowledge
+in every place."[101]
+
+Such, and of such sort are the prisoners of the war of Jesus; such the
+gifts that through sinners pardoned and subdued He bestows upon
+mankind,--"patterns to those who should hereafter believe." Time would
+fail to follow the train of the captives of the love of Christ, which
+stretches unbroken and ever multiplying through the centuries to this
+day. We, too, in our turn have laid our rebel selves at His feet; and
+all that we surrender to Him, by right of conquest He gives over to the
+service of mankind.
+
+    "His love the conquest more than wins;
+      To all I shall proclaim:
+    Jesus the King, the Conqueror reigns;
+      Bow down to Jesu's name!"
+
+He gives out of the spoil of His war with evil,--gives what He receives.
+Yet He gives not _as_ He receives. Everything laid in His hands is
+changed by their touch. Publicans and Pharisees become apostles.
+Magdalenes are made queens and mothers in His Israel. From the dregs of
+our streets He raises up a host of sons to Abraham. From the ranks of
+scepticism and anti-Christian hate the Lord Christ wins new champions
+and captains for His cause. He coins earth's basest metal into heaven's
+fine gold. He takes weak things of the earth and foolish, to strike the
+mightiest blows of battle.
+
+What may we not expect from Him who has led captive such a captivity!
+What surprises of blessing and miracles of grace there are awaiting us,
+that shall fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with
+singing--gifts and succours coming to the Church from unlooked-for
+quarters and reinforcements from the ranks of the enemy. And what
+discomfitures and captivities are preparing for the haters of the
+Lord,--if, at least, the future is to be as the past; and if we may
+judge from the apostle's word, and from his example, of the measure of
+the gift of Christ.
+
+III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the last word of verse
+8, and is drawn out in verses 11 and 12. "He gave gifts _to men_--He
+gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and
+teachers, with a view to the full equipment of the saints for work of
+ministration, for building up of the body of Christ." Yes, and some
+martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and Christian statesmen,
+some poets, some deep thinkers and theologians, some leaders of
+philanthropy and helpers of the poor; all given for the same end--to
+minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with the means for
+carrying on its mission, and to enable every saint to contribute his
+part to the commonwealth of Christ according to the measure of Christ's
+gift to each.
+
+Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes,
+seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the
+second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The
+"work of ministering" and the "building up of the body of Christ" are
+not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling.
+Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see
+that the laity do their duty, of "the ministry" to make each saint a
+minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership
+of Christ's body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the
+Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times.
+Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best
+suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances.
+It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in
+58, and at Ephesus in 66 A.D. That is the best Church system, under any
+given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the
+spiritual energy of the body of Christ.
+
+The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds
+closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not
+profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The "deacons" are wanting;
+although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed
+in Pauline Churches. _Pastors_ (shepherds)--a title only employed here
+by the apostle--is a fitting synonym for the "bishops" (_i.e._,
+overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and
+largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were
+spiritual and disciplinary as well as administrative. Addressing the
+Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them
+"shepherd the Church of God."
+
+In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon
+his "fellow-elders," that they should "shepherd the flock of God, making
+themselves examples" to it; Christ Himself he has previously called
+"Shepherd and Bishop of souls" (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is
+derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true
+and false shepherd of God's flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,--words
+familiar and dear to His disciples.
+
+The office of _teaching_, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined with that
+of shepherding. From that passage we infer that the freedom of teaching
+so conspicuous in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was still
+recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made identical, nor inseparable
+functions, any more than in Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently
+associated, and hence are coupled together here.--Of apostolic
+_evangelists_ we have examples in Timothy and the second Philip;[102]
+men outside the rank of the apostles, but who, like them, preached the
+gospel from place to place. The name apostles (equivalent to our
+_missionaries_) served, in its wider sense, to include ministers of this
+class along with those directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus.[103]
+
+The _prophets_,[104] like the apostles and evangelists, belonged to the
+Church at large, rather than to one locality. But their gift of
+inspiration did not carry with it the claim to rule in the Church. This
+was the function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops,
+or elders, locally appointed.
+
+The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) linked Church
+to Church and served the entire body; the last two (pastors and
+teachers) had charge of local and congregational affairs. The apostles
+(the Twelve and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the
+Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the foundation was laid
+and the deposit of revealed truth was complete. The evangelistic and
+pastoral callings remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety of
+Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists, with apostles or
+missionaries, bring new souls to Christ and carry His message into new
+lands. Pastors and teachers follow in their train, tending the
+ingathered sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they shepherd
+and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.
+
+Marvellous were Christ's "gifts for men" bestowed in the apostolic
+ministry. What a gift to the Christian community, for example, was Paul
+himself! In his natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in his
+training and early experience, in the supernatural mode of his
+conversion, everything wrought together to give to men in the apostle
+Paul a man supremely fitted to be Christ's ambassador to the Pagan
+world, and for all ages the "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and
+truth." "A _chosen vessel_ unto me," said the Lord Jesus, "to bear my
+name."
+
+Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man of the most powerful
+intellect and will, master of the thought and life of his time. Long an
+alien from the household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle,
+and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the awful crisis of the
+fifth century, when the Roman empire was breaking up and the very
+foundations of life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this
+heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to re-establish
+faith in the Divine order of the world.
+
+Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the captive of justifying
+grace, won from the monastery and the bondage of Rome to set Germany and
+Europe free. What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to
+whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of the Reformation; and
+he blew a blast that waked the sleeping peoples of the North, and made
+the walls of Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift to
+Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul breathed the spirit of
+religion into the life of a nation, and gave it a body and organic form
+in which to dwell and work for centuries.
+
+Such a gift to England was John Wesley. Can we conceive a richer boon
+conferred by the Head of the Church upon the English race than the
+raising up of this great evangelist and pastor and teacher, at such a
+time as that of his appearance? Standing at the distance of a hundred
+years, we are able to measure in some degree the magnitude of this
+bestowment. In none of the leaders and commanders whom Christ has given
+to His people was there more signally manifest that combination of
+faculties, that concurrence of providences and adjustment to
+circumstances, and that transforming and attempering influence of grace
+in all--the "effectual working in the measure of each single part" of
+the man and his history, which marks those special gifts that Christ is
+wont to bestow upon His people in seasons of special emergency and
+need.
+
+We are passing into a new age, such as none of these great men dreamed
+of, an age as exigent and perilous as any that have gone before it. The
+ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement of the
+masses, the universal spread of education, the emancipation of critical
+thought, the gigantic growth of the press, the enormous increase and
+aggregation of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the
+world-wide facilities of intercourse,--these and other causes more
+subtle are rapidly transforming human society. Old barriers have
+disappeared; while new difficulties are being created, of a magnitude to
+overtask the faith of the strongest. The Church is confronted with
+problems larger far in their dimensions than those our fathers knew.
+Demands are being made on her resources such as she has never had to
+meet before. Shall we be equal to the needs of the coming times?--Nay,
+that is not the question; but will _He_?
+
+There is nothing new or surprising to the Lord Jesus in the progress of
+our times and the developments of modern thought, nothing for which He
+is not perfectly prepared. He has taken their measure long ere this, and
+holds them within His grasp. The government is upon His shoulders--"the
+weight of all this unintelligible world"--and He can bear it well. He
+has gifts in store for the twentieth century, when it arrives, as
+adequate as those He bestowed upon the first or fifth, upon the
+sixteenth or the eighteenth of our era. There are Augustines and Wesleys
+yet to come. Hidden in the Almighty's quiver are shafts as polished and
+as keen as any He has used, which He will launch forth in the war of the
+ages at the appointed hour. The need, the peril, the greatness of the
+time will be the measure of the gift of Christ.
+
+There is a danger, however, in waiting for great leaders and in looking
+for signal displays of Christ's power amongst men. His "kingdom comes
+not with observation," so that men should say, Lo here! or Lo there! It
+steals upon us unforeseen; it is amongst us before we know. "We looked,"
+says Rutherford, "that He should take the higher way along the
+mountains; and lo, He came by the lower way of the valleys!" While men
+listen to the earthquake and the wind rending the mountains, a still,
+small voice speaks the message of God to prepared hearts. Rarely can we
+measure at the first the worth of Christ's best gifts. When the fruit
+appears, after long patience, the world will haply discover when and how
+the seed was sown. But not always then.
+
+    "The sower, passing onward, was not known;
+    And all men reaped the harvest as their own."
+
+Those who are most ready to appraise their fellows are constantly at
+fault. Our last may prove Christ's first; our first His last! "Each of
+us shall give account of himself to God": each must answer for his own
+stewardship, and the grace that was given to each. "Let us not therefore
+judge one another any more." But let every man see to it that his part
+in the building of God's temple is well and faithfully done. Soon the
+fire will try every man's work, of what sort it is.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[99] Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10-14 with xi. 13-16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24;
+also vi. 12.
+
+[100] The words of David in Browning's _Saul_, turned from the future
+tense into the present.
+
+[101] 2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.
+
+[102] 2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26-40, xxi. 8.
+
+[103] In Acts xiv. 4, 14, _Barnabas and Paul_ are "apostles"; 1 Thess.
+ii. 6, _Paul and Silas and Timothy_. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23,
+xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.
+
+[104] Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association of _prophets_ with
+_apostles_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+_THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    "Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full
+    knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure
+    of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more
+    children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
+    doctrine in the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of
+    error; but dealing truly, in love may grow up in all things into
+    Him, which is the head, _even_ Christ; from whom all the body fitly
+    framed and knit together, through that which every juncture
+    supplieth, according to the working in _due_ measure of each several
+    part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself
+    in love."--EPH. iv. 13-16.
+
+
+We must spend a few moments in unravelling this knotty paragraph and
+determining the relation of its involved clauses to each other, before
+we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove St Paul's hand in the
+letter. No writer of equal power was ever so little of a literary
+craftsman. His epistles read, as M. Renan says, like "a rapid
+conversation stenographed." Sometimes, as in several places in
+Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed clauses, hardly
+more continuous than shorthand notes; often, as in this epistle, they
+pour in a full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and phrase
+heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that bewilders us. In his spoken
+address the interpretation of tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the
+syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul's written composition.
+
+The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church were bestowed to
+promote its corporate efficiency and to further its general growth (vv.
+11, 12). Now, the purpose of these endowments sets a _limit_ to their
+use. "Christ gave apostles, prophets," and the rest--"_till we all
+arrive_ at our perfect manhood and reach the stature of His fulness."
+Such is the connexion of verse 13 with the foregoing context. The aim of
+the Christian ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men
+beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings, apostolates and pastorates,
+the missions of the evangelist and the schools of the teacher will one
+day cease; their work will be done, their end gained, when all believers
+are brought "to the unity of faith, to the full knowledge of the Son of
+God." The work of Christ's servants can have no grander aim, no further
+goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not disclose an
+ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed in the previous sentence;
+it restates the same purpose. To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent
+our being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for which apostles,
+prophets, pastors, teachers are called to office. The goal marked out
+for all believers in the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ
+(ver. 13), is set up that it may direct the Church's course through
+dangers shunned and enemies vanquished (ver. 14) to the attainment of
+her corporate perfection (vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section
+turns upon the idea of "the perfecting of the saints" in verse 12. Verse
+16 looks backward to this; verse 7 looked forward to it.
+
+So much for the general construction of the period. As to its particular
+words and phrases, we must observe:--
+
+(1) The "perfect [full-grown] man" of verse 13 is the _individual_, not
+the generic man, not "the one [collective] new man" of chapter ii. 15.
+The Greek words for _man_ in these two places differ.[105] The apostle
+proposes to the Christian ministry the end that he was himself pursuing,
+viz., to "present _every man_ perfect in Christ."[106]
+
+(2) "_Sleight_ of men" (A.V. and R.V.) does not seem to us to express
+the precise meaning of the word so translated in verse 14. _Kubeia_
+(from _kubos_, a cube, or die) occurs only here in the New Testament; in
+classical Greek it appears in its literal sense of _dice-play_,
+_gambling_. The interpreters have drawn from this the idea of
+_trickery_, _cheating_--the common accompaniment of gambling. But the
+kindred verb (_to play dice_, _to gamble_) has another well-established
+use in Greek, namely, _to hazard_: this supplies for St Paul's noun the
+signification of _sport_ or _hazarding_, preferred by Beza among the
+older expositors and by von Soden amongst the newest. _In the sport of
+men_, says von Soden: "conduct wanting in every kind of earnestness and
+clear purpose. These men _play_ with religion, and with the welfare of
+Christian souls." This metaphor accords admirably with that of the
+restless waves and uncertain winds[107] just preceding it; while it
+leads fittingly to the further qualification "in craftiness," which is
+almost an idle synonym after "sleight."
+
+(3) Another rare word is found in this verse, not very precisely
+rendered as "wiles"--a translation suiting it better in chapter vi. 11.
+Here the noun is singular in number: _methodeia_. It signifies
+_methodizing_, _reducing to a plan_; and then, in a bad sense,
+_scheming_, _plotting_. "Error" is thus personified: it "schemes," just
+as in 2 Thessalonians ii. 7 it "works." Amid the restless speculations
+and the unscrupulous perversions of the gospel now disturbing the infant
+faith of the Asian Churches, the apostle saw the outline of a great
+system of error shaping itself. There was a method in this madness.
+_Unto the scheme of error_--into the meshes of its net--those were being
+driven who yielded to the prevailing tendencies of speculative thought.
+With all its cross currents and capricious movements, it was bearing
+steadily in one direction. Reckless pilots steered ignorant souls this
+way and that over the wind-swept seas of religious doubt; but they
+brought them at last to the same rocks and quicksands.
+
+(4) As the contrast between manhood and childhood links verses 13 and
+14, so it is by the contrast of error and craftiness with _truth_ that
+we pass from verse 14 to verse 15. "_Speaking_ truth" insufficiently
+renders the opening word of the latter verse. The "_dealing_ truly" of
+the Revised margin is preferable. In Galatians iv. 16 the apostle
+employs the same verb, signifying not truth of speech alone, but of deed
+and life (comp. Eph. v. 9). The expression resembles that of 1 John iii.
+19: "We are _of the truth_, and shall assure our hearts before Him,"
+where truth and love are found in the like union.
+
+(5) The last difficulty of this kind we have to deal with, lies in the
+connexion of the clauses of verse 16. "Through every joint of supply" is
+an incongruous adjunct to the previous clause, "fitly framed and knit
+together," although the rendering "joint" gives this connexion a
+superficial aptness. The apostle's word means _juncture_ rather than
+_joint_.[108] The _points of contact_ between the members of Christ's
+body form the channels of supply through which the entire frame receives
+nourishment. The clause "through every juncture of the supply"--an
+expression somewhat obscure at the best--points forwards, not backwards.
+It describes the means by which the Church of Christ, compacted in its
+general framework by those larger ligatures which its ministry furnishes
+(vv. 11, 12), builds up its inward life,--through a communion wherein
+"each single part" of the body shares, and every tie that binds one
+Christian soul to another serves to nourish the common life of grace. We
+may paraphrase the sentence thus: "Drawing its life from Christ, the
+entire body knit together in a well-compacted frame, makes use of every
+link that unites its members and of each particular member in his place
+to contribute to its sustenance, thus building itself up in love
+evermore."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These difficult verses unfold to us three main conceptions: _The goal of
+the Church's life_ (ver. 13), _the malady which arrests its development_
+(ver. 14), and _the means and conditions of its growth_ (vv. 15, 16).
+
+I. The mark at which the Church has to arrive is set forth, in harmony
+with the tenor of the epistle, in a twofold way,--in its _collective_
+and its _individual_ aspects. We must all "unitedly attain the oneness
+of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God"; and we must attain,
+each of us, "a perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ."
+
+The "one faith" of the Church's foundation (ver. 5) is, at the same
+time, its end and goal. The final unity will be the unfolding of the
+primal unity; the implicit will become explicit; the germ will be
+reproduced in the developed organism. "The faith" is still, in St Paul,
+the _fides qua credimus_, not _quam credimus_; it is the living faith of
+all hearts in the same Christ and gospel.[109] When "we all" believe
+heartily and understandingly in "the word of truth, the gospel of our
+salvation," the goal will be in sight. All our defects are, at the
+bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the
+fulness of God in Christ. Faith is the essence of the heart's life: it
+forms the common consciousness of the body of Christ.
+
+While faith is the central organ of the Church's life, _the Son of God_
+is its central object. The dangers assailing the Church and the
+divisions threatening its unity, touched His Person; and whatever
+touches the Head, vitally affects the health of the body and the
+well-being of every member in it. Many had believed in Jesus as the
+Christ and received blessing from Him, whose knowledge of Him as the Son
+of God was defective. This ignorance exposed their faith to perversion
+by the plausible errors circulating in the Churches of Asia Minor.[110]
+The haze of speculation dimmed His glory and distorted His image.
+Dazzled by the "philosophy and empty deceit" of specious talkers, these
+half-instructed believers formed erroneous or uncertain views of Christ.
+And a divided Christ makes a divided Church. We may hold divergent
+opinions upon many points of doctrine--in regard to Church order and the
+Sacraments, in regard to the nature of the future judgement, in regard
+to the mode and limits of inspiration, in regard to the dialect and
+expression of our spiritual life--and yet retain, notwithstanding, a
+large measure of cordial unity and find ourselves able to co-operate
+with each other for many Christian purposes. But when our difference
+concerns the Person of Christ, it is felt at once to be fundamental.
+There is a gulf between those who worship and those who do not worship
+the Son of God.
+
+"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in
+him and he in God" (1 John iv. 15). This is the touchstone of catholic
+truth that the apostles have laid down; and by this we must hold fast.
+The kingship of the Lord Jesus is the rallying-point of Christendom. In
+His name we set up our banners. There are a thousand differences we can
+afford to sink and quarrels we may well forget, if our hearts are one
+towards Him. Let me meet a man of any sect or country, who loves and
+worships my Lord Christ with all his mind and strength, he is my
+brother; and who shall forbid us "with one mind and one mouth to glorify
+the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"? It is nothing but our
+ignorance of Him, and of each other, that prevents us doing this
+already. Let us set ourselves again to the study of Christ. Let us
+strive "all of us" to "attain to the full knowledge of the Son of God";
+it is the way to reunion. As we approach the central revelation, and the
+glory of Christ who is the image of God shines in its original
+brightness upon our hearts, prejudices will melt away; the opinions and
+interests and sentiments that divide us will be lost in the transcendent
+and absorbing vision of the one Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+    "Names and sects and parties fall:
+    Thou, O Christ, art all in all!"
+
+The second and third _unto_ of verse 13 are parallel with the first, and
+with each other. A truer faith and better knowledge of Christ uniting
+believers to each other, at the same time develope in each of them a
+riper character. Jesus Christ was the "perfect man." In Him our nature
+attained, without the least flaw or failure, its true end,--which is to
+glorify God. In His fulness the plenitude of God is embodied; it is made
+human, and attainable to faith. In Jesus Christ humanity rose to its
+ideal stature; and we see what is the proper level of our nature, the
+dignity and worth to which we have to rise. We are "predestinated to be
+conformed to the image of God's Son." All the many brethren of Jesus
+measure themselves against the stature of the Firstborn; and they will
+have to say to the end with St Paul: "Not as though I had attained,
+either were already perfect. I follow after; I press towards the mark."
+A true heart that has seen perfection, will never rest short of it.
+
+"Till we arrive--till we _all_ arrive" at this, the work of the
+Christian ministry is incomplete. Teachers must still school us, pastors
+shepherd us, evangelists mission us. There is work enough and to spare
+for them all--and will be, to all appearance, for many a generation to
+come. The goal of the regenerate life is never absolutely won; it is hid
+with Christ in God. But there is to be a constant approximation to it,
+both in the individual believer and in the body of Christ's people. And
+a time is coming when that goal will be practically attained, so far as
+earthly conditions allow. The Church after long strife will be reunited,
+after long trial will be perfected; and Christ will "present her to
+Himself" a bride worthy of her Lord, "without spot or wrinkle or any
+such thing." Then this world will have had its use, and will give place
+to the new heavens and earth.
+
+II. The goal that the apostle marked out, did not appear to him to be in
+immediate prospect. The childishness of so many Christian believers
+stood in the way of its attainment. In this condition they were exposed
+to the seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by
+the evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long
+as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will
+remain subject to strife and corruption. When he says in verse 14, "that
+we may be _no longer children_ tossed to and fro," etc., this implies
+that many Christian believers at that time were of this childish sort,
+and were being so distracted and misled. The apostle writes on purpose
+to instruct these "babes" and to raise them to a more manly style of
+Christian thought and life.[111]
+
+It is a grievous thing to a minister of Christ to see those who for the
+time ought to be teachers, fit for the Church's strong meat and the
+harder tasks of her service, remaining still infantile in their
+condition, needing to be nursed and humoured, narrow in their views of
+truth, petty and personal in their aims, wanting in all generous feeling
+and exalted thought. Some men, like St Paul himself, advance from the
+beginning to a settled faith, to a large intelligence and a full and
+manly consecration to God. Others remain "babes in Christ" to the end.
+Their souls live, but never thrive. They suffer from every change in the
+moral atmosphere, from every new wind of doctrine. These invalids are
+objects full of interest to the moral pathologist; they are marked not
+unfrequently by fine and delicate qualities. But they are a constant
+anxiety to the Church. Till they grow into something more robust they
+must remain to crowd the Church's nursery, instead of taking part in her
+battle like brave and strenuous men.
+
+The appearance of false doctrine in the Asian Churches made their
+undeveloped condition a matter for peculiar apprehension to the apostle.
+The Colossian heresy, for example, with which he is dealing at this
+present moment, would have no attraction for ripe and settled
+Christians. But such a "scheme of error" was exactly suited to catch men
+with a certain tincture of philosophy and in general sympathy with
+current thought, who had embraced Christianity under some vague sense
+of its satisfaction for their spiritual needs, but without an
+intelligent grasp of its principles or a thorough experience of its
+power.
+
+St Paul speaks of "every wind of _the_ doctrine," having in his mind a
+more or less definite form of erroneous teaching, a certain "plan of
+error." Reading this verse in the light of the companion letter to
+Colossae and the letters addressed to Timothy when at Ephesus a few years
+later, we can understand its significance. We can watch the storm that
+was rising in the Graeco-Asiatic Churches. The characteristics of early
+Gnosticism are well defined in the miniature picture of verse 14. We
+note, in the first place, its protean and capricious form, half
+Judaistic, half philosophical--ascetic in one direction, libertine in
+another: "tossed by the waves, and carried about with every wind." In
+the next place, its intellectual spirit,--that of a loose and reckless
+speculation: "in the hazarding of men,"--not in the abiding truth of
+God. Morally, it was vitiated by "craftiness." And in its issue and
+result, this new teaching was leading "to the scheme of error" which the
+apostle four years ago had sorrowfully predicted, in bidding farewell to
+the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx.). This scheme was no other than
+the gigantic Gnostic system, which devastated the Eastern Churches and
+inflicted deep and lasting wounds upon them.
+
+The struggle with legalism was now over and past, at least in its
+critical phase. The apostle of the Gentiles had won the battle with
+Judaism and saved the Church in its first great conflict. But another
+strife is impending (comp. vi. 10); a most pernicious error has made its
+appearance within the Church itself. St Paul was not to see more than
+the commencement of the new movement, which took two generations to
+gather its full force; but he had a true prophetic insight, and he saw
+that the strength of the Church in the coming day of trial lay in the
+depth and reality of her knowledge of the Son of God.
+
+At every crisis in human thought there emerges some prevailing method of
+truth, or of error, the resultant of current tendencies, which unites
+the suffrages of a large body of thinkers and claims to embody the
+spirit of the age. Such a method of error our own age has produced as
+the outcome of the anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the
+doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or
+Agnosticism. While the Gnosticism of the early ages asserted the
+infinite distance of God from the world and the intrinsic evil of
+matter, modern Agnosticism removes God still further from us, beyond the
+reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature as the one positive
+and accessible reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and
+knowledge of the Son of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. The
+supernatural, it tells us, is an illusion; and we must resign ourselves
+to be once more without God in the world and without hope beyond death.
+
+This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the
+century. It is the living antagonist of Divine revelation. It supplies
+the appointed trial of faith for educated men of our generation, and the
+test of the intellectual vigour and manhood of the Church.
+
+III. In the midst of the changing perils and long delays of her history,
+the Church is called evermore to press towards the mark of her calling.
+The conditions on which her progress depends are summed up in verses 15
+and 16.
+
+To the craft of false teachers St Paul would have his Churches oppose
+the weapons only of _truth and love_. "Holding the truth in love," they
+will "grow up in all things into Christ." Sincere believers, heartily
+devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life
+instinctively repels disease. They "have an anointing from the Holy One"
+which is their protection (1 John ii. 20-29). In all that belongs to
+godliness and a noble manhood, such natures will expand; temptation and
+the assaults of error stimulate rather than arrest their growth. And
+with the growth and ripening in her fellowship of such men of God, the
+whole Church grows.
+
+Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of
+advancement,--viz., the full recognition of _the supremacy and
+sufficiency of Christ_. Christ assumes here two opposite relations to
+the members of His body. He is the Head _into_ (or _unto_) which we grow
+in all things; but at the same time, _from_ whom all the body derives
+its increase (ver. 16). He is the perfect ideal for us each; He is the
+common source of life and progress for us all. In our individual efforts
+after holiness and knowledge, in our personal aspirations and struggles,
+Jesus Christ is our model, our constant aim: we "grow into Him" (ver.
+15). But as we learn to live for others, as we merge our own aims in the
+life of the Church and of humanity we feel, even more deeply than our
+personal needs had made us do, our dependence upon Him. We see that the
+forces which are at work to raise mankind, to stay the strifes and heal
+the wounds of humanity, emanate from the living Christ (ver. 16). He is
+the head of the Church and the heart of the world.
+
+The third, practical condition of Church growth is brought out by the
+closing words of the paragraph. It is _organization_: "all the body
+fitly framed [comp. ii. 21] and knit together." Each local _ecclesia_,
+or assembly of saints, will have its stated officers, its regulated and
+seemly order in worship and in work. And within this fit frame, there
+must be the warm union of hearts, the frank exchange of thought and
+feeling, the brotherly counsel in all things touching the kingdom of
+God, by which Christian men in each place of their assembling are "knit
+together." From these local and congregational centres, the Christian
+fellowship spreads out its arms to embrace all that love our Lord Jesus
+Christ.
+
+A building or a machine is _fitted_ together by the adjustment of its
+parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive
+life, a sympathetic force _knitting_ it together: "knit together in
+love," the apostle says in Colossians ii. 2; and so it is "in love" that
+this "body builds up itself." The tense of the participles in the first
+part of verse 16 is present (continuous); we see a body in process of
+incorporation, whose several organs, imperfectly developed and
+imperfectly co-operant, are increasingly drawn to each other and bound
+more firmly in one as each becomes more complete in itself. The perfect
+Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them
+requires the other for its due realization.
+
+The rest of the sentence, following the comma that we place at "knit
+together," has its parallel in Colossians ii. 19: "All the body, through
+its junctures and bands being supplied and knit together, increaseth
+with the increase of God." According to St Paul's physiology, the
+"bands" knit the body together, but the "junctures" are its means of
+supply. Each point of contact is a means of nourishment to the frame.
+In touch with each other, Christians communicate the life flowing from
+the common Head. The apostle would make _Christian intercourse a
+universal means of grace_. No two Christian men should meet anywhere,
+upon any business, without themselves and the whole Church being the
+better for it.
+
+"Wherever two or three are met together in my name," said Jesus, "there
+am I in the midst." In the multitude of these obscure and humble
+meetings of brethren who love each other for Christ's sake, is the grace
+supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the Church lives and
+thrives. The vitality of the Church of Christ does not depend so much
+upon the large and visible features of its construction--upon Synods and
+Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the like, influential and
+venerable as these authorities may be; but upon the spiritual
+intercourse that goes on amongst the body of its people. "Each several
+part" of Christ's great body, "according to the measure" of its
+capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the common grace.
+
+However defective in other points of organization, the society in which
+this takes place fulfils the office of an ecclesiastical body. It will
+grow into the fulness of Christ; it "builds up itself in love." The
+primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be
+an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through
+the tissues and substance of the entire frame.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[105] =Eis hena kaino anthropon= (_homo_), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv.
+22, 24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Here =eis andra teleion=
+(_vir_); comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Church =aner=
+would be highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor.
+xi. 2.
+
+[106] Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.
+
+[107] For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare: _Julius
+Caesar_, Act V., Scene 1:--
+
+    "Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!
+    The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!"
+
+[108] Vulgate: _per omnem juncturam ministrationis_. St Paul's word here
+is =dia pases haphes=, _through every touching_. See Lightfoot's
+valuable note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek
+authors, in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).
+
+[109] Comp. ch. i. 13: "in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews]
+found hope"; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, "my true child according
+to _a common faith_."
+
+[110] See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8-10, 18, 19.
+
+[111] Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1-3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19;
+Heb. v. 11-14.
+
+
+
+
+ON CHRISTIAN MORALS.
+
+CHAPTER iv. 17--v. 21.
+
+    =En kainoteti zoes peripatesomen.=--ROM. vi. 4.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+_THE WALK OF THE GENTILES._
+
+    "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer
+    walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being
+    darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God
+    because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening
+    of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to
+    lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."--EPH. iv.
+    17-19.
+
+
+Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new
+world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order
+of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have
+therefore to walk in quite another way--"no longer as the Gentiles." St
+Paul does not say "as the other Gentiles" (A.V.); for his readers,
+though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and
+the city of God. They hold the franchise of the "commonwealth of
+Israel." As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a
+born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of "the Jews"
+as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from
+"the Gentiles" who were their natural kindred.
+
+When he "testifies," with a pointed emphasis, "that _you_ no longer walk
+as do indeed the Gentiles," and when in verse 20 he exclaims, "But
+_you_ did not thus learn the Christ," it appears that there were those
+bearing Christ's name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus
+walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians
+(ch. iii. 18, 19): "Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now
+tell you even weeping,--the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is
+their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things."
+We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in
+verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose
+seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor,
+tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples,
+and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of
+life.[112]
+
+The connexion between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on
+which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the
+Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old
+world of Gentile society had formed the "old man" as he then existed,
+the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world
+is abolished, and a "new man" is born. The world in which the Asian
+Christians once lived as "Gentiles in the flesh," is dead to them.[113]
+They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus
+Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the
+following paragraphs. His ideal "new man" is no mere ego, devoted to
+his personal perfection; he is part and parcel of the redeemed society
+of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and
+commonwealth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us
+is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid
+picture of Romans i. 18-32. While this delineation is comparatively
+brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than
+does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the
+description, as they bring into view in turn the _mental_, _spiritual_,
+and _moral_ characteristics of the existing Paganism. Man's intellect
+was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and
+shameless.
+
+I. "The Gentiles walk," the apostle says, "in _vanity of their
+mind_"--with reason frustrate and impotent; "being _darkened in their
+understanding_"--with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of
+life. Similarly, he wrote in Romans i. 21: "They were frustrated in
+their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." But here he
+seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the "reasonings" to
+the "reason" (_nous_) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its
+foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has
+forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects
+so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable
+and ruinous.
+
+The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from popular beliefs,
+for the most part confessed that their philosophies were speculative and
+futile, that certainty in the greatest and most serious matters was
+unattainable. Pilate's question, "What is truth?"--no jesting question
+surely--passed from lip to lip and from one school of thought to
+another, without an answer. Five centuries before this time the human
+intellect had a marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of Greece
+sprang into their glorious life, like Athene born from the head of Zeus,
+full-grown and in shining armour. With such leaders as Pericles and
+Phidias, as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing was
+impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius of our race had
+blossomed; rich and golden fruit would surely follow, to be gathered
+from the tree of life. But the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as
+rottenness. Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry was
+little more than a trick of words; philosophy, a wrangling of the
+schools. Rome towered in the majesty of her arms and laws above the
+faded glory of Greece. She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a
+rule of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty. But this dream
+vanished, like the other. The age of the Caesars was an age of
+disillusion. Scepticism and cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of
+the future possessed men's minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old and new
+Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans disputed the palm of wisdom in
+mere strife of words. Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their
+own systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned was "to hear some
+new thing," for of the old things all thinking men were weary. Only
+rhetoric and scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest
+constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again. "On the whole,
+this last period of Greek philosophy, extending into the Christian era,
+bore the marks of intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of
+despair in the solution of its high problem" (Doellinger). The world
+itself admitted the apostle's reproach that "by wisdom it knew not God."
+It knew nothing, therefore, to sure purpose, nothing that availed to
+satisfy or save it.
+
+Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic method unknown to
+the ancient world. The old metaphysical systems failed; but we have
+relaid the foundations of life and thought upon the solid ground of
+nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis of positive and demonstrated
+knowledge, whose value is independent of religious belief. Scientific
+discovery has put us in command of material forces that secure the race
+against any such relapse as that which took place in the overthrow of
+the Graeco-Roman civilization. _Pessimism_ answers these pretensions made
+for physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the nemesis of
+irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow palsy over the highest and
+ablest minds that reject the Christian hope. What avails it to yoke
+steam to our chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to wing
+our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts are no happier or
+worthier than before?
+
+"Civilization contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude.
+Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave" (F.
+W. Robertson). Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of lavish
+wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what science grimly calls the
+_proletariate_, a barbarism more vicious and dangerous than the old,
+that is generated by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing
+regime of industrial science.
+
+Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity for evil or good;
+culture makes him more sensitive; refinement more delicate in his
+virtues or his vices. But there is no tendency in these forces as we
+see them now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline, to
+make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge supplies nothing to bind
+society together, no force to tame the selfish passions, to guard the
+moral interests of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to the
+forces acting on civilized men; it cannot change or elevate their
+character. It puts new and potent instruments into our hands; but
+whether those instruments shall be tools to build the city of God or
+weapons for its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the
+wielders. In the midst of his splendid machinery, master of the planet's
+wealth and lord of nature's forces, the civilized man at the end of this
+boastful century stands with a dull and empty heart--without God. Poor
+creature, he wants to know whether "life is worth living"! He has gained
+the world, but lost his soul.
+
+In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men stumble onwards to the
+end of life, to the end of time. The world's wisdom and the lessons of
+its history give no hope of any real advance from darkness to light
+until, as Plato said, "We are able more safely and securely to make our
+journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine word."[114] Such a
+vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching. The
+moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its guidance. And that
+moral progress has created the conditions and given the stimulus to
+which our material and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives
+permanence and value to all man's acquisitions. Both of this world and
+of that to come "godliness holds the promise." We are only beginning to
+learn how much was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as "the
+light of the world." He brought into the world a light which was to
+shine through all the realms of human life.
+
+II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked, resulted in a
+settled state of _estrangement from God_. They were "alienated from the
+life of God."
+
+"Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel," St Paul said in chapter ii.
+12,[115] using, as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which
+denotes an abiding fact. These two alienations generally coincide.
+Outside the religious community, we are outside the religious life. This
+expression gathers to a point what was said in verses 11, 12 of chapter
+ii., and further back in verses 1-3; it discloses the spring of the
+soul's malady and decay in its separation from the living God. When
+shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may exist without God,
+as a tree cast out in the desert, or a body wasting in the grave; but
+that is not _life_.
+
+Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who seemed to him
+dead--joyless, empty-hearted, weary of an idle learning or lost in
+sullen ignorance, caring only to eat and drink till they should die like
+the beasts. Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in which
+the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to believe. The ancient
+natural pieties--not wholly untouched by the Spirit of God, despite
+their idolatry--that peopled with fair fancies the Grecian shores and
+skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his manfulness and hallowed his love
+of home and city, were all but extinguished. Death was at the heart of
+Pagan religion; corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who
+believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power behind the veil
+of sense. The Roman augurs laughed at their own auspices; the priests
+made a traffic of their temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was
+rife, as rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the day were
+the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported from Egypt and Syria. A
+hundred years before, the Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his
+burning indignation, the disposition of earnest and high-minded men
+towards the creeds of the later classic times:--
+
+    "Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret,
+    In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,
+    Quae caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat
+    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
+    Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
+    Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra."[116]
+
+    _De Rerum Natura_: Bk. I., 62-67.
+
+How alienated from the life of God were those who conceived such
+sentiments, and those whose creed excited this repugnance. And when
+amongst ourselves, as it occurs in some unhappy instances, a similar
+bitterness is cherished, it is matter of double sorrow,--of grief at
+once for the alienation prompting thoughts so dark and unjust towards
+our God and Father, and for the misshapen guise in which our holy
+religion has been presented to make this aversion possible.
+
+The phrase "alienated from the life of God" denotes an objective
+position rather than a subjective disposition, the state and place of
+the man who is far from God and and his true life. God exiles sinners
+from His presence. By a necessary law, their sin acts as a sentence of
+deprivation. Under its ban they go forth, like Cain, from the presence
+of the Lord. They can no longer partake of the light of life which
+streams forth evermore from God and fills the souls that abide in His
+love.
+
+And this banishment was due to the cause already described,--to the
+radical perversion of the Gentile mind, which is re-affirmed in the
+double prepositional clause of verse 18: "because of the ignorance that
+is in them, because of the hardening of their heart." The repeated
+preposition (_because of_) attaches the two parallel clauses to the same
+predicate. Together they serve to explain this sad estrangement from the
+Divine life; the second _because_ supplements the first. It is the
+ingrained "ignorance" of men that excludes them from the life of God;
+and this ignorance is no misfortune or unavoidable fate, it is due to a
+positive "hardening of the heart."
+
+Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of indevotion. If men knew
+God, they would certainly love and serve Him. St Paul agreed with
+Socrates and Plato in holding that virtue is knowledge. The debasement
+of the heathen world, he declares again and again, was due to the fact
+that it "knew not God."[117] The Corinthian Church was corrupted and its
+Christian life imperilled by the presence in it of some who "had not the
+knowledge of God" (1 Cor. xv. 33, 34). At Athens, the centre of heathen
+wisdom, he spoke of the Pagan ages as "the times of ignorance" (Acts
+xvii. 30); and found in this want of knowledge a measure of excuse. But
+the ignorance he censures is not of the understanding alone; nor is it
+curable by philosophy and science. It has an intrinsic
+ground,--"existing _in_ them."
+
+Since the world's creation, the apostle says, God's unseen presence has
+been clearly visible (Rom. i. 20). Yet multitudes of men have always
+held false and corrupting views of the Divine nature. At this present
+time, in the full light of Christianity, men of high intellect and wide
+knowledge of nature are found proclaiming in the most positive terms
+that God, if He exists, is unknowable. This ignorance it is not for us
+to censure; every man must give account of himself to God. There may be
+in individual cases, amongst the enlightened deniers of God in our own
+days, causes of misunderstanding beyond the will, obstructing and
+darkening circumstances, on the ground of which in His merciful and wise
+judgement God may "overlook" that ignorance, even as He did the
+ignorance of earlier ages. But it is manifest that while this veil
+remains, those on whose heart it lies cannot partake in the life of God.
+Living in unbelief, they walk in darkness to the end, knowing not
+whither they go.
+
+The Gentile ignorance of God was attended, as St Paul saw it, with an
+_induration of heart_, of which it was at once the cause and the effect.
+There is a wilful stupidity, a studied misconstruction of God's will,
+which has played a large part in the history of unbelief. The
+Israelitish people presented at this time a terrible example of such
+guilty callousness (Rom. xi. 7-10, 25). They professed a mighty zeal for
+God; but it was a passion for the deity of their partial and corrupt
+imagination, which turned to hatred of the true God and Father of men
+when He appeared in the person of His Son. Behind their pride of
+knowledge lay the ignorance of a hard and impenitent heart.
+
+In the case of the heathen, hardness of heart and religious ignorance
+plainly went together. The knowledge of God was not altogether wanting
+amongst them; He "left Himself not without witness," as the apostle told
+them (Acts xiv. 17). Where there is, amid whatever darkness, a mind
+seeking after truth and right, some ray of light is given, some gleam of
+a better hope by which the soul may draw nigh to God,--coming whence or
+how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of Christ finds in every new land
+souls waiting for God's salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in
+hearts touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its first
+messengers discovered everywhere,--a remnant in Israel and a great
+multitude amongst the heathen.
+
+But the Jewish nation as a whole, and the mass of the pagans, remained
+at present obstinately disbelieving. They had no perception of the life
+of God, and felt no need of it; and when offered, they thrust it from
+them. Theirs was another god, "the god of this world," who "blinds the
+minds of the unbelieving" (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). And their "ungodliness and
+unrighteousness" were not to be pitied more than blamed. They might have
+known better; they were "holding down the truth in unrighteousness,"
+putting out the light that was in them and contradicting their better
+instincts. The wickedness of that generation was the outcome of a
+hardening of heart and blinding of conscience that had been going on for
+generations past.
+
+III. By two conspicuous features the decaying Paganism of the Christian
+era was distinguished,--its unbelief and its _licentiousness_. In his
+letter to the Romans St Paul declares that the second of these
+deplorable characteristics was the consequence of the former, and a
+punishment for it inflicted by God. Here he points to it as a
+manifestation of the hardening of heart which caused their ignorance of
+God: "Having lost all feeling, they gave themselves up to
+lasciviousness, so as to commit every kind of uncleanness in
+greediness."
+
+Upon that brilliant classic civilization there lies a shocking stain of
+impurity. St Paul stamps upon it the burning word _Aselgeia
+(lasciviousness)_, like a brand on the harlot's brow. The habits of
+daily life, the literature and art of the Greek world, the atmosphere of
+society in the great cities was laden with corruption. Sexual vice was
+no longer counted vice. It was provided for by public law; it was
+incorporated into the worship of the gods. It was cultivated in every
+luxurious and monstrous excess. It was eating out the manhood of the
+Greek and Latin races. From the imperial Caesar down to the horde of
+slaves, it seemed as though every class of society had abandoned itself
+to the horrid practices of lust.
+
+The "greediness" with which debauchery was then pursued, is at the
+bottom self-idolatry, self-deification; it is the absorption of the
+God-given passion and will of man's nature in the gratification of his
+appetites. Here lies the reservoir and spring of sin, the burning deep
+within the soul of him who knows no God but his own will, no law above
+his own desire. He plunges into sensual indulgence, or he grasps
+covetously at wealth or office; he wrecks the purity, or tramples on the
+rights of others; he robs the weak, he corrupts the innocent, he
+deceives and mocks the simple--to feed the gluttonous idol of self that
+sits upon God's seat within him. The military hero wading to a throne
+through seas of blood, the politician who wins power and office by the
+sleights of a supple tongue, the dealer on the exchange who supplants
+every competitor by his shrewd foresight and unscrupulous daring, and
+absorbs the fruit of the labour of thousands of his fellow-men, the
+sensualist devising some new and more voluptuous refinement of
+vice,--these are all the miserable slaves of their own lust, driven on
+by the insatiate craving of the false god that they carry within their
+breast.
+
+For the light-hearted Greeks, lovers of beauty and of laughter, self was
+deified as Aphrodite, goddess of fleshly desire, who was turned by their
+worship into _Aselgeia_,--she of whom of old it was said, "Her house is
+the way to Sheol." Not such as the chaste wife and house-keeping mother
+of Hebrew praise, but Lais with her venal charms was the subject of
+Greek song and art. Pure ideals of womanhood the classic nations had
+once known--or never would those nations have become great and famous--a
+Greek Alcestis and Antigone, Roman Cornelias and Lucretias, noble maids
+and matrons. But these, in the dissolution of manners, had given place
+to other models. The wives and daughters of the Greek citizens were shut
+up to contempt and ignorance, while the priestesses of vice--_hetaerae_
+they were called, or _companions_ of men--queened it in their voluptuous
+beauty, until their bloom faded and poison or madness ended their fatal
+days.
+
+Amongst the Jews whom our Lord addressed, the choice lay between "God
+and Mammon"; in Corinth and Ephesus, it was "Christ or Belial." These
+ancient gods of the world--"mud-gods," as Thomas Carlyle called
+them--are set up in the high places of our populous cities. To the
+slavery of business and the pride of wealth men sacrifice health and
+leisure, improvement of mind, religion, charity, love of country, family
+affection. How many of the evils of English society come from this root
+of all evil!
+
+Hard by the temple of Mammon stands that of Belial. Their votaries
+mingle in the crowded amusements of the day and rub shoulders with each
+other. Aselgeia flaunts herself, wise observers tell us, with increasing
+boldness in the European capitals. Theatre and picture-gallery and novel
+pander to the desire of the eye and the lust of the flesh. The daily
+newspapers retail cases of divorce and hideous criminal trials with
+greater exactness than the debates of Parliament; and the appetite for
+this garbage grows by what it feeds upon. It is plain to see whereunto
+the decay of public decency and the revival of the animalism of pagan
+art and manners will grow, if it be not checked by a deepened Christian
+faith and feeling.
+
+_Past feeling_ says the apostle of the brazen impudicity of his time.
+The loss of the religious sense blunted all moral sensibility. The
+Greeks, by an early instinct of their language, had one word for
+_modesty_ and _reverence_, for self-respect and awe before the Divine.
+There is nothing more terrible than the loss of shame. When immodesty is
+no longer felt as an affront, when there fails to rise in the blood and
+burn upon the cheek the hot resentment of a wholesome nature against
+things that are foul, when we grow tolerant and familiar with their
+presence, we are far down the slopes of hell. It needs only the kindling
+of passion, or the removal of the checks of circumstance, to complete
+the descent. The pain that the sight of evil gives is a divine shield
+against it. Wearing this shield, the sinless Christ fought our battle,
+and bore the anguish of our sin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[112] "The persons here denounced," says Lightfoot on Phil. iii. 18,
+"are not the Judaizing teachers, but the antinomian reactionists.... The
+stress of Paul's grief lies in the fact that they degraded the true
+doctrine of liberty, so as to minister to their profligate and worldly
+living." Comp. 1 Peter iv. 3, 4; 2 Peter ii. 18-22.
+
+[113] Comp. Col. ii. 20-iii. 4; Gal. vi. 14, 15.
+
+[114] _Phaeao_: Sec. xxxv.
+
+[115] See p. 129.
+
+[116] "When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed
+down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters
+of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece
+ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to
+withstand her to her face" (Munro).
+
+[117] 1 Thess. iv. 5; 2 Thess. i. 8; Gal. iv. 8, 9.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+_THE TWO HUMAN TYPES._
+
+    "But ye did not so learn the Christ; if so be that ye heard Him, and
+    were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as
+    concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth
+    corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the
+    spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath
+    been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth."--EPH. iv.
+    20-24.
+
+
+_But as for you!_--The apostle points us from heathendom to Christendom.
+From the men of blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the
+cleansed and instructed. "Not thus did _you_ learn the Christ"--not to
+remain in the darkness and filth of your Gentile state.
+
+The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in this letter so exuberant
+in expression, yet on occasion is as concise as in Galatians. One is
+tempted, as Beza suggested[118] and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at
+this point and to read: "But with you it is not so:[119] you learned the
+Christ!" In spite of its abruptness, this construction would be
+necessary, if it were only "the Gentiles" of verse 17 with whose "walk"
+St Paul means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we have seen, he
+has before his eye a third class of men, unprincipled Christian teachers
+(ver. 14), men who had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in
+Gentile ways and were leading others back to them.[120] Verse 20, after
+all, forms a coherent clause. It points an antithesis of solemn import.
+There are genuine, and there are supposed conversions; there are true
+and false ways of learning Christ.
+
+Strictly speaking, it is not _Christ_, but _the Christ_ whom St Paul
+presumes his readers to have duly learnt.[121] The words imply a
+comprehending faith, that knows who and what Christ is and what
+believing in Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To such a
+faith, which views Christ in the scope and breadth of His redemption,
+this epistle throughout appeals; for its impartation and increase St
+Paul prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter. When he writes
+not simply, "You have believed in Christ," but "You have _learned the
+Christ_," he puts their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of
+approved disciples in Christ's school. For such men the "philosophy and
+vain deceit" of Colossae and the plausibilities of the new "scheme of
+error" will have no charm. They have found the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge that are hidden in Christ.
+
+The apostle's confidence in the Christian knowledge of his readers is,
+however, qualified in verse 21 in a somewhat remarkable way: "If verily
+it is He whom you heard, and in Him that you were taught, as truth is in
+Jesus." We noted at the outset the bearing of this sentence on the
+destination of the letter. It would never occur to St Paul to question
+whether the _Ephesian_ Christians were taught Christ's true doctrine.
+If there were any believers in the world who, beyond a doubt, had heard
+the truth as in Jesus in its certainty and fulness, it was those amongst
+whom the apostle had "taught publicly and from house to house," "not
+shunning to declare all the counsel of God" and "for three years night
+and day unceasingly with tears admonishing each single one" (Acts xx.
+18-35). To suppose these words written in irony, or in a modest
+affectation, is to credit St Paul with something like an ineptitude.
+Doubt was really possible as to whether all his readers had heard of
+Christ aright, and understood the obligations of their faith. Supposing,
+as we have done, that the epistle was designed for the Christians of the
+province of Asia generally, this qualification is natural and
+intelligible.
+
+There are several considerations which help to account for it. When St
+Paul first arrived at Ephesus, eight years before this time, he "found
+certain disciples" there who had been "baptized into John's baptism,"
+but had not "received the Holy Spirit" nor even heard of such a thing
+(Acts xix. 1-7). Apollos formerly belonged to this company, having
+preached and "taught carefully the things about Jesus," while he "knew
+only the baptism of John" (Acts xviii. 25). One very much desires to
+know more about this Church of the Baptist's disciples in Asia Minor.
+Its existence so far away from Palestine testifies to the power of
+John's ministry and the deep impression that his witness to the
+Messiahship of Jesus made on his disciples. The ready reception of
+Paul's fuller gospel by this little circle indicates that their
+knowledge of Jesus Christ erred only by defect; they had received it
+from Judaea by a source dating earlier than the day of Pentecost. The
+partial knowledge of Jesus current for so long at Ephesus, may have
+extended to other parts of the province, where St Paul had not been able
+to correct it as he had done in the metropolis.
+
+Judaistic Christians, such as those who at Rome "preached Christ of envy
+and strife," were also disseminating an imperfect Christian doctrine.
+They limited the rights of uncircumcised believers; they misrepresented
+the Gentile apostle and undermined his influence. A third and still more
+lamentable cause of uncertainty in regard to the Christian belief of
+Asian Churches, was introduced by the rise of Gnosticizing error in this
+quarter. Some who read the epistle had, it might be, received their
+first knowledge of Christ through channels tainted with error similar to
+that which was propagated at Colossae. With the seed of the kingdom the
+enemy was mingling vicious tares. The apostle has reason to fear that
+there were those within the wide circle to which his letter is
+addressed, who had in one form or other heard a different gospel and a
+Christ other than the true Christ of apostolic teaching.
+
+Where does he find the test and touchstone of the true Christian
+doctrine?--In the historical Jesus: "as there is truth _in Jesus_." Not
+often, nor without distinct meaning, does St Paul use the birth-name of
+the Saviour by itself. Where he does, it is most significant. He has in
+mind the facts of the gospel history; he speaks of "the Jesus"[122] of
+Nazareth and Calvary. The Christ whom St Paul feared that some of his
+readers might have heard of was not the veritable _Jesus_ Christ, but a
+shadowy and notional Christ, lost amongst the crowd of angels, such as
+was now being taught to the Colossians. This Christ was neither the
+image of God, nor the true Son of man. He supplied no sufficient
+redemption from sin, no ideal of character, no sure guidance and
+authority to direct the daily walk. Those who followed such a Christ
+would fall back unchecked into Gentile vice. Instead of the light of
+life shining in the character and words of Jesus, they must resort to
+"the doctrines and commandments of men" (Col. ii. 8-23).
+
+Amongst the Gnostics of the second century there was held a distinction
+between the human (fleshly and imperfect) _Jesus_ and the Divine
+_Christ_, who were regarded as distinct beings, united to each other
+from the time of the baptism of Jesus to His death. The critics who
+assert the late and non-Pauline authorship of the epistle, assert that
+this peculiar doctrine is aimed at in the words before us, and that the
+identification of Christ with Jesus has a polemical reference to this
+advanced Gnostic error. The verses that follow show that the writer has
+a different and entirely practical aim. The apostle points us to our
+true ideal, to "the Christ" of all revelation manifest in "the Jesus" of
+the gospel. Here we see "the new man created after God," whose nature we
+must embody in ourselves. The counteractive of a false spiritualism is
+found in the incarnate life of the Son of God. The dualism which
+separated God from the world and man's spirit from his flesh, had its
+refutation in "the Jesus" of Paul's preaching, whom we see in the Four
+Gospels. Those who persisted in the attempt to graft the dualistic
+theosophy upon the Christian faith, were in the end compelled to divide
+and destroy the Christ Himself. They broke up into _Jesus and Christ_
+the unity of His incarnate Person.
+
+It is an entire mistake to suppose that the apostle Paul was indifferent
+to the historical tradition of Jesus; that the Christ he taught was a
+product of his personal inspiration, of his inward experience and
+theological reflection. This preaching of an abstract Christ, distinct
+from the actual Jesus, is the very thing that he condemns. Although his
+explicit references in the epistles to the teaching of Jesus and the
+events of His earthly life are not numerous, they are such as to prove
+that the Churches St Paul taught were well instructed in that history.
+From the beginning the apostle made himself well acquainted with the
+facts concerning Jesus, and had become possessor of all that the earlier
+witnesses could relate. His conception of the Lord Jesus Christ is
+living and realistic in the highest degree. Its germ was in the visible
+appearance of the glorified Jesus to himself on the Damascus road; but
+that expanding germ struck down its roots into the rich soil of the
+Church's recollections of the incarnate Redeemer as He lived and taught
+and laboured, as He died and rose again amongst men. Paul's Christ was
+the Jesus of Peter and of John and of our own Evangelists; there was no
+other. He warns the Church against all unhistorical, subjective Christs,
+the product of human speculation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Asian Christians who held a true faith, had received Jesus as the
+Christ. So accepting Him, they accepted a fixed standard and ideal of
+life for themselves. With Jesus Christ evidently set forth before their
+eyes, let them look back upon their past life; let them contrast what
+they had been with what they are to be. Let them consider what things
+they must "put off" and what "put on," so that they may "be found in
+Him."
+
+Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan world; keenly its
+light smote on that gross darkness. There stood the Word made
+flesh--purity immaculate, love in its very self--shaped forth in no
+dream of fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man Christ Jesus,
+born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate,--truth expressed
+
+            "In loveliness of perfect deeds,
+    More strong than all poetic thought."
+
+And this life of Jesus, living in those who loved Him (2 Cor. iv. 11),
+ended not when He passed from earth; it passed from land to land,
+speaking many tongues, raising up new witnesses at every step as it
+moved along. It was not a new system, a new creed, but _new men_ that it
+gave the world in Christ's disciples, men redeemed from all iniquity,
+noble and pure as sons of God. It was the sight of Jesus, and of men
+like Jesus, that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and hardened
+in its sin. In vain she summoned the gates of death to silence the
+witnesses of Jesus. At last
+
+    "She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword,
+      And laid her sceptre down;
+    Her stately purple she abhorred,
+      And her imperial crown.
+    She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,
+      Her artists could not please;
+    She tore her books, she shut her courts,
+      She fled her palaces;
+    Lust of the eye and pride of life--
+      She left it all behind,
+    And hurried, torn with inward strife,
+      The wilderness to find" (_Obermann once more_).
+
+The Galilean conquered! The new man was destined to convict and destroy
+the old. "God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for
+sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. viii. 3). When Jesus lived, died,
+and rose again, an inconceivable revolution in human affairs had been
+effected. The cross was planted on the territory of the god of this
+world; its victory was inevitable. The "grain of wheat" fell into the
+ground to die: there might be still a long, cruel winter; many a storm
+and blight would delay its growth; but the harvest was secure. Jesus
+Christ was the type and the head of a new moral order, destined to
+control the universe.
+
+To see the new and the old man side by side was enough to assure one
+that the future lay with Jesus. Corruption and decrepitude marked every
+feature of Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice,--"wasting away in
+its deceitful lusts."
+
+St Paul had before his eyes, as he wrote, a conspicuous type of the
+decaying Pagan order. He had appealed as a citizen of the empire to
+_Caesar_ as his judge. He was in durance as _Nero's_ prisoner, and was
+acquainted with the life of the palace (Phil. i. 13). Never, perhaps,
+has any line of rulers dominated mankind so absolutely or held in their
+single hand so completely the resources of the world as did the Caesars
+of St Paul's time. Their name has ever since served to mark the summit
+of autocratic power. It was, surely, the vision of Tiberius sitting at
+Rome that Jesus saw in the wilderness, when "the devil showed Him all
+the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and said, All this hath been
+delivered to me, and to whomsoever I will I give it." The Emperor was
+the topstone of the splendid edifice of Pagan civilization, that had
+been rearing for so many ages. And Nero was the final product and
+paragon of the Caesarean house!
+
+At this epoch, writes M. Renan,[123] "_Nero and Jesus_, Christ and
+Antichrist, stand opposed, confronting each other, if I may dare to say
+so, like heaven and hell.... In face of Jesus there presents itself a
+monster, who is the ideal of evil as Jesus of goodness.... Nero's was an
+evil nature, hypocritical, vain, frivolous, prodigiously given to
+declamation and display; a blending of false intellect, profound
+wickedness, cruel and artful egotism carried to an incredible degree of
+refinement and subtlety.... He is a monster who has no second in
+history, and whose equal we can only find in the pathological annals of
+the scaffold.... The school of crime in which he had grown up, the
+execrable influence of his mother, the stroke of parricide forced upon
+him, as one might say, by this abominable woman, by which he had entered
+on the stage of public life, made the world take to his eyes the form of
+a horrible comedy, with himself for the chief actor in it. At the moment
+we have now reached [when St Paul entered Rome], Nero had detached
+himself completely from the philosophers who had been his tutors. He had
+killed nearly all his relations. He had made the most shameful follies
+the common fashion. A large part of Roman society, following his
+example, had descended to the lowest level of debasement. The cruelty of
+the ancient world had reached its consummation.... The world had touched
+the bottom of the abyss of evil; it could only reascend."
+
+Such was the man who occupied at this time the summit of human power and
+glory,--the man who lighted the torch of Christian martyrdom and at
+whose sentence St Paul's head was destined to fall, the Wild Beast of
+John's awful vision. Nero of Rome, the son of Agrippina, embodied the
+triumph of Satan as the god of this world. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
+Mary, reigned only in a few loving and pure hearts. Future history, as
+the scroll of the Apocalypse unfolded it, was to be the battle-field of
+these confronting powers, the war of Christ with Antichrist.
+
+Could it be doubtful, to any one who had measured the rival forces, on
+which side victory must fall? St Paul pronounces the fate of the whole
+kingdom of evil in this world, when he declares that "the old man" is
+"perishing, according to the lusts of deceit." It is an application of
+the maxim he gave us in Galatians vi. 8: "He that soweth to his own
+flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." In its mad sensuality and
+prodigal lusts, the vile Roman world he saw around him was speeding to
+its ruin. That ruin was delayed; there were moral forces left in the
+fabric of the Roman State, which in the following generations
+re-asserted themselves and held back for a time the tide of disaster;
+but in the end Rome fell, as the ancient world-empires of the East had
+fallen, through her own corruption, and by "the wrath" which is
+"revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
+men." For the solitary man, for the household, for the body politic and
+the family of nations the rule is the same. "Sin, when it is finished,
+bringeth forth death."
+
+The passions which carry men and nations to their ruin are "lusts _of
+deceit_." The tempter is the liar. Sin is an enormous fraud. "You shall
+not die," said the serpent in the garden; "Your eyes will be opened, and
+you will be as God!" So forbidden desire was born, and "the woman _being
+deceived_ fell into transgression."
+
+    "So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud
+    Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree
+    Of prohibition, root of all our woe."
+
+By its baits of sensuous pleasure, and still more by its show of freedom
+and power to stir our pride, sin cheats us of our manhood; it sows life
+with misery, and makes us self-despising slaves. It knows how to use
+God's law as an incitement to transgression, turning the very
+prohibition into a challenge to our bold desires. "Sin taking occasion
+by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me." Over the pit of
+destruction play the same dancing lights that have lured countless
+generations,--the glitter of gold; the purple robe and jewelled coronet;
+the wine moving in the cup; fair, soft faces lit with laughter. The
+straying foot and hot desires give chase, till the inevitable moment
+comes when the treacherous soil yields, and the pursuer plunges beyond
+escape into sin's reeking gulfs. Then the illusion is over. The gay
+faces grow foul; the glittering prize proves dust; the sweet fruit turns
+to ashes; the cup of pleasure burns with the fire of hell. And the
+sinner knows at last that his greed has cheated him, that he is as
+foolish as he is wicked.
+
+Let us remember that there is but one way of escape from the
+all-encompassing deceit of sin. It is in "learning Christ." Not in
+learning _about_ Christ, but in learning _Him_. It is a common artifice
+of the great deceit to "wash the outside of cup and platter." The old
+man is improved and civilized; he is baptized in infancy and called a
+Christian. He puts off many of his old ways, he dresses himself in a
+decorous garb and style; and so deceives himself into thinking that he
+is new, while his heart is unchanged. He may turn ascetic, and deny this
+or that _to_ himself; and yet never deny _himself_. He observes
+religious forms and makes charitable benefactions, as though he would
+compound with God for his unforsaken sin. But all this is only a
+plausible and hateful manifestation of the lusts of deceit. To learn the
+Christ, is to learn the way of the cross. "Take my yoke upon you, and
+learn of me," He bids us; "for I am meek and lowly in heart." Till we
+have done this, we are not even at the beginning of our lesson.
+
+From the perishing old man the apostle turns, in verses 23, 24, to the
+new. These two clauses differ in their form of expression more than the
+English rendering indicates.[124] When he writes, "that ye be renewed in
+the spirit of your mind," it is a _continual rejuvenation_ that he
+describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that
+of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the "new man" to be
+"put on" (ver. 24) is of a _new kind and order_; and in this instance
+the verb is of the aorist tense signifying an event, not a continuous
+act. The new man is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted,
+when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. We
+"put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14), who covers and absorbs
+the old self, even as those who await in the flesh His second advent
+will "put on the house from heaven," when "the mortal" in them will be
+"swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. v. 2-4). Thus two distinct conceptions of
+the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one
+hand, of a quickening, constantly renewed, in the springs of our
+individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption
+of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the Divine character
+and form of its being.
+
+Borne on the stream of his evil passions, we saw "the old man" in his
+"former manner of life," hastening to the gulf of ruin. For the man
+renewed in Christ the stream of life flows steadily in the opposite
+direction, and with a swelling tide moves upward to God. His knowledge
+and love are always growing in depth, in refinement, in energy and joy.
+Thus it was with the apostle in his advancing age. The fresh impulses of
+the Holy Spirit, the unfolding to his spirit of the mystery of God, the
+fellowship of Christian brethren and the interests of the work of the
+Church renewed Paul's youth like the eagle's. If in years and toil he is
+old, his soul is full of ardour, his intellect keen and eager; the
+"outward man decays, but the inward man is renewed day by day."
+
+This new nature had a new birth. The soul reanimating itself perpetually
+from the fresh springs that are in God, had in God the beginning of its
+renovated life. We have not to create or fashion for ourselves the
+perfect life, but to _adopt_ it,--to realize the Christian ideal (ver.
+24). We are called to put on the new type of manhood as completely as we
+renounce the old (ver. 22). The new man is there before our eyes,
+manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom we live henceforth.
+When we "learn the Christ," when we have become His true disciples, we
+"put on" His nature and "walk in Him." The inward reception of His
+Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our
+calling amongst men.
+
+Now, the character of Jesus is human nature as God first formed it. It
+existed in His thoughts from eternity. If it be asked whether St Paul
+refers, in verse 24, to the creation of Adam in God's likeness, or to
+the image of God appearing in Jesus Christ, or to the Christian nature
+formed in the regenerate, we should say that, to the apostle's mind, the
+first and last of these creations are merged in the second. The Son of
+God's love is His primeval image. The race of Adam was created in Christ
+(Col. i. 15, 16). The first model of that image, in the natural father
+of mankind, was marred by sin and has become "the old man" corrupt and
+perishing. The new pattern replacing this broken type is the original
+ideal, displayed "in the likeness of sinful flesh"--wearing no longer
+the charm of childish innocence, but the glory of sin vanquished and
+sacrifice endured--in the Son of God made perfect through suffering.
+Through all there has been only one image of God, one ideal humanity.
+The Adam of Paradise was, within his limits, what the Image of God had
+been in perfectness from eternity. And Jesus in His human personality
+represented, under the changed circumstances brought about by sin, what
+Adam might have grown to be as a complete and disciplined man.
+
+The qualities which the apostle insists upon in the new man are two:
+"_righteousness_ and _holiness_ [or _piety_] of the truth." This is the
+Old Testament conception of a perfect life, whose realization the devout
+Zacharias anticipates when he sings how God has "shown mercy to our
+fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, ... that we being
+delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in
+holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life."
+Enchanting vision, still to be fulfilled! "Righteousness" is the sum of
+all that should be in a man's relations towards God's law; "holiness" is
+a right disposition and bearing towards God Himself. This is not St
+Paul's ordinary word for holiness (_sanctification_, _sanctity_), which
+he puts so often at the head of his letters, addressing his readers as
+"saints" in Christ Jesus. That other term designates Christian believers
+as devoted persons, claimed by God for His own;[125] it signifies
+holiness as a calling. The word of our text denotes specifically the
+holiness of temper and behaviour--"that becometh saints." The two words
+differ very much as _devotedness_ from _devoutness_.[126]
+
+A religious temper, a reverent mind marks the true child of grace. His
+soul is full of the loving fear of God. In the new humanity, in the type
+of man that will prevail in the latter days when the truth as in Jesus
+has been learnt by mankind, justice and piety will hold a balanced sway.
+The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic: he will
+be devout. He will not be narrow and self-seeking; he will not be
+pharisaic and pretentious, practising the world's ethics with the
+Christian's creed: he will be upright and generous, manly and godlike.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[118] Quid si post =houtos= distinctionem ascribas? _Vos autem non ita_
+(subaudi _facere convenit_), _qui didicistis_, etc.
+
+[119] Comp. Numb. xii. 7; Ps. i. 4; Luke xxii. 26, for this Hebraistic
+turn of expression.
+
+[120] Comp. Phil. iii. 2, 18; Titus i. 16.
+
+[121] See pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[122] =Esti aletheia en to Iesou.= The article with the proper name is
+most significant. It points to the definite image of Jesus, in His
+actual person, that was made familiar by the preaching of Paul and the
+other apostles.
+
+[123] _L'Antechrist_, pp. i. ii. 1, 2. This is a powerful and impressive
+work, of whose value those who know only the _Vie de Jesus_ can have
+little conception. Renan's faults are many and deplorable; but he is a
+writer of genius and of candour. His rationalism teems with precious
+inconsistencies. One hears in him always the Church bells ringing under
+the sea, the witness of a faith buried in the heart and never silenced,
+to which he confesses touchingly in the Preface to his _Souvenirs_.
+
+[124] =ananeousthai de to pneumati tou noos hymon, kai endysasthai to
+kainon anthropon, to kata Theo ktisthenta.=
+
+[125] Comp. pp. 29, 30.
+
+[126] It is important to distinguish the Greek adjectives =hagios= and
+=hosios=, with their derivatives. See Cremer's _N. T. Lexicon_ on these
+words, and Trench's _N. T. Synonyms_, Sec. lxxxviii. Of the latter word, 1
+Thess. ii. 10; 1 Tim. i. 9, ii. 8; 2 Tim. iii. 3; Tit. i. 8 are the only
+examples in St Paul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+_DISCARDED VICES._
+
+    "Wherefore, having put away falsehood, 'speak ye truth each one with
+    his neighbour': for we are members one of another.
+
+    "'Be ye angry, and sin not': let not the sun go down upon your
+    provocation: neither give place to the devil.
+
+    "Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour,
+    working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have
+    whereof to give to him that hath need.
+
+    "Let no worthless speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is
+    good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them
+    that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were
+    sealed unto the day of redemption.
+
+    "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing
+    be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to
+    another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in
+    Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved
+    children; and walk in love, even as the Christ also loved you, and
+    gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an
+    odour of a sweet smell.
+
+    "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not
+    even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor
+    foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not befitting: but rather
+    giving of thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator,
+    nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any
+    inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you
+    with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of
+    God upon the sons of disobedience."--EPH. iv. 25--v. 6.
+
+
+The transformation described in the last paragraph (vv. 17-24) has now
+to be carried into detail. The vices of the old heathen self must be
+each of them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new man in
+Christ Jesus.
+
+The peculiarity of the instructions given by the apostle for this
+purpose does not lie in the virtues enjoined, but in the light in which
+they are set and the motives by which they are inculcated. The common
+conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness; they were
+denounced with eloquence by heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New
+Testament differed in many respects from the best moral philosophy: in
+its direct appeal to the conscience, in its vigour and decision, in the
+clearness with which it traced our maladies to the heart's alienation
+from God; but most of all, in the remedy which it applied, the new
+principle of faith in Christ. The surgeon's knife lays bare the root of
+the disease; and the physician's hand pours in the healing balm.
+
+Let us observe at the outset that St Paul deals with the actual and
+pressing temptations of his readers. He recalls what they had been, and
+forbids them to be such again. The associations and habits of former
+life, the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile society,
+and added to all this, as we discover from chapter v. 6, the persuasions
+of the sophistical teachers now beginning to infest the Church, tended
+to draw the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break down the
+moral distinctions that separated them from the pagan world.
+
+Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile life, the following
+are here distinguished: _lying_, _theft_, _anger_, _idle speech_,
+_malice_, _impurity_, _greed_. These may be reduced to sins of temper,
+of word, and of act. Let us discuss them in the order in which they are
+brought before us.
+
+1. "The falsehood"[127] of verse 25 is the antithesis of "the truth"
+from which righteousness and holiness spring (ver. 24). In accepting the
+one, Paul's Gentile readers "had put off" the other. When these heathen
+converts became Christians, they renounced the great lie of idolatry,
+the system of error and deceit on which their lives were built. They
+have passed from the realm of illusion to that of truth. "Now," the
+apostle says, "let your daily speech accord with this fact: you have
+bidden farewell to falsehood; _speak_ truth each with his neighbour."
+The true religion breeds truthful men; a sound faith makes an honest
+tongue. Hence there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing more
+shocking than the conduct of those who defend what they call "the truth"
+by disingenuous arts, by tricks of rhetoric and the shifts of an
+unscrupulous partizanship. "Will you speak unrighteously for God, and
+talk deceitfully for Him?" _As Christ's truth is in me_ cries the
+apostle, when he would give the strongest possible assurance of the fact
+he wishes to assert.[128] The social conventions and make-believes, the
+countless simulations and dissimulations by which the game of life is
+carried on belong to the old man with his lusts of deceit, to the
+universal lie that runs through all ungodliness and unrighteousness,
+which is in the last analysis the denial of God.
+
+St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16, in which the
+prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that
+they should "speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and
+the judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you," he
+continues, "imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no
+false oath. For all these things do I hate, saith the Lord." Such is the
+law of the New Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the
+intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command
+and adds the reason, "For we are _members one of another_." But the word
+_neighbour_, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited
+import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When
+the apostle bids his converts "Follow what is good towards one another,
+and towards all" (1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly
+obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.
+
+Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces
+all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to
+his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should
+conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other.
+Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his
+neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all
+intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect
+truthfulness is scarcely possible. "Self-respect will never destroy
+self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible
+to the temptations of falsehood" (Harless).
+
+2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old
+Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. "_Be ye angry_, and sin
+not": so the words of Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the
+margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, "Stand in awe, and
+sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." The
+apostle's further injunction, that anger should be stayed before
+nightfall, accords with the Psalmist's words; the calming effect of the
+night's quiet the apostle anticipates in the approach of evening. As the
+day's heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should
+die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at
+evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St
+Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: "If at any time
+they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the
+sun set they would take each other's hands and embracing make up their
+quarrel." If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be
+delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those many facts of
+Gentile life which "show the work of the law written in their hearts"
+(Rom. ii. 15). The passion which outlives the day, on which the angry
+man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his
+breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.
+
+There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood
+over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a "place given" to the
+tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the
+soul, from which he may shoot his "fire-tipped darts" (vi. 16). Let us
+dismiss with each day the day's vexations, commending as evening falls
+our cares and griefs to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for
+ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness and a
+better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience
+and charity, to bring into the world's turmoil a calm and generous
+wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall
+be called sons of God.
+
+Still the apostle says: "_Be angry_, and sin not." He does not condemn
+anger in itself, nor wholly forbid it a place within the breast of the
+saint. Wrath is a glorious attribute of God,--perilous, indeed, for the
+best of men; but he who cannot be angry has no strength for good. The
+apostle knew this holy passion, the flame of Jehovah that burns
+unceasingly against the false and foul and cruel. But he knew its
+dangers--how easily an ardent soul kindled to exasperation forgets the
+bounds of wisdom and love; how strong and jealous a curb the temper
+needs, lest just indignation turn to sin, and Satan gain over us a
+double advantage, first by the wicked provocation and then by the
+uncontrolled resentment it excites.
+
+3. From anger we pass to _theft_.
+
+The eighth commandment is put here in a form indicating that some of the
+apostle's readers had been habitual sinners against it. Literally his
+words read: "Let him _that steals_ play the thief no more." The Greek
+present participle does not, however, necessarily imply a pursuit now
+going on, but an habitual or characteristic pursuit, that by which the
+agent was known and designated: "Let the thief no longer steal!" From
+the lowest dregs of the Greek cities--from its profligate and criminal
+classes--the gospel had drawn its converts (comp. 1 Cor. vi. 9-11). In
+the Ephesian Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity had
+to make of them honest workmen.
+
+The words of verse 28, addressed to a company of thieves, vividly show
+the transforming effect of the gospel of Christ: "Let him toil, working
+with his hands what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him
+that is in need." The apostle brings the loftiest motives to bear
+instantly upon the basest natures, and is sure of a response. He makes
+no appeal to self-interest, he says nothing of the fear of punishment,
+nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for their fellows, the
+spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity is to set those pilfering and
+violent hands to unaccustomed toil. The appeal was as wise as it was
+bold. Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded. Preach to
+them thrift and self-improvement, show them the pleasures of an ordered
+home and the advantages of respectability, they will still feel that
+their own way of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine
+spark of charity be kindled in their breast--let the man have love and
+pity and not self to work for, and he is a new creature. His indolence
+is conquered; his meanness changed to the noble sense of a common
+manhood. Love never faileth.
+
+4. We have passed from speech to temper, and from temper to act; in the
+warning of verses 29, 30 we come back to speech again.
+
+We doubt whether _corrupt talk_ is here intended. That comes in for
+condemnation in verses 2 and 3 of the next chapter. The Greek adjective
+is the same that is used of the "_worthless_ fruit" of the "_worthless_
+[_good-for-nothing_] tree" in Matthew xii. 33; and again of the "_bad_
+fish" of Matthew xiii. 48, which the fisherman throws away not because
+they are corrupt or offensive, but because they are useless for food. So
+it is against _inane_, inept and useless talk that St Paul sets his
+face. Jesus said that "for _every idle word_ men must give account to
+God" (Matt. xii. 36).
+
+Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of the gift of speech.
+"By thy words," He said to His disciples, "thou shalt be justified, and
+by thy words condemned." The possession of a human tongue is an immense
+responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. (With the
+tongue we should include the pen, as being the tongue's deputy.) Who
+shall say how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the
+irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of spirit, the
+destruction of Christian fellowship that is due to thoughtless speech
+and writing? The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words, he puts
+an embargo on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough to
+say: "My chatter does nobody harm; if there is no good in it, there is
+no evil." He replies: "If you cannot speak to profit, be silent till you
+can."
+
+Not that St Paul requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious.
+Many a true word is spoken in jest; and "grace" may be "given to the
+hearers" by words clothed in the grace of a genial fancy and playful
+wit, as well as in the direct enforcement of solemn themes. It is the
+mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous--spoken from the pulpit or the
+easy chair--the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless,
+graceless, unprofitable utterance that St Paul desires to arrest: "let
+it not proceed out of your mouth." Such speech must not "escape the
+fence of the teeth." It is an oppression to every serious listener; it
+is an injury to the utterer himself. Above all, it "grieves the Holy
+Spirit."
+
+The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of God's possession in
+us;[129] it is the assurance to ourselves that we are His sons in
+Christ and heirs of life eternal. From the day it is affixed to the
+heart, this seal need never be broken nor the witness withheld, "until
+the day of redemption." Dwelling within the Church as the guard of its
+communion, and loving us with the love of God, the Spirit of grace is
+hurt and grieved by foolish words coming from lips that He has
+sanctified. As Israel in its ancient rebellions "vexed His Holy Spirit"
+(Isai. lxiii. 10), so do those who burden Christian fellowship and who
+enervate their own inward life by speech without worth and purpose. As
+His fire is quenched by distrust (1 Thess. v. 19), so His love is vexed
+by folly. His witness grows faint and silent; the soul loses its joyous
+assurance, its sense of the peace of God. When our inward life thus
+declines, the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless speech. Or
+we have listened willingly and without reproof to "words that may do
+hurt," words of foolish jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and
+backbiting. The Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated
+temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is purged and the
+wilful tongue bends to the yoke of Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy
+Spirit, that He be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray
+evermore: "Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my
+lips."
+
+5. In his previous reproofs the apostle has glanced in various ways at
+love as the remedy of our moral disorders and defects. Falsehood, anger,
+theft, misuse of the tongue involve disregard of the welfare of others;
+if they do not spring from positive ill-will, they foster and aggravate
+it. It is now time to deal directly with this evil that assumes so many
+forms, the most various of our sins and companion to every other: "Let
+all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put
+away from you, with all malice."
+
+The last of these terms is the most typical. _Malice_ is badness of
+disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any
+special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath.
+_Bitterness_ is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the
+exasperating object. _Wrath_ and _anger_ are synonymous, the former
+being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the
+settled indignation of the aggrieved soul: this passion was put under
+restraint already in verses 26, 27. _Clamour_ and _railing_ give audible
+expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud
+self-assertion of the angry man, who will make every one hear his
+grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his
+enemy's camp, and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult.
+
+These sins of speech were rife in heathen society; and there were some
+amongst Paul's readers, doubtless, who found it hard to forgo their
+indulgence. Especially difficult was this when Christians suffered all
+manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and former friends; it cost
+a severe struggle to be silent and "keep the mouth as with a bridle"
+under fierce and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and
+railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing,--this was one of the
+lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.
+
+_Kindness_ in act, _tenderheartedness_ of feeling are to take the place
+of malice with its brood of bitter passions. Where injury used to be met
+with reviling and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the new
+life will be found "forgiving one another, even as God in Christ
+forgave" them. Here we touch the spring of Christian virtue, the master
+motive in the apostle's theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is
+the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology. The sacrifice of
+Calvary, while it is the ground of our salvation, supplies the standard
+and incentive of moral attainment. It makes life _an imitation of God_.
+
+The commencement of the new chapter at this point makes an unfortunate
+division; for its first two verses are in close consecution with the
+last verse of chapter iv. By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by
+readiness to forgive, God's "beloved children" will "show themselves
+imitators" of their Father. The apostle echoes the saying of his Master,
+in which the law of His kingdom was laid down: "Love your enemies, and
+do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and
+you shall be called children of the Highest: for He is kind to the
+thankless and evil. Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful"
+(Luke vi. 35, 36). Before the cross of Jesus was set up, men could not
+know how much God loved the world and how far He was ready to go in the
+way of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love displayed in
+the Father's daily providence. He bids us imitate Him who makes His sun
+shine and His rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the
+good. To the insight of Jesus, nature's impartial bounties in which
+unbelief sees only moral indifference, spoke of God's compassion; they
+proceed from the same love that gave His Son to taste death for every
+man.
+
+In chapter iv. 32-v. 2 the Father's love and the Son's self-sacrifice
+are spoken of in terms precisely parallel. They are altogether one in
+quality. Christ does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father to
+love His children; it is the Divine compassion in Christ that dictates
+and carries into effect the sacrifice. At the same time it was "an
+_offering_ and a _sacrifice_ to God." God is love; but love is not
+everything in God. Justice is also Divine, and absolute in its own
+realm. Law can no more forgo its rights than love forget its
+compassions. Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to
+mark out its path of obedience, or it remains an effusive, ineffectual
+sentiment, helpless to bless and save. Christ's feet followed the stern
+and strait path of self-devotion; "He humbled Himself and became
+obedient," He was "born under law." And the law of God imposing death as
+the penalty for sin, which shaped Christ's sacrifice, made it acceptable
+to God. Thus it was "an odour of a sweet smell."
+
+Hence the love which follows Christ's example, is love wedded with duty.
+It finds in an ordered devotion to the good of men the means to fulfil
+the all-holy Will and to present in turn its "offering to God." Such
+love will be above the mere pleasing of men, above sentimentalism and
+indulgence; it will aim higher than secular ideals and temporal
+contentment. It regards men in their kinship to God and obligation to
+His law, and seeks to make them worthy of their calling. All human
+duties, for those who love God, are subordinate to this; all commands
+are summed up in one: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The
+apostle pronounced the first and last word of his teaching when he said:
+_Walk in love, as the Christ also loved us._
+
+6. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile world of that time with
+infamy,--its _uncleanness_.
+
+St Paul has stigmatized this already in the burning words of verse 19.
+There we saw this vice in its intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set
+in the light of Christ's love on the one hand (ver. 2), and of the final
+judgement on the other (vv. 5, 6). Thus it is banished from the
+Christian fellowship in every form--even in the lightest, where it
+glances from the lips in words of jest: "Fornication and all
+uncleanness, let it not even be named among you." Along with
+"filthiness, foolish talk and jesting" are to be heard no more. Passing
+from verse 2 to verse 3 by the contrastive _But_, one feels how
+repugnant are these things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the
+sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens our life on earth;
+its grace drives wanton and selfish passions from the heart, and
+destroys the pestilence of evil in the social atmosphere. Lust cannot
+breathe in the sight of the cross.
+
+The "good-for-nothing speech" of chapter iv. 29 comes up once more for
+condemnation in the _foolish speech_ and _jesting_ of this passage. The
+former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both,
+under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness.
+Loose speech easily becomes low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence,
+finds a tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations of
+life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and jests that
+desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid open grossness.
+
+St Paul's word for "jesting" is one of the singular terms of this
+epistle. By etymology it denotes a _well-turned_ style of expression,
+the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and
+aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the
+polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word
+describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and
+persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated,--the
+wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. "The very profligate old
+man in the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus (iii. I. 42-52), who prides
+himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and
+refinement [_cavillator lepidus_, _facetus_], is exactly the
+=eutrapelos=. And keeping in mind that =eutrapelia=, being only once
+expressly and by name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians,
+it is not a little notable to find him urging that all this was to be
+expected from him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:--
+
+    Post _Ephesi sum natus_; non enim in Apulia, non Animulae."[130]
+
+In place of senseless prating and wanton jests--things unbefitting to a
+rational creature, much more to a saint--the Asian Greeks are to find in
+_thanksgiving_ employment for their ready tongue. St Paul's rule is not
+one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue that disported itself in
+unhallowed and frivolous utterance, may be turned into a precious
+instrument for God's service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the
+jester's lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise which once
+poured out dishonour to its Maker and shame to His image in man.
+
+7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning
+(iv. 19), uncleanness is joined with _covetousness_, or _greed_.
+
+This, too, is "not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints."
+_Money! property!_ these are the words dearest and most familiar in the
+mouths of a large class of men of the world, the only themes on which
+they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from
+the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the
+trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even
+into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation,
+it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is
+becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an "idolater" of
+
+    "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+    From heaven."
+
+The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator and the
+unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the
+god of this world exclude themselves from their "inheritance in the
+kingdom of Christ and of God."
+
+A serious warning this for all who handle the world's wealth. They have
+a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in
+their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its
+slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,--the passion for
+accumulation, the lust of property? None are found more dead to the
+claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ
+and God, none more "closely wrapped" within their "sensual fleece" than
+rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen
+and won his kingdom. He "receives in his lifetime his good things";
+afterwards he must look for "torments."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[127] =Dio apothemenoi to pseudos.= Despite the commentators, we must
+hold to it that _the lie_, _the falsehood_ is objective and concrete;
+not _lying_, or _falsehood_ as a subjective act, habit, or
+quality,--which would have been rather =pseudologia= (comp. =morologia=,
+v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv. 2, =pseudologon=), or =to pseudes=. So in Rom. i.
+25, =to pseudos= is "the [one great] lie" which runs through all
+idolatry; and in 2 Thess. ii. 11 it denotes "the lie" which Antichrist
+imposes on those ready to believe it,--viz., that he himself is God.
+Accordingly, we take the participle =apothemenoi= to signify not what
+the readers are to do, but what they _had done_ in renouncing
+heathenism. The apostle requires consistency: "Since you are now of the
+truth, be truth-speaking men."
+
+[128] 2 Cor. i. 18, 19, xi. 10.
+
+[129] See ch. i. 13, 14, and 18 (last clause).
+
+[130] Trench: _N. T. Synonyms_, Sec. xxxiv.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+_DOCTRINE AND ETHICS._
+
+    "We are members one of another....
+
+    "Let the thief labour ... that he may have whereof to give to him
+    that hath need....
+
+    "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the
+    day of redemption....
+
+    "Forgive each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be ye
+    imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as the
+    Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a
+    sacrifice to God....
+
+    "No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an
+    idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
+    God."--EPH. iv. 25-v. 6.
+
+
+The homily that we have briefly reviewed in the last Chapter demands
+further consideration. It affords a striking and instructive example of
+St Paul's method as a teacher of morals, and makes an important
+contribution to evangelical ethics. The common vices are here prohibited
+on specifically Christian grounds. The new nature formed in Christ casts
+them off as alien and dead things; they are the sloughed skin of the old
+life, the discarded dress of the old man who was slain by the cross of
+Christ and lies buried in His grave.
+
+The apostle does not condemn these sins as being contrary to God's law:
+that is taken for granted. But the legal condemnation was ineffectual
+(Rom. viii. 3). The wrath revealed from heaven against man's
+unrighteousness had left that unrighteousness unchastened and defiant.
+The revelation of law, approved and echoed by conscience, taught man his
+guilt; it could do no more. All this St Paul assumes; he builds on the
+ground of law and its acknowledged findings.
+
+Nor does the apostle make use of the principles of philosophical ethics,
+which in their general form were familiar to him as to all educated men
+of the day. He says nothing of the rule of nature and right reason, of
+the intrinsic fitness, the harmony and beauty of virtue; nothing of
+expediency as the guide of life, of the inward contentment that comes
+from well-doing, of the wise calculation by which happiness is
+determined and the lower is subordinated to the higher good. St Paul
+nowhere discountenances motives and sanctions of this sort; he
+contravenes none of the lines of argument by which reason is brought to
+the aid of duty, and conscience vindicates itself against passion and
+false self-interest. Indeed, there are maxims in his teaching which
+remind us of each of the two great schools of ethics, and that make room
+in the Christian theory of life both for the philosophy of experience
+and that of intuition. The true theory recognizes, indeed, the
+experimental and evolutional as well as the fixed and intrinsic in
+morality, and supplies their synthesis.
+
+But it is not the apostle's business to adjust his position to that of
+Stoics and Epicureans, or to unfold a new philosophy; but to teach the
+way of the new life. His Gentile disciples had been untruthful,
+passionate in temper, covetous, licentious: the gospel which he preached
+had turned them from these sins to God; from the same gospel he draws
+the motives and convictions which are to shape their future life and to
+give to the new spirit within them its fit expression. St Paul has no
+quarrel with ethical science, much less with the inspired law of his
+fathers; but both had proved ineffectual to keep men from iniquity, or
+to redeem them fallen into it. Above them both, above all theories and
+all external rules he sets the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.
+
+The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does not lie in its
+detailed precepts. There is not one, it may be, even of the noblest
+maxims of Jesus that had not been uttered by some previous moralist.
+With the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible to collect from
+non-Christian sources--from Greek philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud,
+from Egyptian sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius--a moral
+anthology which thus sifted out of the refuse of antiquity, like
+particles of iron drawn by the magnet, may bear comparison with the
+ethics of Christianity. If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we should
+expect Him to gather into one all that is highest in the thoughts and
+aspirations of mankind. Addressing the Athenians on Mars' Hill, the
+apostle could appeal to "certain of your own poets" in support of his
+doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The noblest minds in all ages witness
+to Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be, in some sort, of His
+kindred.
+
+      "They are but broken lights of Thee;
+    And Thou, O Lord, art more than they!"
+
+It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the soul with Him
+and with the living God through Him, that forms the vital and
+constitutive factor of Christianity. Here is the secret of its moral
+efficacy. The Christ is the centre root and of the race; He is the
+image of God in which we were made. The life-blood of mankind flowed in
+Him as in its heart, and poured forth from Him as from its fountain in
+sacrifice for the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and restored
+the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand fragments; but He did much
+more than this. While He re-created in His personal character our lost
+manhood, by His death and resurrection He has gained for that ideal a
+transcendent power that seizes upon men and regenerates and transforms
+them. "With unveiled face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord,
+we are changed into the same image, [receiving the glory that we see] as
+from the Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+There is, therefore, an evangelical ethics, a Christian science of life.
+"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" has a system and method
+of its own. It has a rational solution and explanation to render for our
+moral problems. But its solution is given, as St Paul and as his Master
+loved to give it, in practice, not in theory. It teaches the art of
+living to multitudes to whom the names of ethics and moral science are
+unknown. Those who understand the method of Christ best are commonly too
+busy in its practice to theorize about it. They are physicians tending
+the sick and the dying, not professors in some school of medicine. Yet
+professors have their use, as well as practitioners. The task of
+developing a Christian science of life, of exhibiting the truth of
+revelation in its theoretical bearings and its relations to the thought
+of the age, forms a part of the practical duties of the Church and
+touches deeply the welfare of souls. For other times this work has been
+nobly accomplished by Christian thinkers. Shall we not pray the Lord of
+the harvest that He will thrust forth into this field fit labourers;
+that He will raise up men mighty through God to overthrow every high
+thing that exalts itself against His knowledge, and wise to build up to
+the level of the times the great fabric of Christian ethics and
+discipline?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There emerge in this exhortation four distinct principles, which lay at
+the basis of St Paul's views of life and conduct.
+
+I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of _the Fatherhood of God_,
+"Be imitators of God," he writes, "as beloved children." And in chapter
+iv. 24: "Put on the new man, which _was created after God_."
+
+Man's life has its law, for it has its source, in the nature of the
+Eternal. Behind our race-instincts and the laws imposed on us in the
+long struggle for existence, behind those imperatives of practical
+reason involved in the structure of our intelligence, is the presence
+and the active will of Almighty God our heavenly Father. His image we
+see in the Son of man.
+
+Here is the fountainhead of truth, from which the two great streams of
+philosophical thought upon morals have diverged. If man is the child of
+a Being absolutely good, then moral goodness belongs to the essence of
+his nature; it is discoverable in the instincts of his reason and will.
+Were not our nature warped by sin, such reasoning must have commanded
+immediate assent and led to consistent and self-evident results. Again,
+if man is the _child_ of God, the finite of the Infinite, his moral
+character must, presumably, have been in the beginning germinal rather
+than complete, needing--even apart from sin and its
+malformations--development and education, the discipline of a fatherly
+providence, inculcating the lessons and forming the habits which belong
+to his ripe manhood and full-grown stature. Intuitional morals bear
+witness to the God of creation; experimental morals to the God of
+providence and history. The Divine Fatherhood is the keystone of the
+arch in which they meet.
+
+The command to "be imitators of God" makes _personality_ the sovereign
+element in life. If consciousness is a finite and passing phenomenon, if
+God be but a name for the sum of the impersonal laws that regulate the
+universe, for the "stream of tendency" in the worlds, _Father_ and
+_love_ are meaningless terms applied to the Supreme and religion
+dissolves into an impalpable mist. Is the universe governed by personal
+will, or by impersonal force? Is reason, or is gravitation the index to
+the nature of the Absolute? This is the vital question of modern
+thought. The latter is the answer given by a large, if not a
+preponderant body of philosophical opinion in our own day,--as it was
+given, virtually, by the natural philosophers of Greece in the dawn of
+science. Man's triumphs over nature and the splendour of his discoveries
+in the physical realm bewilder his reason. The scientists, like other
+conquerors, have been intoxicated with victory. The universe, it seemed,
+was about to yield to them its last secrets; they were prepared to
+analyze the human soul and resolve the conception of God into its
+material elements. Religion and conscience, however, prove to be
+intractable subjects in the physical laboratory; they are coming out of
+the crucible unchanged and refined. We are able by this time to take a
+more sober measure of the possibilities of the scientific method, and to
+see what inductive logic and natural selection can do for us, and what
+they cannot do. We can walk in the light of the new revelation, without
+being dazzled by it. Things are less altered than we thought. The old
+boundaries reappear. The spirit resumes its place, and rules a wider
+realm than before. Reason refuses to be the victim of its own success,
+and to immolate itself for the deification of material law. "Forasmuch
+as we are God's offspring," we ought not to think, and we will not think
+that the Godhead is like to blind forces and reasonless properties of
+matter. Love, thought, will in us raise our being above the realm of the
+impersonal; and these faculties point us upward to Him from whom they
+came, the Father of the spirits of all flesh.
+
+The great tide of joy, the victorious energy which the sense of God's
+love brings into the life of a Christian, is evidence of its reality.
+The believer is a child walking in the light of his Father's
+smile--dependent, ignorant, but the object of an Almighty love. A
+thousand tokens speak to him of the Divine care; his tasks and trials
+are sweetened by the confidence that they are appointed for wise ends
+beyond his present knowledge. To another in that same house there is no
+heavenly Father, no unseen hand that guides, no gleam of a brighter and
+purer day lighting up its dull chambers. There are human companions,
+weak, erring and wearying like oneself. There is work to do, with the
+night coming swiftly; and the brave heart girds itself to duty, finding
+in the service of man its motive and employment--but, alas, with how
+poor success and how faint a hope!
+
+It is not the loss of strength for human service, nor the dying out of
+joy which unbelief entails, that is its chief calamity; but the
+unbelief itself. The sun in the soul's heaven is put out. The personal
+relationship to the Supreme which gave dignity and worth to our
+individual being, which imparted sacredness and enduring power to all
+other ties, is destroyed. The heart is orphaned; the temple of the
+spirit desolate. The mainspring of life is broken.
+
+    "Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth!
+              Hide not Thy face from me,
+      Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit!"
+
+II. _The solidarity of mankind in Christ_ furnishes the apostle with a
+powerful lever for raising the ethical standard of his readers. The
+thought that "we are members one of another" forbids deceit. That he may
+"have whereof to give to the needy" is the purpose that provokes the
+thief to industry. The desire to "give grace" to the hearers and to
+"build them up" in truth and goodness imparts seriousness and elevation
+to social intercourse. The irritations and injuries we inflict on each
+other, with or without purpose, furnish occasion for us to "be kind one
+to another, good-hearted, _forgiving yourselves_"--for this is the
+expression the apostle uses in chapter iv. 32, and in Colossians iii.
+13. Self is so merged in the community, that in dealing censure or
+forgiveness to an offending brother the Christian man feels as though he
+were dealing with himself--as though it were the hand that forgave the
+foot for tripping, or the ear that pardoned some blunder of the eye.
+
+_Showing-grace_ is what the apostle literally says here, speaking both
+of human and Divine forgiveness.[131] In this lies the charm and power
+of true forgiveness. The forgiver after the order of grace does not
+pardon like a judge moved by magnanimity or pity for transgressors, but
+in love to his own kind and desire for their amendment. He identifies
+himself with the wrong-doer, weighs his temptation and all that drew him
+into error. Such forgiveness, while it never ignores the wrong, admits
+every qualifying circumstance and just extenuation. This is the kind of
+pardon that touches the sinner's heart; for it goes to the heart of the
+sin, isolating it from all other feelings and conditions that are not
+sin; it takes the wrong upon itself in understanding and perception; it
+puts its finger upon the aching, festering spot where the criminality
+lies and applies to that its healing balm.
+
+"Even as God in Christ forgave you." And how did God forgive? Not by a
+grand imperial decree, as of some monarch too exalted to resent the
+injuries of men or to inquire into their futile proceedings. Had such
+forgiveness been possible to Divine justice, it could have wrought in us
+no real salvation. Our forgiveness is that of God in Christ. The
+Forgiver has sat down by the prisoner's side, has felt his misery and
+the force of his temptations, and in everything but the actual sin has
+made Himself one with the sinner, even to bearing the extreme penalty of
+his guilt. In the act of making sacrifice, Jesus prayed for those that
+slew Him: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!" This
+intercession breathed the spirit of the new forgiveness. There is a real
+remission of sins, a release granted justly and upon due satisfaction;
+but it is the act of justice charged with love, of a justice as tender
+and considerate as it is strong, and which eagerly takes account of all
+that bespeaks in the offender a possibility of better things. It is a
+forgiveness that does justice to the humanity as well as the criminality
+in the sinner.
+
+To proclaim by word and deed this forgiveness of God to the sinful world
+is the vocation of the Church. And where she does thus declare it, by
+whatever means or ministry, Christ's promise to her is verified:
+"Whose-soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them." We may so
+reconcile men to ourselves, as to bring them back to God. Has some one
+done you a wrong? there is your opportunity of saving a soul from death
+and hiding a multitude of sins. Thus Christ used the great wrong we all
+did Him. It is your privilege to show the wrong-doer that you and he are
+made one by the blood of Christ.
+
+"Walk in love," St Paul says, "as the Christ also loved us and gave up
+Himself for us a sacrifice." When the apostle writes _the Christ_, he
+points us along the whole line of the revelation of the cross.[132] We
+think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness of such love as
+this. Christ's was a representative and exemplary love, with its
+forerunners and its followers all walking in one path. "The Christ loved
+_and gave_"; for love that does not give, that prompts to no effort and
+puts itself to no sacrifice, is but a luxury of the heart,--useless and
+even selfish. And He "gave up _Himself_"--the only gift that could
+suffice. The rich who bestow many gifts in furtherance of humanitarian
+and religious work and still do not bestow themselves, their sympathetic
+thought, their presence and personal aid, are withholding the best
+thing, the one thing required to make their bounties efficacious. In
+what we give and forgive, it is the accent of sympathy, the giving of
+the heart with it that adds grace to the act. "Though I dole out all my
+goods, though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it
+profiteth me nothing." We do a thousand things to serve and benefit our
+fellow-men, and yet evade the real sacrifice,--which is simply to love
+them.
+
+In studying this epistle, we have felt increasingly that the Church is
+the centre of humanity. The love born and nourished in the household of
+faith goes out into the world with a universal mission. The solidarity
+of moral interests that is realized there, embraces all the kindreds of
+the earth. The incarnation of Christ knits all flesh into one redeemed
+family. The continents and races of mankind are members one of another,
+with Jesus Christ for head. We are brothers and sisters of humanity: He
+our elder brother, and God our common Father in heaven,--His Father and
+ours.
+
+Auguste Comte writes in his _System of Positive Polity_: "The promises
+of supernatural religion appealed exclusively to man's selfish
+instincts.... The sympathetic instincts found no place in the
+theological synthesis."[133] It would be impossible to affirm anything
+more completely at variance with the truth, anything more absolutely
+opposed to the doctrine of Christ and the theological synthesis of the
+apostles. And yet it was upon this ground that the great French thinker
+renounced Christianity, proposing his new religion of humanity as a
+substitute for a selfish and effete supernaturalism! Why did he not go
+to the New Testament itself to find out what Christianity means? "To
+combine permanently concert with independence," Comte excellently says,
+"is the capital problem of society, a problem which religion alone can
+solve, by love primarily, then by faith on a basis of love."[134]
+Precisely so; and this is the solution offered by Jesus Christ. His
+self-sacrificing love is the basis on which our faith rests; and that
+faith works by love in all those who truly possess it. This is the
+evangelical theory. The morale of the Church, it is true, has fallen
+shamefully below its doctrine; but this doctrine is, after all, the one
+fruitful and progressive moral force in the world; and it is certain to
+be carried into effect.
+
+In the darkest hour of Israel's oppression and of international hate,
+one of her great prophets thus described the triumph of supernatural
+religion: "In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria,
+a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that the LORD of hosts hath
+blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work
+of my hands, and Israel my inheritance" (Isai. xix. 24, 25). This is our
+programme still.
+
+III. Another of St Paul's ruling ideas lying at the basis of Christian
+ethics, is his conception of _man's future destiny_. The apostle warns
+his readers that they "grieve not the Holy Spirit, in whom they were
+sealed till the day of redemption." He tells them that "the impure and
+the covetous have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."
+
+There is thus disclosed a world beyond the world, a life growing out of
+life, an eternal and invisible kingdom of whose possession the Spirit
+that lives in Christian men is the earnest and firstfruits. This kingdom
+is the joint inheritance of the sons of God, brethren with Christ and in
+Christ, who are conformed to His image and found worthy to "stand before
+the Son of man." Those are excluded from the inheritance, who by their
+moral nature are alien to it: "Without are dogs, sorcerers,
+whoremongers, idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie."
+This revelation has had a most powerful influence on the progress of
+ethics. It has given a momentous importance to individual conduct, a new
+grandeur to the moral issues of the present life. "Man's life," viewed
+in the light of the Christian gospel, "has duties that are alone great,
+that go up to Heaven, and down to Hell." The tangled skein is at last to
+be unravelled, the mysterious problem of mortal life will have its
+solution at the judgement-seat of Jesus Christ.
+
+It is true that the wicked flourish and spread themselves like green
+trees in the sunshine; and the covetous boast of their hearts' desire.
+To see this was the trial of ancient faith; and the good man had to
+charge himself constantly that he should not fret because of evil-doers.
+It required an heroic faith to believe in God's kingdom and
+righteousness, when the visible course of things made all against them,
+and there was no clear light beyond. God's saints had to learn first
+that God is Himself the sufficient good, and must be trusted to do
+right. But this was the faith of defence rather than of victory,--of
+endurance, not enthusiasm. In the knowledge of Christ's victory over
+death and entrance on our behalf into the heavenly world, "in hope of
+life eternal which God who cannot lie hath promised," men have fought
+against their own sins, have struggled for the right and spent
+themselves to save their fellows with a vigour and success never
+witnessed before, and in numbers far exceeding those that all other
+creeds and systems have enlisted in the holy cause of humanity.
+
+Human reason had guessed and hope had dreamed of the soul's
+immortality. Christianity gives this hope certainty, and adds to it the
+assurance of the resurrection of the body. Man's entire nature is thus
+redeemed. Chastity takes its due place amongst the virtues, and becomes
+the mark of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan life. "The body is
+not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God
+who raised up the Lord Jesus, will raise us also through His power. Your
+bodies are limbs of Christ, ... a temple of the Holy Spirit which you
+have from God.... Glorify God in your body." So St Paul exhorts the
+Christians of Corinth (1 Ep. vi.), living in the centre and shrine of
+heathen vice. This doctrine of the sanctity of the body has been the
+salvation of the family. It has saved civilization from perishing
+through sexual corruption, and is still our chief defence against this
+fearful evil.
+
+Our bodily dress, we now learn, is one with the spirit that it infolds.
+We shall lay it aside only to resume it,--transfigured, but with a form
+and impress continuous with its present being. This identical self, the
+same both in its outward and inward personality, will appear before the
+tribunal of Christ, that it may "receive the things done in the body."
+This announcement gives reasonableness and distinctness to the
+expectation of future judgement. The judgement assumes, with its solemn
+grandeur, a matter-of-fact reality, an immediate bearing on the daily
+conduct of life, which lends a powerful reinforcement to the conscience,
+while it supplies a fitting and glorious conclusion to our course as
+moral beings.
+
+IV. Finally, _the atonement of the cross_ stamps its own character and
+spirit on the entire ethics of Christianity. The Fatherhood of God, the
+unity and solidarity of mankind, the issues of eternal life or death
+awaiting us in the unseen world--all the great factors and fundamentals
+of revealed religion gather about the cross of Christ; they lend to it
+their august significance, and gain from it new import and
+impressiveness.
+
+The fact that Christ "gave Himself up for us an offering and sacrifice
+to God"--gave Himself, as it is put elsewhere, "for our sins"--throws an
+awful light upon the nature of human transgression. The blood spilt in
+the strife with our sin and shed to wash out its stain, reveals its
+foulness and malignity. All that inspired men had taught, that good men
+had believed and felt and penitent men confessed in regard to the evil
+of human sin, is more than verified by the sacrifice which the Holy One
+of God has undergone in order to put it away. It was felt that "the
+blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins," that the
+sacrifices man could offer for himself, or the creatures on his behalf,
+were ineffectual; the guilt was too real to be expiated in this fashion,
+the wound too deep to be healed by those poor appliances. But who had
+suspected that such a remedy as this was needed, and forthcoming? How
+deep the resentment of eternal Justice against the transgressions of
+men, if the blood of God's own Son alone could make propitiation! How
+rank the offence against the Divine holiness, if to purge its
+abomination the vessel containing the most sweet fragrance of His
+sinless nature must be broken! What tears of contrition, what cleansing
+fires of hate against our own sins, what scorn of their baseness, what
+stern resolves against them are awakened by the sight of the cross of
+our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+This negative side of the ethical bearing of Christ's sacrifice is
+implied in the words of the apostle in the second verse, and in the
+contrast indicated between its sweet savour and those unclean things
+whose very names it should banish from our midst (ver. 3). On its
+positive effects--the love and self-devotion it inspires, the conformity
+of our lives to its example--we have dwelt already. Let us add, however,
+that the sacrifice of Christ demands from us, above all, _devotion to
+Christ Himself_. Our first duty as Christians is to love Christ, to
+serve and follow Christ. "He died for all," says the apostle, "that the
+living should live no longer to themselves, but to Him that died for
+them and rose again." When Mary of Bethany poured on the Saviour's head
+her box of precious ointment, the Master accepted the tribute and
+approved the act; and the poor have been gainers by it a thousand times
+the pence which Judas deemed wasted on the head he was watching to
+betray. There is no conflict between the claims of Christ and those of
+philanthropy, between the needs of His worship and the needs of the
+destitute and suffering in our streets. Every new subject won to the
+kingdom of Christ is another helper won for His poor. Every act of love
+rendered to Him deepens the channel of sympathy by which relief and
+blessing come to sorrowful humanity.
+
+Let the gospel of Christ's kingdom be preached in word and deed to all
+nations, let the love of Christ be brought to bear upon the great masses
+of mankind, and the time of the world's salvation will be come. Its sin
+will be hated, forsaken, forgiven. Its social evils will be banished;
+its weapons of war turned to ploughshares and pruning hooks. Its
+scattered races and nations will be reunited in the obedience of faith,
+and formed into one Christian confederacy and commonwealth of the
+peoples, a peaceful kingdom of the Son of God's love.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[131] =Charizomenoi eautois, kathos kai ho Theos en Christo echarisato
+hymin.= So in Col. ii. 13, iii. 13; Rom. viii. 32; 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10;
+Luke vii. 42, 43.
+
+[132] Comp. pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[133] Vol. iv., pp. 22, 41 (Eng. Trans.).
+
+[134] Comte, vol. iv., p. 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+_THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT._
+
+    "Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness,
+    but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the
+    fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
+    proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship
+    with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them.
+    For the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even
+    to speak of; but all things when they are reproved are made manifest
+    by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light.
+    Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;
+      And the Christ shall shine upon thee.'"
+
+    EPH. v. 7-14.
+
+
+The contrast between the Christian and heathen way of life is now,
+finally, to be set forth under St Paul's familiar figure of _the light
+and the darkness_. He bids his Gentile readers not to be
+"joint-partakers with them"--with the sons of disobedience upon whom
+God's wrath is coming (ver. 6)--for he has hailed them already, in
+chapter iii. 6, as "joint-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
+through the gospel." "Once" indeed they shared in the lot of the
+disobedient; but for them the darkness has past, and the true light now
+shineth.
+
+In wrath or promise, in hope of life eternal or in the fearful looking
+for of judgement they, and we, must partake. This future participation
+depends upon present character. "Do not," the apostle entreats, "cast
+in your lot again with the unclean and covetous. Their ways you have
+renounced, and their doom you have exchanged for the heritage of the
+saints. Let no vain words deceive you into supposing that you may keep
+your new inheritance, and yet return to your old sins. Show yourselves
+worthy of your calling. Walk as children of the light, and you will
+possess the eternal kingdom." Each man carries with him into the next
+state of being the entail of his past life. That heritage depends on his
+own choice; yet not upon his individual will working by itself, but on
+the grace and will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted or
+rejected. He has light: he must walk in it; and he will reach the realm
+of light. Thus the apostle, in verses 7 and 8, concludes his warning
+against relapse into heathen sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 delineate _the character of the children of the light_:
+verses 11-14 set forth _their influence upon the surrounding darkness_.
+Into these two divisions the exposition of this paragraph naturally
+falls.
+
+I. "The fruit _of the light_" (not _of the Spirit_) is the true text of
+verse 9, as it stands in the older Greek copies, Versions, and Fathers.
+Calvin showed his judgement and independence in preferring this reading
+to that of the received Greek text. Similarly Bengel,[135] and most of
+the later critics. The sentence is parenthetical, and contains a
+singular and instructive figure. It is one of those sparks from the
+anvil, in which great writers not unfrequently give us their finest
+utterances,--sentences that get a peculiar point from the eagerness with
+which they are struck off in the heat and clash of thought, as the mind
+reaches forward to some thought lying beyond. The clause is an epitome,
+in five words, of Christian virtue, whose qualities, origin and method
+are all defined. It sums up exquisitely the moral teaching of the
+epistle. Galatians v. 22, 23 (_the fruit of the Spirit_) and Philippians
+iv. 8 (_Whatsoever things are true_, etc.) are parallel to this passage,
+as Pauline definitions, equally perfect, of the virtues of a Christian
+man. This has the advantage of the others in brevity and epigrammatic
+point.
+
+"You are light in the Lord," the apostle said; "walk as children of the
+light." But his readers might ask: "What does this mean? It is poetry:
+let us have it translated into plain prose. How shall we walk as
+children of the light? Show us the path."--"I will tell you," the
+apostle answers: "the fruit of the light is in all goodness and
+righteousness and truth. Walk in these ways; let your life bear this
+fruit; and you will be true children of the light of God. So living, you
+will find out what it is that pleases God, and how joyful a thing it is
+to please Him (ver. 10). Your life will then be free from all complicity
+with the works of darkness. It will shine with a brightness clear and
+penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness and transform
+the darkness itself. It will speak with a voice that all must hear,
+bidding them awake from the sleep of sin to see in Christ their light of
+life." Such is the setting in which this delightful definition stands.
+
+But it is more than a definition. While this sentence declares what
+Christian virtue is, it signifies also whence it comes, how it is
+generated and maintained. It asserts the connexion that exists between
+Christian character and Christian faith. The fruit cannot be grown
+without the tree, any more than the tree can grow soundly without
+yielding its proper fruit. _Right is the fruit of light._
+
+The principle that religion is the basis of moral virtue, is one that
+many moralists disputed in St Paul's time; and it has fallen into some
+discredit in our own. In philosophical theory, and to a large extent in
+popular maxim and belief, it is assumed that faith and morals, character
+and creed, are not only distinct but independent things and that there
+is no necessary connexion between the two. Christians are themselves to
+blame for this fallacy, through the discrepancy not seldom visible
+between their creed and life. Our narrowness of view and the harshness
+of our ethical judgements have helped to foster this grave error.
+
+Great Christian teachers have spoken of the virtues of the heathen as
+"splendid sins." But Christ and His apostles never said so. He said:
+"Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold." And they said: "In
+every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted
+of Him." The Christian creed has no jealousy in regard to human
+excellence. "Whatsoever things are true and honourable and just and
+pure," wherever and in whomsoever they are found, our faith honours and
+delights in them, and accepts them to the utmost of their worth. But
+then it claims them all for its own,--as the fruit of the one "true
+light which lighteth every man." Wherever this fruit appears, we know
+that that light has been, though its ways are past finding out. Through
+secret crevices, by subtle refractions and multiplied reflections, the
+true light reaches many a life lying far outside its visible course.
+
+All goodness has one source; for, said Jesus, "there is none good but
+one, that is God." The channels may be tortuous, obstructed and obscure:
+the stream is always one. There is nothing more touching, and nothing
+more encouraging to our faith in God's universal love and His will that
+all men should be saved, than to see, as we do sometimes under
+conditions most adverse and in spots the most unlikely, features of
+moral beauty and Christlike goodness appearing like springs in the
+desert or flowers blooming in Alpine snows,--signs of the universal
+light,
+
+    "Which yet in the absolutest drench of dark
+    Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
+    To the despair of hell!"
+
+The action of God's grace in Christ is by no means limited to the sphere
+of its recognized working. All the more earnestly on this account do we
+vindicate this grace against those who deny its necessity or the
+permanence of its moral influence. The fruit, in the main, they approve.
+But they would cut down the plant from which it came; they seek to
+quench the light under which it grew. They are like men who should take
+you to some lofty tree that has flourished for ages rooted in the rock,
+and who should say: "See how wide its branches and how stout its stem,
+how firmly it stands upon its native soil! Let us cut it loose from
+those dark and ugly roots--that mysterious theology, those superstitions
+of the past. The human mind has outgrown them. Virtue can support itself
+on its own proper basis. It is time to assert the dignity of man, and to
+proclaim the independence of morality." If these men have their way, and
+if European society renounces the authority of God, how quickly will
+that tree of the Lord's planting, the vast growth of Christian virtue
+and beneficence, wither to its topmost bough; and the next storm will
+bring it to the ground, with all its stately strength and summer beauty.
+Unbelief in God lays the axe at the root of human society. Our life--the
+life of individuals, of families and nations--is rooted in the unseen
+and hid with Christ in God. Thence it draws its vitality and virtue,
+through those spiritual fibres by which we are linked to God and lay
+hold on eternal life. Since Christ Jesus our forerunner entered the
+heavenly places, the anchor of human hopes has been cast within the
+veil; if that anchor drags, there is no other that will hold. The rocks
+are plain to see on which our richly freighted ship of life will
+founder. Without the religion of Jesus Christ, our civilization is not
+worth a hundred years' purchase.
+
+Moral effects do not follow upon their causes as rapidly as physical
+effects: they follow as certainly. We live largely upon the accumulated
+ethical capital of our forefathers. When that is spent, we are left to
+our intrinsic poverty of soul, to our faithlessness and feebleness. The
+scepticism of one generation bears fruit in the immorality of the next,
+or the next after that; the unbelief and cynicism of the teacher in the
+vice of his disciple. Such fruit of blasting and mildew the decay of
+faith has never failed to bear.
+
+The corresponding truth will be at once acknowledged. There is no real
+religion without virtue. If the godly man is not a good man, if he is
+not a sincere and pure-hearted man, "that man's religion is vain": no
+matter what his professions or his emotions, no matter what his
+services to the Church. He is one of those to whom Jesus Christ will
+say: "I know you not; depart from me, all ye that work iniquity." There
+is a flaw in him somewhere, a rift within the lute that spoils all its
+music. "A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit."
+
+In Christ's garden there forms in clustered beauty and perfectness the
+ripe growth of virtue, which in the sunshine of His love and under the
+freshening breath of His Spirit sends forth its spices and "yieldeth its
+fruit every month." In it there abide _goodness_, _righteousness_,
+_truth_--these three; and who shall say which of them is greatest?
+
+I. _Goodness_ stands first, as the most visible and obvious form of
+Christian excellence,--that which every one looks for in a religious
+man, and which every one admires when it is to be seen. Righteousness,
+regarded by itself, is not so readily appreciated. There is something
+austere and forbidding in it. "For a righteous man scarcely would one
+die"--you respect, even revere him; but you do not love him: "but for
+the good man peradventure, one would even dare to die."
+
+Christian goodness is the sanctification of the heart and its
+affections, renewed and governed by the love of God in Christ. It is,
+notwithstanding, but seldom inculcated in the New Testament;[136]
+because it is referred to its spring and principle in _love_. Goodness
+is love embodied. Now love, as the Christian knows it, is of God. "We
+love," says the apostle John, "because He first loved us.... He loved
+us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This is the
+faith that makes good men,--the best the world has ever known, the best
+that it holds now. Vanity, selfishness, evil temper and desire are
+shamed and burnt out of the soul by the holy fire of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ our Lord. In the warm, tender light of the cross the heart
+is softened and cleansed, and expanded to the widest charity. It becomes
+the home of all generous instincts and pure affections. So "the fruit of
+the light is in all goodness."
+
+2. And _righteousness_.
+
+This second and central definition applies a searching test to all
+spurious forms of goodness, superficial or sentimental,--to the goodness
+of mere good manners, or good nature. The principle of righteousness,
+fully understood, includes everything in moral worth, and is often used
+to denote in one word the entire fruit of God's grace in man. For
+righteousness is the sanctification of the conscience. It is loyalty to
+God's holy and perfect law. It is no mere outward keeping of formal
+rules, such as the legal righteousness of Judaism, no submission to
+necessity or calculation of advantages: it is a love of the law in a
+man's inmost spirit; it is the quality of a heart one with that law,
+reconciled to it as it is reconciled to God Himself in Jesus Christ.
+
+At the bottom, therefore, righteousness and goodness are one. Each is
+the counterface and complement of the other. Righteousness is to
+goodness as the strong backbone of principle, the firm hand and the
+vigorous grasp of duty, the steadfast foot that plants itself on the
+eternal ground of the right and true and stands against a world's
+assault. Goodness without righteousness is a weak and fitful sentiment:
+righteousness without goodness is a dead formality. He cannot love God
+or his neighbour truly, who does not love God's law; and he knows
+nothing aright of that law, who does not know that it is the law of
+love.
+
+This also, this above all is "the fruit of the light." Two watchwords we
+have from the lips of Jesus, two mottoes of His own life and
+mission,--the one given at the end, the other at the beginning of His
+course: "Greater _love_ hath none than this, that one lay down his life
+for his friends"; and, "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all
+_righteousness_." By a double flame was He consumed a sacrifice upon the
+cross,--by the passion of His zeal for God's righteousness, and by the
+passion of His pity for mankind. In that twofold light we see light, and
+become "light in the Lord." Therefore the fruit of the light, the moral
+product of a true faith in the gospel, is in all _goodness and
+righteousness_.
+
+There is a danger of merging the latter in the former of these
+attributes. Evangelical piety is credited with an excess of the
+sentimental and emotional disposition, cultivated at the expense of the
+more sterling elements of character. High principle, scrupulous honour,
+stern fidelity to duty are no less essential to the image of Christ in
+the soul than are warm feeling and zealous devotion to His service.
+_Jesus Christ the righteous_, as His apostles loved to call Him, is the
+pattern of a manly faith, up to which we must grow in all things. "_He_
+is the propitiation for our sins." Never was there an act of such
+unswerving integrity and absolute loyalty to the law of right as the
+sacrifice of Calvary. God forbid that we should magnify love at the
+expense of law, or make good feeling a substitute for duty.
+
+3. _Truth_ comes last in this enumeration, for it signifies the inward
+reality and depth of the other two.
+
+Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of the lips. Heathen
+honesty goes as far as this. Men of the world expect as much from each
+other, and brand the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires a
+reality behind itself. The acted falsehood is excluded, the hinted and
+intended lie no less than that expressly uttered. Beyond all this, it is
+the truth of the man that God requires--speech, action, thought, all
+consistent, harmonious and transparent, with the light of God's truth
+shining through them. Truth is the harmony of the inward and the
+outward, the correspondence of what the man is in himself with that
+which he appears and wishes to appear to be.
+
+Now, it is only children of the light, only men thoroughly good and
+upright who can, in this strict sense, be men of truth. So long as any
+malice or iniquity is left in our nature, we have something to conceal.
+We cannot afford to be sincere. We are compelled to pay, by very shame,
+the degrading tribute which vice renders to virtue, the homage of
+hypocrisy. But find a man whose intellect, whose heart and will, tried
+at whatever point, ring sound and true, in whom there is no affectation,
+no make-believe, no pretence or exaggeration, no discrepancy, no discord
+in the music of his life and thought, "an Israelite indeed, in whom is
+no guile"--there is a saint for you, and a man of God; there is one whom
+you may "grapple to your soul with hoops of steel."
+
+Truth is the hall-mark of entire sanctification; it is the highest and
+rarest attainment of the Christian life. It is equally the charm of an
+innocent, unspoilt childhood, and of a ripe and purified old age. The
+apostle John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," is the most perfect
+embodiment, after his Master, of this consummating grace. In him
+righteousness and love were blended in the translucence of an utter
+simplicity and truth.
+
+We must beware of giving a subjective and merely personal aspect to this
+divine quality. While truth is the unity of the outward and inward, of
+heart and act and word in the man, it is at the same time the agreement
+of the man with the reality of things as they exist in God. The former
+kind of truth rests upon the latter; the subjective upon the objective
+order. The truth of God makes us true. We magnify our own sincerity,
+until it becomes vitiated and pretentious. In our eagerness to realize
+and express our own convictions, we give too little pains to form them
+upon a sound basis; we make a great virtue of _speaking out_ what is in
+our hearts, but take small heed of what _comes in_ to the heart, and
+speak out of a loose self-confidence and idolatry of our own opinions.
+So the Pharisees were true, who called Christ an impostor. So every
+careless slanderer, and scandalmonger credulous of evil, who believes
+the lies he propagates. "Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in
+which every one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he
+thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the Palace of Truth.
+A palace of veracity, if you will; but no temple of the truth. A place
+where each one would be at liberty to utter his own crude unrealities,
+to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half-formed, hasty judgements;
+where the depraved ear would reckon discord harmony, and the depraved
+eye mistake colour; the depraved moral taste take Herod or Tiberius for
+a king, and shout beneath the Redeemer's cross, 'Himself He cannot
+save!' A temple of the truth? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious
+falsehoods, a Babel of confused sounds, in which egotism would rival
+egotism, and truth would be each man's own lie."[137] In the pride of
+our veracity, we miss the verity of things; we are true only to our
+blind self, false to the light of God. "Every one that is of the truth
+heareth my voice:" so said He who was Truth incarnate, making His word a
+law for all true men.
+
+"In _all_ goodness and righteousness and truth," says the apostle. Let
+us seek them all. We are apt to become specialists in virtue, as in
+other departments of life. Men will endeavour even to compensate by
+extreme efforts in one direction for deficiencies in some other
+direction, which they scarcely desire to make good. So they grow out of
+shape, into oddities and moral malformations. There is a want of balance
+and of finish about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who
+have long and steadily pursued the way of faith. We have sweetness
+without strength, and strength without gentleness, and truth spoken
+without love, and words of passionate zeal without accuracy and
+heedfulness.
+
+All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to the cause of our
+religion.
+
+    "It is the little rift within the lute
+    That by-and-by will make the music mute,
+      And ever widening slowly silence all;
+    The little rift within the lover's lute,
+    Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
+      That rotting inward slowly moulders all."
+
+Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us count
+no wrong a trifle. Let us never imagine that our defects in one kind
+will be atoned for by excellencies in another. Our friends may say
+this, in charity, for us; it is a fatal thing when a man begins to say
+so to himself. "May the God of peace sanctify you fully. May your whole
+spirit, soul, and body in blameless integrity be preserved to the coming
+of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. v. 23).
+
+II. The _effect_ upon surrounding darkness of the light of God in
+Christian lives is described in verses 11-14, in words which it remains
+for us briefly to examine.
+
+Verse 12 distinguishes "the things secretly done" by the Gentiles, "of
+which it is a shame even to speak," from the open and manifest forms of
+evil in which they invite their Christian neighbours to join (ver. 11).
+Instead of doing this and "having fellowship with the unfruitful works
+of darkness," they must "rather reprove them." Silent absence, or
+abstinence is not enough. Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all
+hazards be rebuked. On the other hand, St Paul does not warrant
+Christians in prying into the hidden sins of the world around them and
+playing the moral detective. Publicity is not a remedy for all evils,
+but a great aggravation of some, and the surest means of disseminating
+them. "It is a shame"--a disgrace to our common nature, and a grievous
+peril to the young and innocent--to fill the public prints with the
+nauseous details of crime and to taint the air with its putridities.
+
+"But all things," the apostle says--whether it be those open works of
+darkness, profitless of good, which expose themselves to direct
+conviction, or the depths of Satan that hide their infamy from the light
+of day--"all things being reproved by the light, are made manifest"
+(ver. 13). The fruit of the light convicts the unfruitful works of
+darkness. The daily life of a Christian man amongst men of the world is
+a perpetual reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word is
+spoken, of which the reprover never guesses, as well as against open and
+unblushing vices.
+
+"This is the condemnation," said Jesus, "that light is come into the
+world." And this condemnation every one who walks in Christ's steps, and
+breathes His Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on,
+more frequently in silence than by spoken argument. Our unconscious and
+spontaneous influence is the most real and effective part of it. Life is
+the light of men--words only as the index of the life from which they
+spring. Just so far as our lives touch the conscience of others and
+reveal the difference between darkness and light, so far do we hold
+forth the word of life and carry on the Holy Spirit's work in convincing
+the world of sin. "Let your light so shine."
+
+This manifestation leads to a transformation: "For everything that is
+made manifest _is light_" (ver. 13). "You are light in the Lord," St
+Paul says to his converted Gentile readers,--you who were "once
+darkness," once wandering in the lusts and pleasures of the heathen
+around you, without hope and without God. The light of the gospel
+disclosed, and then dispelled the darkness of that former time; and so
+it may be with your still heathen kindred, through the light you bring
+to them. So it will be with the night of sin that is spread over the
+world. The light which shines upon sin-laden and sorrowful hearts,
+shines on them to change them into its own nature. _The manifested is
+light_: in other words, if men can be made to see the true nature of
+their sin, they will forsake it. If the light can but penetrate their
+conscience, it will save them. "Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    Awake, O sleeper; and arise from out of the dead!
+      And the Christ shall dawn upon thee!"
+
+The speaker of this verse can be no other than God, or the Spirit of God
+in Scripture. The sentence is no mere quotation. It re-utters, in the
+style of Mary's or Zechariah's song, the promise of the Old Covenant
+from the lips of the New. It gathers up the import of the prophecies
+concerning the salvation of Christ, as they sounded in the apostle's
+ears and as he conveyed them to the world. Isaiah lx. 1-3 supplies the
+basis of our passage, where the prophet awakens Zion from the sleep of
+the Exile and bids her shine once more in the glory of her God and show
+forth His light to the nations: "Arise," he cries, "shine, for thy light
+is come!" There are echoes in the verse, besides, of Isaiah li. 17,
+xxvi. 19; perhaps even of Jonah i. 6: "What meanest thou, O sleeper?
+arise, and call upon thy God!" We seem to have here, as in chapter iv.
+4-6, a snatch of the earliest Christian hymns. The lines are a free
+paraphrase from the Old Testament, formed by weaving together Messianic
+passages--belonging to such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in the
+Pauline Churches. Certainly those Churches did not wait until the second
+century to compose their hymns and spiritual songs (comp. ver. 19). Our
+Lord's sublime announcement (John v. 25), already verified, that "the
+hour had come when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God, and
+they that heard should live," gave the key to the prophetic sayings
+which promised through Israel the light of life to all nations.
+
+With this song on her lips the Church went forth, clad in the armour of
+light, strong in the joy of salvation; and darkness and the works of
+darkness fled before her.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[135] Mr. Wesley adopted this and other emendations from Bengel, "that
+great light of the Christian world," in the translation accompanying his
+_Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament_. He there supplied the
+Methodist preachers with many of the most valuable improvements made in
+the Revised Version, a hundred years before the time.
+
+[136] The word belongs to Paul's vocabulary; it is found besides in 2
+Thess. i. 11; Rom. xv. 14; and Gal. v. 22. See the Commentary on this
+last epistle in the _Expositor's Bible_, pp. 384, 385.
+
+[137] F. W. Robertson: _Sermons_ (First Series), xix., on "The Kingdom
+of the Truth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+_THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT._
+
+    "Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
+    redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not
+    foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
+
+    "And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with
+    the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and
+    spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the
+    Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord
+    Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to
+    another in the fear of Christ."--EPH. v. 15-21.
+
+
+Very solemnly did the moral homily to the Asian Christians begin in
+chapter iv. 17: "This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you
+must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk." So much has now been said and
+testified in the intervening paragraphs, by way both of dehortation and
+exhortation. Here the apostle pauses; and casting his eye over the whole
+pathway of life he has marked out in this discourse, he bids his
+readers: "Look then carefully how you walk. Show that you are not fools,
+but wise to observe your steps and to seize your opportunities in these
+evil times,--days so perilous that you need your best wisdom and
+knowledge of God's will to save you from fatal stumbling."
+
+So far St Paul's renewed exhortation, in verses 15-17, inculcates care
+and wary discretion,--the skill that in the strategy of life finds its
+vantage in unequal ground, that makes opposing winds help forward the
+seafarer. In this sober wisdom it is likely the Asian Christians were
+deficient. In many ways, both directly and indirectly, the need of
+increased thoughtfulness on the readers' part has been indicated. But
+there is another side to the Christian nature: it has its moods of
+exhilaration, as well as of caution and reflection; ardent emotion,
+eager speech and exultant song are things proper to a high religious
+life. For these the apostle makes room in verses 18-20, while the three
+foregoing verses enjoin the circumspection and vigilance that become the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus.
+
+A striking contrast thus arises between the _sobriety_ and the
+_excitement_ that mark the life of grace. We see with what strictness we
+must watch over ourselves, and guard the character and interests of the
+Church; and with what joyousness and holy freedom we may take our part
+in its communion. Temperament and constitution modify these injunctions
+in their personal application. The Holy Spirit does not enable us all to
+speak with equal fervour and freedom, nor to sing with the same
+tunefulness. His power operates in the limbs of Christ's body "according
+to the measure of each single part." But the self-same Spirit works in
+both these contrasted ways,--in the sanguine and the melancholic
+disposition, in the demonstrative and in the reserved, in the quick play
+of fancy and the brightness and impulsiveness of youth no less than in
+the sober gait and solid sense of riper age. Let us see how the two
+opposite aspects of Christian experience are set out in the apostle's
+words.
+
+I. First of all, upon the one side, _heedfulness_ is enjoined. The
+children of light must use the light to see their way. To "stumble at
+noonday" is a proof of folly or blindness. So misusing our light, we
+shall quickly lose it and return to the paths of darkness.
+
+According to the preferable (Revised) order of the words, the qualifying
+adverb "carefully" belongs to the "look," not to the "walk." The
+circumspect _look_ precedes the wise step. The spot is marked on which
+the foot is to be planted; the eye ranges right and left and takes in
+the bearings of the new position, forecasting its possibilities. "Look
+before you leap," our sage proverb says. According to the carefulness of
+the look, the success of the leap is likely to be.
+
+There is no word in the epistle more apposite than this to
+
+                        "our day
+    Of haste, half-work, and disarray."
+
+We are too restless to think, too impatient to learn. Everything is
+sacrificed to speed. The telegraph and the daily newspaper symbolize the
+age. The public ear loves to be caught quickly and with new sensations:
+a premium is set on carelessness and hurry. Earnest men, eager for the
+triumph of a good cause, push forward with unsifted statements and
+unweighed denunciations, that discredit Christian advocacy and wound the
+cause of truth and charity. Time, thus wronged and driven beyond her
+pace, has her revenge; she deals hardly with these light judgements of
+the hour. They are as the chaff which the wind carrieth away. After all,
+it is still truth that lives; thorough work that lasts; accuracy that
+hits the mark. And the time-servers are "unwise," both intellectually
+and morally. They are most unwise who think to succeed in life's high
+calling without self-distrust, and without scrupulous care and pains in
+all work they do for the kingdom of God.
+
+In the evil of his own times St Paul sees a special reason for
+heedfulness: "Walk not as unwise, but as wise, buying up the
+opportunity, _because the days are evil_." In Colossians iv. 5 the
+parallel sentence shows that in giving this caution he is thinking of
+the relation of Christians to the world outside: "Walk in wisdom toward
+those without, buying up the opportunity." Evil days they were, when
+Paul lay in Nero's prison; when that wild beast was raging against
+everything that resisted his mad will or reproved his monstrous vices.
+With supreme power in the hands of such a creature of Satan, who could
+tell what fires of persecution were kindling for the people of Christ,
+or what terrible revelation of God's anger against the present evil
+world might be impending. At Ephesus the spirit of heathenism had shown
+itself peculiarly menacing. Here, too, in the rich and cultivated
+province of Asia where the currents of Eastern and Western thought met,
+heresy and its corruptions made their first decided appearance in the
+Churches of the Gentiles. Conflicts are approaching which will try to
+the uttermost the strength of the Christian faith and the temper of its
+weapons (vi. 10-16).
+
+As wise men, reading thoughtfully the signs of the times, the Asian
+Christians will "redeem the [present] season." They will use to the
+utmost the light given them. They will employ every means to increase
+their knowledge of Christ, to confirm their faith and the habits of
+their spiritual life. They are like men expecting a siege, who
+strengthen their fortifications and furbish their weapons and practise
+their drill and lay up store of supplies, that they may "stand in the
+evil day." Such wisdom Ecclesiastes preaches to the young man: "Remember
+now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come."
+
+Within a year after this epistle was penned, Rome was burnt and the
+crime of its burning washed out, at Nero's caprice, in Christian blood.
+In four years more St Paul and St Peter had died a martyr's death at
+Rome; and Nero had fallen by the assassin's hand. At once the Empire was
+convulsed with civil war; and the year 68-69 was known as that of the
+Four Emperors. Amid the storms threatening the ruin of the Roman State,
+the Jewish war against Rome was carried on, ending in the year 70 with
+the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple and
+nationality. These were the days of tribulation of which our Lord spoke,
+"such as had not been since the beginning of the world" (Matt. xxiv. 21,
+22). The entire fabric of life was shaken; and in the midst of
+earthquake and tempest, blood and fire, Israel met its day of judgement
+and the former age passed away. In the year 63, when the apostle wrote,
+the sky was everywhere red and lowering with signs of coming storm. None
+knew where or how the tempest might break, or what would be its issue.
+
+When men amid evil days and portents of danger must be told not to be
+"foolish" nor "drunken with wine," one is disposed to tax them with
+levity. It was difficult for these Asian Greeks to take life seriously,
+and to realize the gravity of their situation. St Paul appeals to them
+by their duty, still more than by their danger: "Be not foolish, but
+understand what _the will of the Lord_ is." As he bade the Thessalonians
+consider that chastity was not matter of choice and of their own
+advantage only, it was "God's will" (1 Ep. iv. 3), so the Ephesians
+must understand that Christ is no mere adviser, nor the Christian life
+an optional system that men may adopt when and so far as it suits them.
+He is our Lord; and it is our business to understand, in order that we
+may execute, His designs. For this Christ's servants require a watchful
+eye and an alert intelligence. They must be no dullards nor simpletons,
+who would enter into the Divine Master's plans; no triflers, no
+creatures of sentiment and impulse, who are to be the agents of His
+will. He can and does employ every sincere heart that gives itself in
+love to Him. But His nobler tasks are for the wise taught by His Spirit,
+for those who can "understand," with penetrating sympathy and breadth of
+comprehension, "what the will of the Lord is." Hence the distinction of
+St Paul himself, and of John the beloved disciple, amongst His ministers
+and witnesses,--men great in mind as they were in heart, whose thoughts
+about Christ were as grand as their love to Him was fervent.
+
+Nowhere does the apostle say so much of "the will of God" in regard to
+the dispensation of grace as he does in this epistle.[138] For he sees
+life and salvation here in their largest bearings and proportions. He
+prayed at the outset that the Gentile readers might realize the value
+that God puts upon them, and the mighty forces He has set at work for
+their salvation (i. 18-20); and again, that they might comprehend the
+vast dimensions of His plan for the building of the Church (iii. 18).
+Now that he has shown the relation of this eternal purpose to the
+character and everyday life of the converted Gentiles, "the will of God"
+becomes matter of immediate import; it is revealed in its bearing upon
+conduct, upon the affairs of business and society. It is not the
+purpose, the promises, the doctrine of the Lord alone, but "the _will_
+of the Lord" that they have to understand, as it touches their spirit
+and behaviour day by day. They must realize the practical demands of
+their religion,--how it is to make them truthful, gracious, pure and
+wise. They must translate creed into life and act. Such is the wisdom
+which their apostle strives to instil into the Asian Christians. Their
+first need was spiritual enlightenment; their second need was moral
+intelligence. Might they only have sense to understand and loyalty to
+obey the will of Christ.--And oh may we!
+
+II. There were converted thieves in the Ephesian Church, who still
+needed to be warned against their old propensities (iv. 28); there were
+men who had been sorcerers and fortune-tellers (Acts xix. 18, 19). It
+appears that there were in this circle converted _drunkards_ also, men
+to whom the apostle is obliged to say: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein
+is riot."
+
+In view of the following context (vv. 19-21), and remembering how the
+Lord's table was defiled by excess at Corinth (1 Cor. xi. 17-34), it
+seems to us probable that the warning of verse 18 had special reference
+to the Christian assemblies. The institution of the common meal, the
+_Agape_ or Lovefeast accompanying the Lord's Supper, suited the manners
+of the early Christians, and was long continued. The cities of Asia
+Minor were full of trade-guilds and clubs for various social and
+religious purposes, in which the common supper, or club-feast, furnished
+usually by each member bringing his contribution to the table, was a
+familiar bond of fellowship. This afforded to the Church a natural and
+pleasant means of intercourse; but it must be purified from sensual
+indulgence. _Wine_ was its chief danger.
+
+The eastern coast of the Aegean is an ancient home of the vine. And the
+Greeks of the Asian towns, on those bright shores and under their genial
+sky, were a light-hearted, sociable race. They sought the wine-cup not
+for animal indulgence, but as a zest to good-fellowship and to give a
+freer flow to social joys. This was the influence that ruled their
+feasts, that loosened their tongues and inspired their gaiety. Hence
+their wit was prone to become ribaldry (ver. 4); and their songs were
+the opposite of the "spiritual songs" that gladden the feasts of the
+Church (ver. 19). The quick imagination and the social instincts of the
+Ionian Greeks, the aptness for speech and song native to the land of
+Homer and Sappho, were gifts not to be repressed but sanctified. The
+lyre is to be tuned to other strains; and poetry must draw its
+inspiration from a higher source. Dionysus and his reeling Fauns give
+place to the pure Spirit of Jesus and the Father. "The Aonian mount"
+must now pay tribute to "Sion hill"; and the fountain of Castalia yields
+its honours to
+
+            "Siloa's brook that flowed
+    Fast by the oracle of God."
+
+Our nature craves excitement,--some stimulus that shall set the pulses
+dancing and thrill the jaded frame, and lift the spirit above the
+taskwork of life and the dreary and hard conditions which make up the
+daily lot of multitudes. It is this craving that gives to strong drink
+its cruel fascination. Alcohol is a mighty magician. The tired labouring
+man, the household drudge shut up in city courts refreshed by no
+pleasant sight or cheering voice, by its aid can leave fretted nerves
+and aching limbs and dull care behind, and taste, if it be only for a
+feverish moment, of the joy of bounding life. Can such cravings be
+hindered from seeking their relief? The removal of temptation will
+accomplish little, unless higher tastes are formed and springs of purer
+pleasure opened to the masses for whom our civilization makes life so
+drab and colourless. "One finds traces of the primitive greatness of our
+nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as impurity proceeds at
+the bottom from an abuse of the craving for love, so drunkenness betrays
+a certain demand for ardour and enthusiasm, which in itself is natural
+and even noble.... Man loves to _feel_ himself alive; he would fain live
+twice his life at once; and he would rather draw excitement from
+horrible things than have no excitement at all" (Monod).
+
+For the drunkards of Ephesus the apostle finds a cure in the joys of the
+Holy Ghost. The mightiest and most moving spring of feeling is in the
+spirit of man kindred to God. There is a deep excitement and
+refreshment, a "joy that human thought transcends," in the love of God
+shed abroad in the heart and the communion of true saints, which makes
+sensuous delights cheap and poor. Toil and care are forgotten, sickness
+and trouble seem as nothing; we can glory in tribulation and laugh in
+the face of death, when the strong wine of God's consolations is poured
+into the soul.
+
+"Be filled with the Spirit," says the apostle--or more strictly, "filled
+_in_ the Spirit"; since the Holy Spirit of God is the element of the
+believer's life, surrounding while it penetrates his nature: it is the
+atmosphere that he breathes, the ocean in which he is immersed. As a
+flood fills up the river-banks, as the drunkard is filled with the wine
+that he drains without limit, so the apostle would have his readers
+yield themselves to the tide of the Spirit's coming and steep their
+nature in His influence. The Greek imperative, moreover, is present, and
+"describes this influence as ever going forth from the Spirit" (Beet).
+This is to be a continual replenishment. Paul has prayed that we may "be
+filled unto all the fulness of God" (iii. 19), and has bidden us grow
+"to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (iv. 13) in
+whom we "are made full" (Col. ii. 9): in the replenishment of the Spirit
+the fulness of God in Christ is sensibly imparted. God's fulness is the
+hidden and eternal spring of all that can fill our nature; Christ's
+fulness is its revelation and renewed communication to the race; the
+Holy Spirit's fulness is its abiding energy within the soul and within
+the Church. Thus possessed, the Church is truly the body of Christ (iv.
+4), and the habitation of God (ii. 21, 22).
+
+The words of verses 19, 20 show that St Paul is thinking of that
+presence of the Spirit in the Christian community, which is the spring
+of its affections and activities. The Spirit of Jesus, the Son of man,
+is a kindly and gracious Spirit, the guardian of brotherhood and
+friendship, the inspirer of pure social joys and genial converse. The
+joy in the Holy Ghost that in its warmth and freshness filled the hearts
+of the first Christians, soared upward on the wings of song. Their very
+talk was music: they "spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and
+spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the
+Lord." Love loves to sing. Its joys
+
+            "from out our hearts arise,
+    And speak and sparkle in our eyes,
+      And vibrate on our tongue."
+
+All exalted sentiment tends to rhythmical expression. There is a
+mystical alliance, which is amongst the most significant facts in our
+constitution, between emotion and art. The rudest natures, touched by
+high feeling, will shape themselves to some sort of beauty, to some
+grace and refinement of expression. Each new stirring of the pulse of
+man's common life has been marked by a re-birth of poetry and art. The
+songs of Mary and Zechariah were the parents and patterns of a multitude
+of holy canticles. In the Psalms of Scripture the New Testament Church
+found already an instrument of wide compass strung and tuned for her
+use. We can imagine the delight with which the Gentile Christians would
+take up the Psalter and draw out one and another of its pearls, and
+would in turn recite them at their meetings, and adapt them to their
+native measures and modes of song. After a while, they began to mix with
+the praise-songs of Israel newer strains--"hymns" to the glory of Christ
+and the Father, such as that with which this epistle opens, needing but
+little change in form to make it a true poem, and such as those which
+break in upon the dread visions of the Apocalypse; and added to these,
+"spiritual songs" of a more personal and incidental character, like
+Simeon's _Nunc dimittis_ or Paul's swan-song in his last letter to
+Timothy. In verse 14 above we detected, as we thought, an early Church
+paraphrase of the Old Testament. In later epistles addressed to Ephesus,
+there are fragments of just such artless chants as the Asian Christians,
+exhorted and taught by their apostle, were wont to sing in their
+assemblies: see 1 Timothy iii. 16, and 2 Timothy ii. 11-13.
+
+Upon this congenial soil, we trace the beginnings of Christian
+psalmody. The parallel text of Colossians (iii. 16) discloses in the
+songs of the Pauline Churches a didactic as well as a lyric character.
+The apostle bids his readers "_teach and admonish_ one another by
+psalms, hymns, spiritual songs." The form of the sentence of chapter iv.
+4-6 in this letter, and of 1 Timothy iii. 16, suggests that these
+passages were destined for use as a chanted rehearsal of Christian
+belief. Thus "the word of Christ dwelling richly" in the heart, poured
+itself freely from the lips, and added to its grave discourse the charms
+of gladdening and spirit-stirring song.
+
+As in their heathen days they were used to "speak to each other," in
+festive or solemn hours, with hymns to Artemis of the Ephesians, or
+Dionysus giver of the vine, or to Persephone sad queen of the dead--in
+songs merry and gay, too often loose and wanton; in songs of the dark
+underworld and the grim Furies and inexorable Fate, that told how life
+fleets fast and we must pluck its pleasures while we may;--so now the
+Christians of Ephesus and Colossae, of Pergamum and of Smyrna would sing
+of the universal Father whose presence fills earth and sky, of the Son
+of His love, His image amongst men, who died in sacrifice for their sins
+and asked grace for His murderers, of the joys of forgiveness and the
+cleansed heart, of life eternal and the treasure laid up for the just in
+the heavenly places, of Christ's return in glory and the judgement of
+the nations and the world quickly to dissolve and perish, of a
+brotherhood dearer than earthly kindred, of the saints who sleep in
+Jesus and in peace await His coming, of the Good Shepherd who feeds His
+sheep and leads them to fountains of living water calling each by his
+name, of creation redeemed and glorified by His love, of pain and
+sorrow sanctified and the trials that make perfect in Christ's
+discipline, of the joy that fills the heart in suffering for Him, and
+the vision of His face awaiting us beyond the grave. So reciting and
+chanting--now in single voice, now in full chorus--singing the Psalms of
+David to their Greek music, or hymns composed by their leaders, or
+sometimes improvised in the rapture of the moment, the Churches of
+Ephesus and of the Asian cities lauded and glorified "the name of our
+Lord Jesus Christ" and the counsels of redeeming love. So their worship
+and fellowship were filled with gladness. Thus in their great Church
+meetings, and in smaller companies, many a joyous hour passed; and all
+hearts were cheered and strengthened in the Lord.
+
+"Singing and _playing_," says the apostle. For music aided song; voice
+and instrument blended in His praise whose glory claims the tribute of
+all creatures. But it was "with the heart," even more than with voice or
+tuneful strings, that melody was made. For this inward music the Lord
+listens. Where other skill is wanting and neither voice nor hand can
+take its part in the concert of praise, He hears the silent gratitude,
+the humble joy that wells upward when the lips are still or the full
+heart cannot find expression.
+
+But the Spirit who dwelt in the praises of the new Israel, was not
+confined to its public assemblings. The people of Christ should be
+"_always giving thanks_, for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." It is one of St Paul's commonest injunctions. "In _everything_
+give thanks," he wrote to the Thessalonians in his earliest extant
+letter (1 Ep. v. 18). "For all things," he says to the
+Ephesians,--"though fallen on evil days." Do we not "know that to them
+that love God all things work together for good"--evil days as well as
+good days? Nothing comes altogether amiss to the child of God. In the
+heaviest loss, the severest pain, the sharpest sting of injury--"in
+everything" the ingenuity of love and the sweetness of patience will
+find some token of mercy. If the evil is to our eyes all evil and we can
+see in it no reason for thanksgiving, then faith will give thanks for
+that which we "know not now, but shall know hereafter."
+
+_Always_, the apostle says,--_for all things_! No room for a moment's
+discontent. In this perfecting of praise he had himself undergone a long
+schooling in his four years' imprisonment. Now, he tells us, he "has
+learnt the secret of contentment, in whatsoever state" (Phil. iv. 12).
+Let us try to learn it from him. These words, which we treat, almost
+unconsciously, as the exaggeration of homiletical appeal, state no more
+than the sober possibility, the experience attained by many a Christian
+in circumstances of the greatest suffering and deprivation. The love of
+God in Jesus Christ our Lord suffices for the life and joy of man's
+spirit.
+
+The twenty-first verse, which seems to belong to a different line of
+thought, in reality completes the foregoing paragraph. In the Corinthian
+Church, as we remember, with its affluence of spiritual gifts, there
+were so many ready to prophesy, so many to sing and recite, that
+confusion arose and the Church meetings fell into disedifying uproar (1
+Cor. xiv. 26-34). The apostle would not have such scenes occur again.
+Hence when he urges the Asian Christians to seek the full inspiration of
+the Spirit and to give free utterance in song to the impulses of their
+new life, he adds this word of caution: "being subject to one another in
+fear of Christ." He reminds them that "God is not the author of
+confusion." His Spirit is a spirit of seemliness and reverence. "In fear
+of Christ," the unseen witness and president of its assemblies, the
+Church will comport herself with the decorum that befits His bride. The
+spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets. The voices of
+the singers and the hands of them that play upon the strings of the harp
+or the keys of the organ, will keep tune with the worship of Christ's
+congregation. Each must consider that it is his part to serve and not
+rule in the service of God's house.
+
+In our common work and worship, in all the offices of life this is the
+Christian law. No man within Christ's Church, however commanding his
+powers, may set himself above the duty of submitting his judgement and
+will to that of his fellows. In mutual subjection lies our freedom, with
+our strength and peace.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[138] See ch. i. 5-11, ii. 21, iii. 11, v. 10, vi. 6; comp. Col. i. 9,
+27, iv. 12; Phil. ii. 13,--epistles of the same group.
+
+
+
+
+_ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    =Thelo de hymas eidenai hoti pantos andros he kephale ho Christos
+    estin, kephale de gynaikos ho aner, kephale de tou Christou ho
+    Theos.=--1 COR. xi. 3.
+
+    "And pure Religion breathing household laws."
+
+    W. WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+_CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE._
+
+    "Wives, _be in subjection_ to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
+    For the husband is the head of the wife, as the Christ also is the
+    head of the Church, _being_ Himself the saviour of the body. But as
+    the Church is subject to the Christ, so let the wives also _be_ to
+    their husbands in everything.
+
+    "Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the
+    Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her,
+    having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He
+    might present the Church to Himself a glorious _Church_, not having
+    spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and
+    without blemish.
+
+    "Even so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own
+    bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever
+    hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the
+    Christ also the Church; because we are members of His body. 'For
+    this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave
+    to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh.' This mystery is
+    great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the Church.
+    Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as
+    himself; and _let_ the wife _see_ that she fear her husband."--EPH.
+    v. 22-33.
+
+
+In mutual subjection the Christian spirit has its sharpest trials and
+attains its finest temper. "Be subject one to another," was the last
+word of the apostle's instructions respecting the "walk" of the Asian
+Churches. By its order and subjection the gifts of all the members of
+Christ's body are made available for the upbuilding of God's temple. The
+inward fellowship of the Spirit becomes a constructive and organizing
+force, reconstituting human life and framing the world into the kingdom
+of Christ and God. "In fear of Christ" the loyal Christian man submits
+himself to the community; not from the dread of human displeasure, but
+knowing that he must give account to the Head of the Church and the
+Judge of the last day, if his self-will should weaken the Church's
+strength and interrupt her holy work. "For the Lord's sake" His freemen
+submit to every ordinance of men. This is such a fear as the servant has
+of a good master (vi. 5), or the true wife for a loving husband (ver.
+33),--not that which "perfect love casts out," but which it deepens and
+sanctifies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this subjection to Christ the relationship of marriage furnishes an
+example and a mirror. St Paul passes on to the new topic without any
+grammatical pause, verse 22 being simply an extension of the participial
+clause that forms verse 21: "Being in subjection to one another in fear
+of Christ--ye wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord." The relation
+of the two verses is not that of the particular to the general, so much
+as that of image and object, of type and antitype. Submission to Christ
+in the Church suggests by analogy that of the wife to her husband in the
+house. Both have their origin in Christ, in whom all things were
+created, the Lord of life in its natural as well as in its spiritual and
+regenerate sphere (Col. i. 15-17). The bond that links husband and wife,
+lying at the basis of collective human existence, has in turn its ground
+in the relation of Christ to humanity.
+
+The race springs not from a unit, but from a united pair. The history of
+mankind began in wedlock. The family is the first institution of
+society, and the mother of all the rest. It is the life-basis, the
+primitive cell of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic. In the
+health and purity of household life lies the moral wealth, the vigour
+and durability of all civil institutions. The mighty upgrowth of nations
+and the great achievements of history germinated in the nursery of home
+and at the mother's breast. Christian marriage is not an expedient--the
+last of many that have been tried--for the satisfaction of desire and
+the continuance of the human species. The Institutor of human life laid
+down its principle in the first frame of things. Its establishment was a
+great prophetic mystery (ver. 32). Its law stands registered in the
+eternal statutes. And the Almighty Father watches over its observance
+with an awful jealousy. Is it not written: "Fornicators and adulterers
+God will judge"; and again, "The Lord is an avenger concerning all these
+things"?
+
+St Paul rightly gives to this subject a conspicuous place in this
+epistle of Christ and the Church. The corner-stone of the new social
+order which the gospel was to establish in the world lies here. The
+entire influence of the Church upon society depends upon right views on
+the relationship of man and woman and on the ethics of marriage.
+
+In wedlock there are blended most completely the two principles of
+association amongst moral beings,--viz., authority and love, submission
+and self-surrender.
+
+I. On the one side, _submission to authority_.
+
+"Wives, be in subjection, as to the Lord,"--as is fitting in the Lord
+(Col. iii. 18). Again, in 1 Timothy ii. 11, 12, the apostle writes: "I
+suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion," or (as the word may
+rather signify) "to act independently of the man." Were these directions
+temporary and occasional? Were they due, as one hears it suggested, to
+the uneducated and undeveloped condition of women in the apostle's time?
+Or do they not affirm a law that is deeply seated in nature and in the
+feminine constitution? The words of 1 Corinthians xi. 2-15 show that, in
+the apostle's view of life, this subordination is fundamental. "The head
+of woman is the man," as "the head of every man is the Christ" and "the
+head of Christ is God." "The woman," he says, "is of the man," and "was
+created because of the man." Whether these sentences square with our
+modern conceptions or not, there they stand, and their import is
+unmistakable.[139] They teach that in the Divine order of things it is
+the man's part to lead and rule, and the woman's part to be ruled. But
+the Christian woman will not feel that there is any loss or hardship in
+this. For in the Christian order, ambition is sin. To obey is better
+than to rule. She remembers who has said: "I am amongst you as he that
+serveth." The children of the world strive for place and power; but "it
+shall not be so amongst you."
+
+Such subordination implies no inferiority, rather the opposite. A free
+and sympathetic obedience--which is the true submission--can only
+subsist between equals. The apostle writes: "Children, obey; ...
+Servants, obey" (vi. 1, 5); but "Wives, submit yourselves to your own
+husbands, as to the Lord." The same word denotes submission within the
+Church, and within the house. It is here that Christianity, in contrast
+with Paganism, and notably with Mohammedanism, raises the weaker sex to
+honour. In soul and destiny it declares the woman to be man, endowed
+with all rights and powers inherent in humanity. "In Christ Jesus there
+is no male and female," any more than there is "Jew and Greek" or "bond
+and free." The same sentence which broke down the barriers of Jewish
+caste, and in course of time abolished slavery, condemned the odious
+assumptions of masculine pride. It is one of the glories of our faith
+that it has enfranchised our sisters, and raises them in spiritual
+calling to the full level of their brothers and husbands. Both sexes are
+children of God by the same birthright; both receive the same Holy
+Spirit, according to the prediction quoted by St Peter on the day of
+Pentecost: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.... Yea, on my
+servants and on my handmaidens in those days will I pour out of my
+Spirit, saith the Lord" (Acts ii. 17, 18). This one point of headship,
+of public authority and guidance, is reserved. It is the point on which
+Christ forbids emulation amongst His people.
+
+Christian courtesy treats the woman as "the glory of the man"; it
+surrounds her from girlhood to old age with protection and deference.
+This homage, duly rendered, is a full equivalent for the honour of
+visible command. When, as it happens not seldom in the partnership of
+life, the superior wisdom dwells with the weaker vessel, the golden gift
+of persuasion is not wanting, by which the official ruler is guided, to
+his own advantage, and his adviser accomplishes more than she could do
+by any overt leadership. The chivalry of the Middle Ages, from which the
+refinement of European society takes its rise, was a product of
+Christianity grafted on the Teutonic nature. Notwithstanding the folly
+and excess that was mixed with it, there was a beautiful reverence in
+the old knightly service and championship of women. It humanized the
+ferocity of barbarous times. It tamed the brute strength of warlike
+races and taught them honour and gentleness. Its prevalence marked a
+permanent advance in civilization.
+
+Shall we say that this law of St Paul is that laid down specifically for
+_Christian_ women? is it not rather a law of nature--the intrinsic
+propriety of sex, whose dictates are reinforced by the Christian
+revelation? The apostle takes us back to the creation of mankind for the
+basis of his principles in dealing with this subject (ver. 31). The new
+commandments are the old which were in the world from the beginning,
+though concealed and overgrown with corruption. Notwithstanding the
+debasement of marriage under the non-Christian systems, the instincts of
+natural religion taught the wife her place in the house and gave rise to
+many a graceful and appropriate custom expressive of the honour due from
+one sex to the other. So the apostle regarded the man's bared and
+cropped head and the woman's flowing tresses as symbols of their
+relative place in the Divine order (1 Cor. xi. 13-15). These and such
+distinctions--between the dignities of strength and of beauty--no
+artificial sentiment and no capricious revolt can set aside, while the
+world stands. St Paul appeals to the common sense of mankind, to that
+which "nature itself teaches," in censuring the forwardness of some
+Corinthian women who appeared to think that the liberty of the gospel
+released them from the limitations of their nature.
+
+Some earnest promoters of women's rights have fallen into the error that
+Christianity, to which they owe all that is best in their present
+status, is the obstacle in the way of their further progress. It is an
+obstacle to claims that are against nature and against the law of
+God,--claims only tolerable so long as they are exceptional. But the
+barriers imposed by Christianity, against which these people fret, are
+their main protection. "The moment Christianity disappears, the law of
+strength revives; and under that law women can have no hope except that
+their slavery may be mild and pleasant." To escape from the "bondage of
+Christian law" means to go back to the bondage of paganism.
+
+"As unto the Lord" gives the pattern and the principle of the Christian
+wife's submission. Not that, as Meyer seems to put it, the husband in
+virtue of marriage "represents Christ to the wife." Her relation to the
+Lord is as full, direct, and personal as his. Indeed, the clause
+inserted at the end of verse 23 seems expressly designed to guard
+against this exaggeration. The qualification that Christ is "Himself
+Saviour of the body," thrown in between the two sentences comparing the
+marital headship to that which Christ holds towards the Church, has the
+effect of limiting the former.[140] The subjection of the Christian wife
+to her husband reserves for Christ the first place in the heart and the
+undiminished rights of Saviourship. St Paul indicates a real, and not
+unfrequent danger. The husband may eclipse Christ in the wife's soul,
+and be counted as her all in all. Her absorption in him may be too
+complete. Hence the brief guarding clause: "He Himself [and no other]
+Saviour of the body [to which all believers alike belong]." As the
+Saviour of the Church, Christ holds an unrivalled and unqualified
+lordship over every member of the same.
+
+"Nevertheless, as the Church is subject to the Christ, so also wives
+[should be] to their husbands in everything" (ver. 24). Again, in verse
+33: "Let the wife see that she fear her husband"--with the reverent and
+confiding fear which love makes sweet. As the Christian wife obeys the
+Lord Christ in the spiritual sphere, in the sphere of marriage she is
+subject to her husband. The ties that bind her to Christ, bind her more
+closely to the duties of home. These duties illustrate for her the
+submissive love that Christ's people, and herself as one of them, owe to
+their Divine Head. Her service in the Church, in turn, will send her
+home with a quickened sense of the sacredness of her domestic calling.
+It will lighten the yoke of obedience; it will check the discontent that
+masculine exactions provoke; and will teach her to win by patience and
+gentleness the power within the house that is her queenly crown.
+
+II. The apostle alludes to submission as the wife's duty; for she might,
+possibly, be tempted to think this superseded by the liberty of the
+children of God. Love he need not enjoin upon her; but he writes:
+"Husbands, _love your wives_, even as the Christ also loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her" (comp. Col. iii. 18, 19).
+
+The danger of selfishness lies on the masculine side. The man's nature
+is more exacting; and the self-forgetfulness and solicitous affection of
+the woman may blind him to his own want of the truest love. Full of
+business and with a hundred cares and attractions lying outside the
+domestic circle, he too readily forms habits of self-absorption and
+learns to make his wife and home a convenience, from which he takes as
+his right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of devotion
+and confidence in return. This lack of love denies the higher rights of
+marriage; it makes the wife's submission a joyless constraint. Along
+with this selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there
+supervenes sometimes an irritability of temper that chafes over domestic
+troubles and makes a grievance of the most trifling mishap or
+inadvertence, ignoring the wife's patient affection and anxiety to
+please. Too often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family
+tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness of their
+espousals. "There are many," says Bengel (on this point unusually
+caustic), "who out of doors are civil and kind to all; when at home,
+toward their wives and children, whom they have no need to fear, they
+freely practise secret bitterness."
+
+"Love your wives, _even as the Christ loved the Church_." What a glory
+this confers upon the husband's part in marriage! His devotion pictures,
+as no other love can, the devotion of Christ to His redeemed people. His
+love must therefore be a spiritual passion, the love of soul to soul,
+that partakes of God and of eternity. Of the three Greek words for
+love,--_eros_, familiar in Greek poetry and mythology, denoting the
+flame of sexual passion, is not named in the New Testament; _philia_,
+the love of friendship, is tolerably frequent, in its verb at least; but
+_agape_ absorbs the former and transcends both. This exquisite word
+denotes love in its spiritual purity and depth, the love of God and of
+Christ, and of souls to each other in God. This is the specific
+Christian affection. It is the attribute of God who "loved the world and
+gave His Son the Only-begotten," of "the Christ" who "loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her." Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is
+its note. Its strength and authority it uses as material for sacrifice
+and instruments of service, not as prerogatives of pride or titles to
+enjoyment. Let this mind be in you, O husband, toward your wife, which
+was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and lowly in heart, counting it
+His honour to serve and His reward to save and bless.
+
+From verse 26 we gather that Christ is the husband's model, not only in
+the rule of self-devotion, but in the end toward which that devotion is
+directed: "that He might sanctify the Church,--that He might present her
+to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle,--_that she might
+be holy and without blemish_." The perfection of the wife's character
+will be to the religious husband one of the dearest objects in life. He
+will desire for her that which is highest and best, as for himself. He
+is put in charge of a soul more precious to him than any other, over
+which he has an influence incomparably great. This care he cannot
+delegate to any priest or father-confessor. The peril of such delegation
+and the grievous mischiefs that arise when there is no spiritual
+confidence between husband and wife, when through unbelief or
+superstition the head of the house hands over his priesthood to another
+man, are painfully shown by the experience of Roman Catholic countries.
+The irreligion of laymen, the carelessness and unworthiness of fathers
+and husbands are responsible for the baneful influences of the
+confessional. The apostle bade the Corinthian wives, who were eager for
+religious knowledge, to "ask their husbands at home" (1 Cor. xiv. 35).
+Christian husbands should take more account of their office than they
+do; they should not be strangers to the spiritual trials and experiences
+of the heart so near to them. It might lead them to walk more worthily
+and to seek higher religious attainments, if they considered that the
+shepherding of at least one soul devolves upon themselves, that they are
+unworthy of the name of husband without such care for the welfare of the
+soul linked to their own as Christ bears toward His bride the Church.
+Those who have no father or husband to look to, or who look in vain to
+this quarter for spiritual help, St Paul refers, beside the light and
+comfort of Scripture and the public ministry and fellowship of the
+Church, to the "aged women" who are the natural guides and exemplars of
+the younger in their own sex (Titus ii. 3-5).
+
+The selfishness of the stronger sex, supported by the force of habit and
+social usage, was hard to subdue in the Greek Christian Churches.
+Through some eight verses St Paul labours this one point. In verse 28 he
+adduces another reason, added to the example of Christ, for the love
+enjoined. "So ought men indeed to love their wives as their own bodies.
+He that loveth his wife loveth himself." The "So" gathers its force from
+the previous example. In loving us Christ does not love something
+foreign and, as it were, outside of Himself. "We are members of His
+body" (ver. 30). It is the love of the Head to the members, of the Son
+of man to the sons of men, whose race-life is founded in Him. Jesus
+Christ laid it down as the highest law, under that of love to God: "Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_." His love to us followed this
+rule. His life was wrapped up in ours. By such community of life
+self-love is transfigured, and exalted into the purest self-forgetting.
+
+Thus it is with true marriage. The wedding of a human pair makes each
+the other's property. They are "one flesh" (ver. 31); and so long as
+the flesh endures there remains this consciousness of union, whose
+violation is deadly sin. As the Church is not her own, nor Christ His
+own since He became man with men, so the husband and wife are no longer
+independent and self-complete personalities, but incorporated into a new
+existence common to both. Their love must correspond to this fact. If
+the man loves himself, if he values his own limbs and tends and guards
+from injury his bodily frame (ver. 29), he must do the same equally by
+his wife; for her life and limbs are as a part of his own. This the
+apostle lays down as an obvious duty. Nature teaches the obligation, by
+every manly instinct.
+
+The saying the apostle quotes in verse 31 dates from the origin of the
+human family; it is taken from the lips of the first husband and father
+of the race, while as yet unstained by sin (Gen. ii. 23, 24). Christ
+infers from it the singleness and indelibility of the marriage covenant.
+But this doctrine, natural as it is, was not inferred by natural
+religion. The cultivated Greek took a wife for the production of
+children. Her rights put no restriction upon his appetite. Love was not
+in the marriage contract. If she received the maintenance due to her
+rank and the mistress-ship of the house, and was the mother of his
+lawful children, she had all that a free-born woman could demand. The
+slave-woman had no rights. Her body was at her owner's disposal. Nothing
+in Christianity appeared more novel and more severe, in comparison with
+the dissolute morals of the time, than the Christian view of marriage.
+Even Christ's Jewish disciples seemed to think the state of wedlock
+intolerable under the condition He imposed. This want of reverence and
+constancy between the sexes was a main cause of the degeneracy of the
+age. All virtues disappear with this one. Roman manliness and
+uprightness, Greek courtesy and courage, filial piety, civic worth,
+loyalty in friendship--the qualities that once in a high degree adorned
+the classic nations, were now rare amongst men. In the most exalted
+ranks infamous vices flourished; and purity of life was a cause for
+odium and suspicion.
+
+Amidst this seething mass of corruption the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus created new hearts and new homes. It kindled a pure fire on the
+desecrated hearth. It taught man and woman a chaste love; and their
+alliances were formed "in sanctification and honour, not in the passion
+of lust as it is with the Gentiles who know not God" (1 Thess. iv. 3-6).
+Every Christian house, thus based on an honourable and religious union,
+became the centre of a leaven that wrought upon the corrupt society
+around. It held forth an example of wedded loyalty and domestic joy
+beautiful and strange in that loveless Pagan world. Children grew up
+trained in pure and gentle manners. From that hour the hope of a better
+day began. The influence of the new ideal, filtrating everywhere into
+the surrounding heathenism and assimilating even before it converted the
+hostile world, raised society, though gradually and with many relapses,
+from the extreme debasement of the age of the Caesars. Never subsequently
+have the morals of civilized mankind sunk to a level quite so low. The
+Christian conception of love and marriage opened a new era for mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[139] See Dr. Maclaren's admirable words on this subject in _Colossians
+and Philemon_ (Expositor's Bible), pp. 336-40; and Dr. Dale's _Lectures
+on Ephesians_, Lect. xix., "Wives and Husbands."
+
+[140] In verse 24 St Paul resumes with =alla=, the _but_ of opposition
+and not mere contrast, indicating a case where the claims of husband and
+Saviour may, conceivably, be in competition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    "The Christ is the head of the Church, _being_ Himself the Saviour
+    of the body.... The Church is subject to the Christ in
+    everything....
+
+    "The Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He
+    might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with
+    the word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious
+    _Church_, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she
+    should be holy and without blemish....
+
+    "The Christ [nourisheth and cherisheth] the Church; because we are
+    members of His body. 'For this cause shall a man leave his father
+    and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become
+    one flesh.' This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ
+    and of the Church."--EPH. v. 23-32.
+
+
+We have extracted from the apostle's homily upon marriage the sentences
+referring to Christ and His Church, in order to gather up their
+collective import. The main topic of the epistle here again asserts
+itself; and under the figure of marriage St Paul brings to its
+conclusion his doctrine on the subject of the Church. This passage
+answers, theologically, a purpose similar to that of the allegory of
+Hagar and Sarah in the epistle to the Galatians: it lights up for the
+imagination the teaching and argument of the former part of the epistle;
+it shows how the doctrine of Christ and the Church has its counterpart
+in nature, as the struggle between the legal and evangelical spirit had
+its counterpart in the patriarchal history. The three detached
+paragraphs present us three considerations, of which we shall treat the
+second first in order of exposition: Christ's _love to the Church_; His
+_authority over the Church_; and _the mystery of the Church's origin in
+Him_.
+
+I. "Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church,
+and gave up Himself for her." This is parallel to the declaration of
+Galatians ii. 20: "He loved me; He gave up Himself for me." The
+sacrifice of the cross has at once its personal and its collective
+purpose. Both are to be kept in mind.
+
+On the one hand, we must value infinitely and joyfully assert our
+individual part in the redeeming love of the Son of God; but we must
+equally admit the sovereign rights of the Church in the Redeemer's
+passion. Our souls bow down before the glory of the love with which He
+has from eternity sought her for His own. There is in some Christians an
+absorption in the work of grace within their own hearts, an
+individualistic salvation-seeking that, like all selfishness, defeats
+its end; for it narrows and impoverishes the inner life thus sedulously
+cherished. The Church does not exist simply for the benefit of
+individual souls; it is an eternal institution, with an affiance to
+Christ, a calling and destiny of its own; within that universal sphere
+our personal destiny holds its particular place.
+
+It is "the Christ" who stands, throughout this context (vv. 23-29), over
+against "the Church" as her Lover and Husband; whereas in the context of
+Galatians ii. 20 we read "Christ"--the bare personal name--repeated
+again and again without the distinguishing article. _Christ_ is the
+Person whom the soul knows and loves, with whom it holds communion in
+the Spirit. _The Christ_ is the same regarded in the wide scope of His
+nature and office,--the Christ of humanity and of the ages. "The Christ"
+of this epistle expands the Saviour's title to its boundless
+significance, and gives breadth and length to that which in "Christ" is
+gathered up into a single point.[141]
+
+This Christ "gave Himself up for the Church,"--yielded Himself to the
+death which the sins of His people merited and brought upon Him. Under
+the same verb, the apostle says in Romans iv. 25: He "_was delivered_
+because of our trespasses, and raised up because of our
+justification"--the sacrifice being there regarded on its passive side.
+Here, as in Galatians ii. 20, the act is made His own,--a voluntary
+surrender. "No man taketh my life from me," He said (John x. 18). In His
+case alone amongst the sons of men, death was neither natural nor
+inevitable. His surrender of life was an absolute sacrifice. He "laid
+down His life for His friends," as no other friend of man could do--the
+One who died for all. The love measured by this sacrifice is
+proportionately great.
+
+The sayings of verses 25-27 set the glory of the vicarious death in a
+vivid light. Of such worth was the person of the Christ, of such
+significance and moral value His sacrificial death, that it weighed
+against the trespass, not of a man--Paul or any other--but of a world of
+men. He "purchased through His own blood," said Paul to the Ephesian
+elders, "the Church of God" (Acts xx. 28)--the whole flock that feeds in
+the pastures of the Great Shepherd, that has passed or will pass through
+the gates of His fold. Great was the honour and glory with which he was
+crowned, when led as victim to the altar of the world's atonement (Heb.
+ii. 9). Who will not say, as the meek Son of man treads so willingly
+His mournful path to Calvary, "Worthy is the Lamb!" Is not the heavenly
+Bridegroom worthy of the bride, that He consents to win by the sacrifice
+of Himself!
+
+He is worthy; and _she must be made worthy_. "He gave up Himself, that
+He might sanctify her,--that He might Himself present to Himself a
+glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the
+kind,--that she may be holy and without blemish." The sanctification of
+the Church is the grand purpose of redeeming grace. This was the design
+of God for His sons in Christ before the world's foundation, "that we
+should be holy and unblemished before Him" (i. 4). This, therefore, was
+the end of Christ's mission upon earth; this was the intention of His
+sacrificial death. "For their sakes," said Jesus concerning His
+disciples, "I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in
+truth" (John xvii. 19). His purchase of the Church is no selfish act. To
+God His Father Christ devotes every spirit of man that is yielded to
+Him. As the Priest of mankind it was His office thus to consecrate
+humanity, which is already in purpose and in essence "sanctified through
+the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb. x. 10).
+
+Only in this passage, where the apostle is thinking of the preparation
+of the Church for its perfect union with its Head, does he name Christ
+as our _Sanctifier_; in 1 Corinthians i. 2 he comes near this
+expression, addressing his readers as men "sanctified in Christ Jesus."
+In the epistle to the Hebrews this character is largely ascribed to Him,
+being the function of His priesthood. One in nature with the sanctified,
+Jesus our great Priest "sanctifies us through His own blood," so that
+with cleansed consciences we may draw near to the living God.[142] As
+Christ the Priest stands towards His people, so Christ the Husband
+towards His Church. He devotes her with Himself to God. He cleanses her
+that she may dwell with Him for ever, a spotless bride, dead unto sin
+and living unto God through Him.
+
+"That He might sanctify her, _having cleansed her_ in the laver of water
+by the word." The Church's purification is antecedent in thought to her
+sanctification through the sacrifice of Christ; and it is a means
+thereto. "Ye were washed, ye were sanctified," writes the apostle in 1
+Corinthians vi. 11, putting the two things in the same order. It is the
+order of doctrine which he has laid down in the epistle to the Romans,
+where sanctification is built on the foundation laid in justification
+through the blood of Christ. Through the virtue of the sacrificial death
+the Church in all her members was washed from the defilements of sin,
+that she might enter upon God's service. Of the same initial
+purification of the heart St John writes in his first epistle (i. 7-9):
+"The blood of Jesus, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin.... He is
+faithful and just, that He should forgive us our sins and cleanse us
+from all unrighteousness." This is "the redemption through Christ's
+blood," for which St Paul in his first words of praise called upon us to
+bless God (i. 7). It is the special distinction of the New Covenant,
+which renders possible its other gifts of grace, that "the worshippers
+once cleansed" need have "no further consciousness of sins" (Heb. x. 2,
+14-18). In the theological use here made of the idea of _cleansing_, St
+Paul comes into line with St John and the epistle to the Hebrews. The
+purification is nothing else than that which he has elsewhere styled
+_justification_. He employs the terms synonymously in the later epistle
+to Titus (ii. 14; iii. 7).
+
+"Having cleansed" is a phrase congruous with the figure of _the laver_,
+or _bath_ (comp. again Tit. 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 passage
+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 God. 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 God, 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 passed 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,
+"God's word--the Spirit's sword"; of Romans x. 8, "the word of faith
+which we proclaim"; of Luke i. 37, "the word from God 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 _verbum 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 God
+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 God of a
+good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." The vital
+constituent 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 God,--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 God 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 pass from her face: the worldly passions
+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 God!
+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 pass 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 God'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 assume
+the attitude 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 God; 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 assemblies.
+Royalties and nobilities, and the holders of popular power--all whose
+"names are named in this world," along with the principalities in
+heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of the Church must
+lay aside their robes and forget their titles, 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. God "chose
+us in Christ before the world's foundation" (i. 4). We were created in
+the Son of God'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 analogous to the
+derivation of the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in
+its ideal, and as conceived in the purpose of God, 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 God.... Man is the image and glory of God: 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 God 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 God 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 passage 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 analogy 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 God 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 God at the institution 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. God 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] =En rhemati=. =Logos= is word as expressive of _thought_. =Rhema=,
+the utterance of a living voice,--a _sentence_, _pronouncement_,
+_message_; it is the Greek term employed in all the passages 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 =Heneken toutou= of the original to =Anti
+toutou=, 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 God 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 God; 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 assembly 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 God.
+
+The Latin _pietas_ impressed a religious character upon filial duty.
+This word signified at once dutifulness towards the gods, 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 illustration 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 associated 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 God," 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 God giveth thee." This blessing is the heritage of dutiful children
+in every land. Those who have watched the history of godly 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 promptitude and faithfulness and kindliness of heart, which are the
+best guarantees for happiness and success in life. Through parental
+nurture "godliness" secures its "promise of the life that now is."
+
+Children are exhorted to submission: fathers to _gentleness_. "Do not,"
+the apostle says, "anger your children"; in the corresponding place in
+Colossians, "Do not irritate your children, lest they be disheartened"
+(ch. iii. 21). In these parallel texts two distinct verbs are rendered
+by the one English word "provoke." The Colossian passage warns against
+the chafing effect of parental exactions and fretfulness, that tend to
+break the child's spirit and spoil its temper. Our text warns the father
+against angering his child by unfair or oppressive treatment. From this
+verb comes the noun "wrath" (or "provocation") used in chapter iv. 26,
+denoting that stirring of anger which gives peculiar occasion to the
+devil.
+
+Not that the father is forbidden to cross his child's wishes, or to do
+anything or refuse anything that may excite its anger. Nothing is worse
+for a child than to find that parents fear its displeasure, and that it
+will gain its ends by passion. But the father must not be exasperating,
+must not needlessly thwart the child's inclinations and excite in order
+to subdue its anger, as some will do even of set purpose, thinking that
+in this way obedience is learnt. This policy may secure submission; but
+it is gained at the cost of a rankling sense of injustice.
+
+Household rule should be equally firm and kind, neither provoking nor
+avoiding the displeasure of its subjects, inflicting no severity for
+severity's sake, but shrinking from none that fidelity demands. With
+much parental fondness, there is sometimes in family government a want
+of seriousness and steady principle, an absence in father or mother of
+the sense that they are dealing with moral and responsible beings in
+their little ones, and not with toys, which is reflected in the caprice
+and self-indulgence of the children's maturer life. Such parents will
+give account hereafter of their stewardship with an inconsolable grief.
+
+It is almost superfluous to insist on the apostle's exhortation to treat
+children kindly. For them these are days of Paradise, compared with
+times not far distant. Never were the wants and the fancies of these
+small mortals catered for as they are now. In some households the danger
+lies at the opposite extreme from that of over-strictness. The children
+are idolized. Not their comfort and welfare only, but their humours and
+caprices become the law of the house. They are "nourished" indeed, but
+not "in the discipline and admonition of the Lord." It is a great
+unkindness to treat our children so that they shall be strangers to
+hardship and restriction, so that they shall not know what real
+obedience means, and have no reverence for age, no habits of deference
+and self-denial. It is the way to breed monsters of selfishness,
+pampered creatures who will be useless and miserable in adult life.
+
+"Discipline and admonition" are distinguished as positive and negative
+terms. The first is the "training up of the child in the way that he
+should go"; the second checks and holds him back from the ways in which
+he should not go. The former word (_paideia_)--denoting primarily
+_treating-as-a-boy_--signifies very often "chastisement";[149] but it
+has a wider sense, embracing instruction besides.[150] It includes the
+whole course of training by which the boy is reared into a
+man.--_Admonition_ is a still more familiar word with St Paul.[151] It
+may be reproof bearing upon errors in the past; or it may be warning,
+that points out dangers lying in the future. Both these services parents
+owe to their children. Admonition implies faults in the nature of the
+child, and wisdom in the father to see and correct them.
+
+"Foolishness," says the Hebrew proverb, "is bound up in the heart of a
+child." In the Old Testament discipline there was something over-stern.
+The "hardness of heart" censured by the Lord Jesus, which allowed of two
+mothers in the house, put barriers between the father and his offspring
+that rendered "the rod of correction" more needful than it is under the
+rule of Christ. But correction, in gentler or severer sort, there must
+be, so long as children spring from sinful parents. The child's
+conscience responds to the kindly and searching word of reproof, to the
+admonition of love. This faithful dealing with his children wins for the
+father in the end a deep gratitude, and makes his memory a guard in
+days of temptation and an object of tender reverence.
+
+The child's "obedience _in the Lord_" is its response to "the discipline
+and admonition _of the Lord_" exercised by its parents. The discipline
+which wise Christian fathers give their children, is the Lord's
+discipline applied through them. "Correction and instruction should
+proceed from the Lord and be directed by the Spirit of the Lord, in such
+a way that it is not so much the father who corrects his children and
+teaches them, as the Lord through him" (Monod). Thus the Father of whom
+every family on earth is named, within each Christian house works all in
+all. Thus the chief Shepherd, through His under-shepherds, guides and
+feeds the lambs of His flock. By the gate of His fold fathers and
+mothers themselves have entered; and the little ones follow with them.
+In the pastures of His word they nourish them, and rule them with His
+rod and staff. To their offspring they become an image of the Good
+Shepherd and the Father in heaven. Their office teaches them more of
+God's fatherly ways with themselves. From their children's humbleness
+and confidence, from their simple wisdom, their hopes and fears and
+ignorances, the elders learn deep and affecting lessons concerning their
+own relations to the heavenly Father.
+
+St Paul's instruction to fathers applies to all who have the charge of
+children: to schoolmasters of every degree, whose work, secular as it
+may be called, touches the springs of moral life and character; to
+teachers in the Sunday school, successors to the work that Christ
+assigned to Peter, of shepherding His lambs. These instructors supply
+the Lord's nurture to multitudes of children, in whose homes Christian
+faith and example are wanting. The ideas which children form of Christ
+and His religion, are gathered from what they see and hear in the
+school. Many a child receives its bias for life from the influence of
+the teacher before whom it sits on Sunday. The love and meekness of
+wisdom, or the coldness or carelessness of the one who thus stands
+between Christ and the infant soul, will make or mar its spiritual
+future.
+
+II. From the children of the house the apostle proceeds to address the
+_servants_--slaves as they were, until the gospel unbound their chains.
+The juxtaposition of children and slaves is full of significance; it is
+a tacit prophecy of emancipation. It brings the slave within the
+household, and gives a new dignity to domestic service.[152]
+
+The Greek philosophers regarded slavery as a fundamental institution,
+indispensable to the existence of civilized society. That the few might
+enjoy freedom and culture, the many were doomed to bondage. Aristotle
+defines the slave as an "animated tool," and the tool as an "inanimate
+slave." Two or three facts will suffice to show how utterly slaves were
+deprived of human rights in the brilliant times of the classic humanism.
+In Athens it was the legal rule to admit the evidence of a slave only
+upon torture, as that of a freeman was received upon oath. Amongst the
+Romans, if a master had been murdered in his house, the whole of his
+domestic servants, amounting sometimes to hundreds, were put to death
+without inquiry. It was a common mark of hospitality to assign to a
+guest a female slave for the night, like any other convenience. Let it
+be remembered that the slave population outnumbered the free citizens of
+the Roman and Greek cities by many times; that they were frequently of
+the same race, and might be even superior in education to their masters.
+Indeed, it was a lucrative trade to rear young slaves and train them in
+literary and other accomplishments, and then to let them out in these
+capacities for hire. Let any one consider the condition of society which
+all this involved, and he will have some conception of the degradation
+in which the masses of mankind were plunged, and of the crushing tyranny
+that the world laboured under in the boasted days of republican liberty
+and Hellenic art.
+
+No wonder that the new religion was welcome to the slaves of the Pagan
+cities, and that they flocked into the Church. Welcome to them was the
+voice that said: "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy
+laden"; welcome the proclamation that made them Christ's freedmen,
+"brethren beloved" where they had been "animated tools" (Philem. 16). In
+the light of such teaching, slavery was doomed. Its re-adoption by
+Christian nations, and the imposition of its yoke on the negro race, is
+amongst the great crimes of history,--a crime for which the white man
+has had to pay rivers of his blood.
+
+The social fabric, as it then existed, was so entirely based upon
+slavery, that for Christ and the apostles to have proclaimed its
+abolition would have meant universal anarchy. In writing to Philemon
+about his converted slave Onesimus, the apostle does not say, "Release
+him," though the word seems to be trembling on his lips. In 1
+Corinthians vii. 20-24 he even advises the slave who has the chance of
+manumission to remain where he is, content to be "the Lord's freedman."
+To the Christian slave what mattered it who ruled over his perishing
+body! his spirit was free, death would be his discharge and
+enfranchisement. No decree is issued to abolish bond-service between man
+and man; but it was destroyed in its essence by the spirit of Christian
+brotherhood. It melted away in the spread of the gospel, as snow and
+winter melt before the face of spring.
+
+"Ye slaves, obey your lords according to the flesh." The apostle does
+not disguise the slave's subservience; nor does he speak in the language
+of pity or of condescension. He appeals as a man to men and equals, on
+the ground of a common faith and service to Christ. He awakens in these
+degraded tools of society the sense of spiritual manhood, of conscience
+and loyalty, of love and faith and hope. As in Colossians iii. 22-iv. 1,
+the apostle designates the earthly master not by his common title
+(_despotes_), but by the very word (_kyrios_) that is the title of the
+_Lord_ Christ, giving the slave in this way to understand that he has,
+in common with his master (ver. 9), a higher Lord in the spirit. "Ye are
+slaves to the Lord Christ!" (Col. iii. 24). St Paul is accustomed to
+call himself "a slave of Christ Jesus."[153] Nay, it is even said, in
+Philippians ii. 7, that Christ Jesus "took the form of a slave!"
+
+How much there was, then, to console the Christian bondman for his lot.
+In self-abnegation, in the willing forfeiture of personal rights, in his
+menial and unrequited tasks, in submission to insult and injustice, he
+found a holy joy. His was a path in which he might closely follow the
+steps of the great Servant of mankind. His position enabled him to
+"adorn the Saviour's doctrine" above other men (Tit. ii. 9, 10).
+Affectionate, gentle, bearing injury with joyful courage, the Christian
+slave held up to that hardened and jaded Pagan age the example which it
+most required. God chose the base things of the world to bring to nought
+the mighty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The relations of servant and master will endure, in one shape or other,
+while the world stands. And the apostle's injunctions bear upon servants
+of every order. We are all, in our various capacities, servants of the
+community. The moral worth of our service and its blessing to ourselves
+depend on the conditions that are here laid down.
+
+1. There must be _a genuine care for our work_.
+
+"Obey," he says, "with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart,
+as unto the Christ." The fear enjoined is no dread of human displeasure,
+of the master's whip or tongue. It is the same "fear and trembling" with
+which we are bidden to "work out our own salvation" (Phil. ii. 12). The
+inward work of the soul's salvation and the outward work of the busy
+hands labouring in the mine or at the loom, or in the lowliest domestic
+duties,--all alike are to be performed under a solemn responsibility to
+God and in the presence of Christ, the Lord of nature and of men, who
+understands every sort of work, and will render to each of His servants
+a just and exact reward. No man, whether he be minister of state or
+stable-groom, will dare to do heedless work, who lives and acts in that
+august Presence,--
+
+    "As ever in the great Task-master's eye."
+
+2. The sense of Christ's Lordship ensures _honesty in work_.
+
+So the apostle continues: "Not with _eye-service_, as _men-pleasers_."
+Both these are rare compound words,--the former indeed occurring only
+here and in the companion letter, being coined, probably, by the writer
+for this use. It is the common fault and temptation of servants in all
+degrees to observe the master's eye, and to work busily or slackly as
+they are watched or not. Such workmen act as they do, because they look
+to men and not to God. Their work is without conscience and
+self-respect. The visible master says "Well done!" But there is another
+Master looking on, who says "Ill done!" to all pretentious doings and
+works of eye-service,--who sees not as man sees, but judges with the act
+the motive and intent.
+
+              "Not on the vulgar mass
+              Called 'work' must sentence pass,
+    Things done, which took the eye and had the price."
+
+In His book of accounts there is a stern reckoning in store for
+deceitful dealers and the makers-up of unsound goods, in whatever
+handicraft or headcraft they are engaged.
+
+Let us all adopt St Paul's maxim; it will be an immense economy. What
+armies of overlookers and inspectors we shall be able to dismiss, when
+every servant works as well behind his master's back as to his face,
+when every manufacturer and shopkeeper puts himself in the purchaser's
+place and deals as he would have others deal with him. It was for the
+Christian slaves of the Greek trading cities to rebuke the Greek spirit
+of fraud and trickery, by which the common dealings of life in all
+directions were vitiated.
+
+3. To the carefulness and honesty of the slave's daily labour he must
+even add _heartiness_: "as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from
+the soul, with good will doing service, as to the Lord and not to men."
+
+They must do _the will of God_ in the service of men, as Jesus Christ
+Himself did it,--and with His meekness and fortitude and unwearied love.
+Their work will thus be rendered from inner principle, with thought and
+affection and resolution spent upon it. That alone is the work of a man,
+whether he preaches or ploughs, which comes from the soul behind the
+hands and the tongue, into which the workman puts as much of his soul,
+of himself, as the work is capable of holding.
+
+4. Add to all this, the servant's _anticipation of the final reward_. In
+each case, "whatsoever one may do that is good, this he will receive
+from the Lord, whether he be a bondman or a freeman." The complementary
+truth is given in the Colossian letter: "He who does wrong, will receive
+back the wrong that he did."
+
+The doctrine of equal retribution at the judgement-seat of Christ
+matches that of equal salvation at the cross of Christ. How trifling and
+evanescent the differences of earthly rank appear, in view of these
+sublime realities. There is a "Lord in heaven," alike for servant and
+for master, "with whom is no respect of persons" (ver. 9). This grand
+conviction beats down all caste-pride. It teaches justice to the mighty
+and the proud; it exalts the humble, and assures the down-trodden of
+redress. No bribery or privilege, no sophistry or legal cunning will
+avail, no concealment or distortion of the facts will be possible in
+that Court of final appeal. The servant and the master, the monarch and
+his meanest subject will stand before the bar of Jesus Christ upon the
+same footing. And the poor slave, wonderful to think, who was faithful
+in the "few things" of his drudging earthly lot, will receive the "many
+things" of a son of God and a joint-heir with Christ!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_And_, _ye lords_, do the same things towards them"--be as good to your
+slaves as they are required to be towards you. A bold application this
+of Christ's great rule: "What you would that men should do to you, do
+even so to them." In many instances this rule suggested _liberation_,
+where the slave was prepared for freedom. In any case, the master is to
+put himself in his dependant's place, and to act by him as he would
+desire himself to be treated if their positions were reversed.
+
+Slaves were held to be scarcely human. Deceit and sensuality were
+regarded as their chief characteristics. They must be ruled, the
+moralists said, by the fear of punishment. This was the only way to keep
+them in their place. The Christian master adopts a different policy. He
+"desists from threatening"; he treats his servants with even-handed
+justice, with fit courtesy and consideration. The recollection is ever
+present to his mind, that he must give account of his charge over each
+one of them to his Lord and theirs. So he will make, as far as in him
+lies, his own domain an image of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[148] We cannot absolutely _prove_ infant baptism from the New Testament
+texts adduced on its behalf; but they afford a strong presumption in its
+favour, which is confirmed on the one hand by the analogy of
+circumcision, and on the other by the immemorial usage of the early
+Church. Titus i. 6 shows that stress was laid on the faith of children,
+and that discrimination was used in their recognition as Church members.
+
+[149] 1 Cor. xi. 32; Heb. xii. 5, 11, etc.
+
+[150] Acts vii. 22, xxii. 3; Rom. ii. 20; 2 Tim. ii. 25, iii. 14.
+
+[151] 1 Cor. x. 11; Col. i. 28, iii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 14, etc.
+
+[152] The word _family_ (Latin _familia_) denoted originally the
+servants of the establishment, the domestic slaves. Its modern usage is
+an index to the elevating influence of Christianity upon social
+relations.
+
+[153] Rom. i. 1; 2 Cor. iv. 5; Gal. i. 10, etc.
+
+
+
+
+_ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+CHAPTER vi. 10-20.
+
+    =Idou ho Satanas exetesato hymas, tou siniasai hos to siton.=
+
+    LUKE xxii. 31.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+_THE FOES OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    "From henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the might of His
+    strength. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not
+    against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
+    powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
+    spiritual _hosts_ of wickedness, in the heavenly _places_."--EPH.
+    vi. 10-12.
+
+
+We follow the Revised reading of the opening word of this paragraph, and
+the preferable rendering given by the Revisers in their margin. The
+adverb is the same that is found in Galatians vi. 17 ("_Henceforth_ let
+no man trouble me"); not that used in Philippians iii. 1 and elsewhere
+("_Finally_, my brethren," etc.). The copyists have conformed our text,
+seemingly, to the latter passage. We are recalled to the circumstances
+and occasion of the epistle. High as St Paul soars in meditation, he
+does not forget the situation of his readers. The words of chapter iv.
+14 showed us how well aware he is of the dangers looming before the
+Asian Churches.
+
+The epistle to the Colossians is altogether a letter of conflict (see
+ch. ii. 1 ff.). In writing that letter St Paul was wrestling with
+spiritual powers, mighty for evil, which had commenced their attack upon
+this outlying post of the Ephesian province. He sees in the sky the
+cloud portending a desolating storm. The clash of hostile arms is heard
+approaching. This is no time for sloth or fear, for a faith half-hearted
+or half-equipped. "You have need of your best manhood and of all the
+weapons of the spiritual armoury, to hold your ground in the conflict
+that is coming upon you. _Henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the
+might of His strength._"
+
+It is the apostle's call to arms!--"Be strengthened in the Lord," he
+says (to render the imperative literally: so in 2 Timothy ii. I). _Make
+His strength your own._ The strength he bids them assume is _power_,
+_ability_, strength adequate to its end.[154] "The might of His
+strength" repeats the combination of terms we found in chapter i. 19.
+That sovereign power of the Almighty which raised Jesus our Lord from
+the dead, belongs to the Lord Christ Himself. From its resources He will
+clothe and arm His people. "In the Lord," says Israel evermore, "is
+righteousness and strength. The rock of my salvation and my refuge is in
+God." The Church's strength lies in the almightiness of her risen Lord,
+the Captain of her warfare.
+
+"The _panoply_ of God" (ver. II) reminds us of the saying of Jesus in
+reference to His casting out of demons, recorded in Luke xi. 21, 22--the
+only other instance in the New Testament of this somewhat rare Greek
+word. The Lord Jesus describes Himself in conflict with Satan, who as
+"the strong one armed keeps his possessions in peace,"--until there
+"come upon him the stronger than he," who "conquers him and takes away
+his panoply wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils." In this text
+the situation is reversed; and the "full armour" belongs to Christ's
+servants, who are equipped to meet the counter-attack of Satan and the
+powers of evil. There is a Divine and a Satanic panoply--arms tempered
+in heaven and in hell, to be wielded by the sons of light and of
+darkness respectively (comp. Rom. xiii. 12). The weapons of warfare on
+the two sides are even as the two leaders that furnish them--"the strong
+one armed" and the "Stronger than he." Mightier are faith and love than
+unbelief and hate; "greater is He that is in you than he that is in the
+world."
+
+Let us review the forces marshalled against us,--their _nature_, their
+_mode of assault_, and _the arena of the contest_.
+
+1. The Asian Christians had to "stand against _the wiles_ [_schemes_, or
+_methods_[155]] _of the devil_."
+
+Unquestionably, the New Testament assumes the personality of Satan. This
+belief runs counter to modern thought, governed as it is by the tendency
+to depersonalize existence. The conception of evil spirits given us in
+the Bible is treated as an obsolete superstition; and the name of the
+Evil One with multitudes serves only to point a profane or careless
+jest. To Jesus Christ, it is very certain, Satan was no figure of
+speech; but a thinking and active being, of whose presence and influence
+He saw tokens everywhere in this evil world (comp. ii. 2). If the Lord
+Jesus "speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen" concerning
+the mysteries of the other world, there can be no question of the
+existence of a personal devil. If in any matter He was bound, as a
+teacher of spiritual truth, to disavow Jewish superstition, surely
+Christ was so bound in this matter. Yet instead of repudiating the
+current belief in Satan and the demons, He earnestly accepts it; and it
+entered into His own deepest experiences. In the visible forms of sin
+Jesus saw the shadow of His great antagonist. "From the Evil One" He
+taught His disciples to pray that they might be delivered. The victims
+of disease and madness whom He healed, were so many captives rescued
+from the malignant power of Satan. And when Jesus went to meet His
+death, He viewed it as the supreme conflict with the usurper and
+oppressor who claimed to be "the prince of this world."[156]
+
+Satan is the consummate form of depraved and untruthful intellect. We
+read of his "thoughts," his "schemes," his subtlety and deceit and
+impostures;[157] of his slanders against God and man,[158] from which,
+indeed, the name devil (_diabolus_) is given him. Falsehood and hatred
+are his chief qualities. Hence Jesus called him "the manslayer" and "the
+father of falsehood" (John viii. 44). He was the first sinner, and the
+fountain of sin (1 John iii. 8). All who do unrighteousness or hate
+their brethren are, so far, his offspring (1 John iii. 10). With a realm
+so wide, Satan might well be called not only "the prince," but the very
+"god of this world" (2 Cor. iv. 4). Plausibly he said to Jesus, in
+showing Him the kingdoms of the world, at the time when Tiberius Caesar
+occupied the imperial throne: "All this authority and glory are
+delivered unto me. To whomsoever I will, I give it." His power is
+exercised with an intelligence perhaps as great as any can be that is
+morally corrupt; but it is limited on all sides. In dealing with Jesus
+Christ he showed conspicuous ignorance.
+
+Chief amongst the wiles of the devil at this time was the "scheme of
+error," the cunningly woven net of the Gnostical delusion, in which the
+apostle feared that the Asian Churches would be entangled. Satan's
+empire is ruled with a settled policy, and his warfare carried on with a
+system of strategy which takes advantage of every opening for
+attack.[159] The manifold combinations of error, the various arts of
+seduction and temptation, the ten thousand forms of the deceit of
+unrighteousness constitute "the wiles of the devil."
+
+Such is the gigantic opponent with whom Christ and the Church have been
+in conflict through all ages. But Satan does not stand alone. In verse
+12 there is called up before us an imposing array of spiritual powers.
+They are "the angels of the devil," whom Jesus set in contrast with the
+angels of God that surround and serve the Son of man (Matt. xxv. 41).
+These unhappy beings are, again, identified with the "demons," or
+"unclean spirits," having Satan for their "prince," whom our Lord
+expelled wherever He found them infesting the bodies of men.[160] They
+are represented in the New Testament as fallen beings, expelled from a
+"principality" and "habitation of their own" (Jude 6) which they once
+enjoyed, and reserved for the dreadful punishment which Christ calls
+"the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." They are here
+entitled _principalities_ and _powers_ (or _dominions_), after the same
+style as the angels of God, to whose ranks, as we are almost compelled
+to suppose, these apostates once belonged.
+
+In contrast with the "angels of light" (2 Cor. xi. 14) and "ministering
+spirits" of the kingdom of God (Heb. i. 14), the angels of Satan have
+constituted themselves _the world-rulers of this darkness_. We find the
+compound expression _cosmo-krator_ (world-ruler) in later rabbinical
+usage, borrowed from the Greek and applied to "the angel of death,"
+before whom all mortal things must bow. Possibly, St Paul brought the
+term with him from the school of Gamaliel. Satan being the god of this
+world and swaying "the dominion of darkness,"[161] according to the same
+vocabulary his angels are "the rulers of the world's darkness"; and the
+provinces of the empire of evil fall under their direction.
+
+The darkness surrounding the apostle in Rome and the Churches in
+Asia--"this darkness," he says--was dense and foul. With Nero and his
+satellites the masters of empire, the world seemed to be ruled by demons
+rather than by men. The frightful wish of one of the Psalmists was
+fulfilled for the heathen world: "Set a wicked man over him, and let
+Satan stand at his right hand."
+
+The last of St Paul's synonyms for the satanic forces, "the spiritual
+[powers] of wickedness," may have served to warn the Church against
+reading a political sense into the passage and regarding the civil
+constitution of society and the visible world-rulers as objects for
+their hatred. Pilate was a specimen, by no means amongst the worst, of
+the men in power. Jesus regarded him with pity. His real antagonist
+lurked behind these human instruments. The above phrase, "spirituals of
+wickedness," is Hebraistic, like "judge" and "steward of
+unrighteousness,"[162] and is equivalent to "wicked spirits." The
+adjective "spiritual," which does duty for a substantive--"the
+spiritual [forces, or elements] of wickedness"[163]--brings out the
+collective character of these hostile powers.
+
+St Paul's demonology[164] is identical with that of Jesus Christ. The
+two doctrines stand or fall together. The advent of Christ appears to
+have stirred to extraordinary activity the satanic powers. They asserted
+themselves in Palestine at this particular time in the most open and
+terrifying manner. In an age of scepticism and science like our own, it
+belongs to "the wiles of the devil" to work obscurely. This is dictated
+by obvious policy. Moreover, his power is greatly reduced. Satan is no
+longer the god of this world, since Christianity rose to its ascendant.
+The manifestations of demonism are, at least in Christian lands, vastly
+less conspicuous than in the first age of the Church. But those are more
+bold than wise who deny their existence, and who profess to explain all
+occult phenomena and phrenetic moral aberrations by physical causes. The
+popular idolatries of his own day, with their horrible rites and inhuman
+orgies, St Paul ascribed to devilry. He declared that those who sat at
+the feast of the idol and gave sanction to its worship, were partaking
+of "the cup and the table of demons" (1 Cor. x. 20, 21). Heathen
+idolatries at the present time are, in many instances, equally
+diabolical; and those who witness them cannot easily doubt the truth of
+the representations of Scripture upon this subject.
+
+II. The conflict against these spiritual enemies is essentially a
+_spiritual_ conflict. "Our struggle is not against blood and flesh."
+
+They are not human antagonists whom the Church has to fear,--mortal men
+whom we can look in the face and meet with equal courage, in the contest
+where hot blood and straining muscle do their part. The fight needs
+mettle of another kind. The foes of our faith are untouched by carnal
+weapons. They come upon us without sound or footfall. They assail the
+will and conscience; they follow us into the regions of spiritual
+thought, of prayer and meditation. Hence the weapons of our warfare,
+like those which the apostle wielded (2 Cor. x. 2-5), "are not carnal,"
+but spiritual and "mighty toward God."
+
+It is true that the Asian Churches had visible enemies arrayed against
+them. There were the "wild beasts" with whom St Paul "fought at
+Ephesus," the heathen mob of the city, sworn foes of every despiser of
+their great goddess Artemis. There was Alexander the coppersmith, ready
+to do the apostle evil, and "the Jews from Asia," a party of whom all
+but murdered him in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 27-36); there was Demetrius the
+silversmith, instigator of the tumult which drove him from Ephesus, and
+"the craftsmen of like occupation," whose trade was damaged by the
+progress of the new religion. These were formidable opponents, strong in
+everything that brings terror to flesh and blood. But after all, these
+were of small account in St Paul's view; and the Church need never
+dread material antagonism. The centre of the struggle lies elsewhere.
+The apostle looks beyond the ranks of his earthly foes to the power of
+Satan by which they are animated and directed,--"impotent pieces of the
+game he plays." From this hidden region he sees impending an attack more
+perilous than all the violence of persecution, a conflict urged with
+weapons of finer proof than the sharp steel of sword and axe, and with
+darts tipped with a fiercer fire than that which burns the flesh or
+devours the goods.
+
+Even in outward struggles against worldly power, our wrestling is not
+simply against blood and flesh. Calvin makes a bold application of the
+passage when he says: "This sentence we should remember so often as we
+are tempted to revengefulness, under the smart of injuries from men. For
+when nature prompts us to fling ourselves upon them with all our might,
+this unreasonable passion will be checked and reined in suddenly, when
+we consider that these men who trouble us are nothing more than darts
+cast by the hand of Satan; and that while we stoop to pick up these, we
+shall expose ourselves to the full force of his blows." _Vasa sunt_,
+says Augustine of human troublers, _alius utitur_; _organa sunt, alius
+tangit_.
+
+The crucial assaults of evil, in many instances, come in no outward and
+palpable guise. There are sinister influences that affect the spirit
+more directly, fires that search its inmost fibres, a darkness that
+sweeps down upon the very light that is in us threatening its
+extinction. "Doubts, the spectres of the mind," haunt it; clouds brood
+over the interior sky and fierce storms sweep down on the soul, that
+rise from beyond the seen horizon. "Jesus was led of the Spirit into the
+wilderness, to be tempted of the devil." Away from the tracks of men
+and the seductions of flesh and blood the choicest spirits have been
+tested and schooled. So they are tempered in the spiritual furnace to a
+fineness which turns the edge of the sharpest weapons the world may use
+against them.
+
+Some men are constitutionally more exposed than others to these interior
+assaults. There are conditions of the brain and nerves, tendencies lying
+deep in the organism, that give points of vantage to the enemy of souls.
+These are the opportunities of the tempter; they do not constitute the
+temptation itself, which comes from a hidden and objective source.
+Similarly in the trials of the Church, in the great assaults made upon
+her vital truths, historical conditions and the external movements of
+the age furnish the material for the conflicts through which it has to
+pass; but the spring and moving agent, the master will that dominates
+these hostile forces is that of Satan.
+
+The Church was engaged in a double conflict--of the flesh and of the
+spirit. On the one hand, it was assailed by the material seductions of
+heathenism and the terrors of ruthless persecution. On the other hand,
+it underwent a severe intellectual conflict with the systems of error
+that were rooted in the mind of the age. These forces opposed the
+Christian truth from without; but they became much more dangerous when
+they found their way within the Church, vitiating her teaching and
+practice, and growing like tares among the wheat. It is of heresy more
+than persecution that the apostle is thinking, when he writes these
+ominous words. Not blood and flesh, but the mind and spirit of the Asian
+believers will bear the brunt of the attack that the craft of the devil
+is preparing for the apostolic Church.
+
+III. The last clause of verse 12, _in the heavenly places_, refuses to
+combine with the above description of the powers hostile to the Church.
+The heavenly places are the abode of God and the blessed angels. This is
+the region where the Father has blessed us in Christ (i. 3); where He
+seated the Christ at His own right hand (i. 20), and has in some sense
+seated us with Christ (ii. 6); and where the angelic princedoms dwell
+who follow with keen and studious sympathy the Church's fortunes (iii.
+10). To locate the devil and his angels _there_ seems to us highly
+incongruous; the juxtaposition is out of the question with St Paul.
+Chapter ii. 2 gives no real support to this view: supposing "the air" to
+be literally intended in that passage, it belongs to _earth_ and not to
+heaven.[165] Nor do the parallels from other Scriptures adduced supply
+any but the most precarious basis for an interpretation against which
+the use of the exalted phrase in our epistle revolts.
+
+No; Satan and his hosts do not dwell with Christ and the holy angels "in
+the heavenly places." But the Church dwells there already, by her faith;
+and it is in the heavenly places of her faith and hope that she is
+assailed by the powers of hell. This final prepositional clause should
+be separated by a comma from the words immediately foregoing; it forms a
+distinct predicate to the sentence contained in verse 12. It specifies
+the _locality_ of the struggle; it marks out the battle-field. "Our
+wrestling is ... in the heavenly places."[166] So we construe the
+sentence, following the ancient Greek commentators.
+
+The life of the Church "is hid with the Christ in God"; her treasure is
+laid up in heaven. She is assailed by a philosophy and vain deceit that
+perverts her highest doctrines, that clouds her vision of Christ and
+limits His glory, and threatens to drag her down from the high places
+where she sits with her ascended Lord.[167] Such was, in effect, the aim
+of the Colossian heresy, and of the great Gnostical movement to which
+this speculation was a prelude, that for a century and more entangled
+Christian faith in its metaphysical subtleties and false mysticism. The
+epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike the leading note of the
+controversies of the Church in this region during its first ages. Their
+character was thoroughly transcendental. "The heavenly things" were the
+subject-matter of the great conflicts of this epoch.
+
+The questions of religious controversy characteristic of our own times,
+though not identical with those of Colossae or Ephesus, concern matters
+equally high and vital. It is not this or that doctrine that is now at
+stake--the nature or extent of the atonement, the procession of the Holy
+Spirit from the Son with the Father, the verbal or plenary inspiration
+of Scripture; but the personal being of God, the historical truth of
+Christianity, the reality of the supernatural,--these and the like
+questions, which formed the accepted basis and the common assumptions of
+former theological discussions, are now brought into dispute. Religion
+has to justify its very existence. Christianity must answer for its
+life, as at the beginning. God is denied. Worship is openly renounced.
+Our treasures in heaven are proclaimed to be worthless and illusive.
+The entire spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to the
+region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties of modern
+religious thought lie at the foundation of things, and touch the core of
+the spiritual life. Unbelief appears, in some quarters, to be more
+serious and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics and
+ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and immortality. The
+Churches are engaged in trivial contentions with each other, while the
+enemy pushes his way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.
+
+"The apostle incites the readers," says Chrysostom, "by the thought of
+the prize at stake. When he has said that our enemies are powerful, he
+adds thereto that these are great possessions which they seek to wrest
+from us. When he says _in the heavenly places_, this implies _for the
+heavenly things_. How it must rouse and sober us to know that the hazard
+is for great things, and great will be the prize of victory. Our foe
+strives to take _heaven_ from us." Let the Church be stripped of all her
+temporalities, and driven naked as at first into the wilderness. She
+carries with her the crown jewels; and her treasure is unimpaired, so
+long as faith in Christ and the hope of heaven remain firm in her heart.
+But let these be lost; let heaven and the Father in heaven fade with our
+childhood's dreams; let Christ go back to His grave--then we are utterly
+undone. We have lost our all in all!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[154] =Endynamousthe= [from =dynamis=] =en Kyrio kai en to kratei tes
+ischyos autou.= See the note on these synonyms, on p. 76. Comp., for
+this verb, Col. i. II; 2 Tim. iv. 17; Phil. iv. 13: =Panta ischyo en to
+endynamounti me=,--"I have strength for everything in Him that _enables_
+me."]
+
+[155] Comp. remark on =methodeia= (iv. 14), p. 247.
+
+[156] John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11: comp. Luke iv. 5-7; Heb. ii. 14.
+
+[157] 2 Cor. ii. 11, xi. 3; 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10; 2 Tim. ii. 26, etc.
+
+[158] Rev. xii, 7-10; Gen. iii. 4, 5; Zech. iii. 1; Job i.
+
+[159] Ch. iv. 27; 2 Cor. ii. 11; Luke xxii. 31.
+
+[160] Luke x. 17-20, xi. 14-26.
+
+[161] Col. i. 13: comp. Acts xxvi. 18, etc.
+
+[162] Luke xvi. 8, xviii. 6.
+
+[163] =Ta pneumatika tes ponerias.=
+
+[164] Mr. Moule aptly observes, in his excellent and most useful
+Commentary on Ephesians in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_: St Paul's "testimony to the real and objective existence" of
+evil spirits "gains in strength when it is remembered that the epistle
+was addressed (at least, among other designations) to Ephesus, and that
+Ephesus (see Acts xix.) was a peculiarly active scene of asserted
+magical and other dealings with the unseen darkness. Supposing that the
+right line to take in dealing with such beliefs and practices had been
+to say that the whole basis of them was a fiction of the human mind, not
+only would such a verse as this [vi. 12] not have been written, but, we
+may well assume, something would have been written strongly
+contradictory to the thought of it" (p. 176).
+
+[165] See p. 103.
+
+[166] The objection against the common rendering taken from the absence
+of the Greek article (=ta=) before the phrase =en tois epouraniois=,
+required to link it to =ta pneumatika tes ponerias=, is not decisive.
+
+[167] Col. ii. 8-10, iii. 1-4; Phil. iii. 20, 21: comp. Eph. i. 3, ii.
+6, 18, iv. 10, 15; Heb. vi. 19, 20, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+_THE DIVINE PANOPLY._
+
+    "Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    withstand in the evil day, and, having conquered all, to stand.
+    Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put
+    on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with
+    the readiness of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of
+    faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of
+    the evil _one_. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
+    the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and
+    supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching
+    thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the
+    saints."--EPH. vi. 13-18.
+
+
+_Stand_ is the watchword for this battle, the apostle's order of the
+day: "that you may be able to _stand_ against the stratagems of the
+devil, ... that you may be able to _withstand_ in the evil day, and
+mastering all your enemies[168] to _stand_.... _Stand_ therefore,
+girding your loins about with truth." The apostle is fond of this
+martial style, and such appeals are frequent in the letters of this
+period.[169] The Gentile believers are raised to the heavenly places of
+fellowship with Christ, and invested with the lofty character of sons
+and heirs of God: let them hold their ground; let them maintain the
+honour of their calling and the wealth of their high estate, standing
+fast in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. _Pro aris et focis_ the
+patriot draws his sword, and manfully repels the invader. Even so the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus contends for his heavenly city and the
+household of faith. He defends the dearest interests and hopes of human
+life.
+
+This defence is needed, for an "evil day" is at hand! This emphatic
+reference points to something more definite than the general day of
+temptation that is co-extensive with our earthly life. St Paul foresaw a
+crisis of extreme danger impending over the young Church of Christ. The
+prophecies of Jesus taught His disciples, from the first, that His
+kingdom could only prevail by means of a severe conflict, and that some
+desperate struggle would precede the final Messianic triumph. This
+prospect looms before the minds of the New Testament writers, as "the
+day of Jehovah" dominated the imagination of the Hebrew prophets. Paul's
+apocalypse in 1 and 2 Thessalonians is full of reminiscences of Christ's
+visions of judgement. It culminates in the prediction of the evil day of
+Antichrist, which is to usher in the second, glorious coming of the Lord
+Jesus. The consummation, as the apostle was then inclined to think,
+might arrive within that generation (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17), although he
+declares its times and seasons wholly unknown. In his later epistles,
+and in this especially, it is clear that he anticipated a longer
+duration for the existing order of things; and "the evil day" for which
+the Asian Churches are to prepare can scarcely have denoted, to the
+apostle's mind, the final day of Antichrist, though it may well be an
+epoch of similar nature and a token and shadow of the last things.
+
+In point of fact, a great secular crisis was now approaching. The six
+years (64-70 after Christ) extending from the fire of Rome to the fall
+of Jerusalem, were amongst the most fateful and calamitous recorded in
+history. This period was, in a very real sense, the day of judgement for
+Israel and the ancient world. It was a foretaste of the ultimate doom of
+the kingdom of evil amongst men; and through it Christ appears to have
+looked forward to the end of the world. Already "the days are evil" (v.
+16); and "the evil day" is at hand--a time of terror and despair for all
+who have not a firm faith in the kingdom of God.
+
+Two chief characteristics marked this crisis, as it affected the people
+of Christ: _persecution from without_, and _apostasy within the Church_
+(Matt. xxiv. 5, 8-12). To the latter feature St Paul refers
+elsewhere.[170] Of persecution he took less account, for this was indeed
+his ordinary lot, and had already visited his Churches; but it was
+afterwards to assume a more violent and appalling form.
+
+When we turn to the epistle to the Seven Churches (Rev. ii., iii.)
+written in the next ensuing period, we find a fierce battle raging,
+resembling that for which this letter warns the Asian Churches to
+prepare. The storm which our apostle foresees, had then burst. The
+message addressed to each Church concludes with a promise to "him that
+overcometh." To the faithful it is said: "I know thy endurance." The
+angel of the Church of Pergamum dwells where is "the throne of Satan,"
+and where "Antipas the faithful martyr was killed." There also, says the
+Lord Jesus, "are those who hold the teaching of Balaam, and the teaching
+of the Nicolaitans," with whom "I will make war with the sword of my
+mouth" (comp. Eph. vi. 17). Laodicea has shrunk from the trial, and
+grown rich by the world's friendship. Thyatira "suffers the woman
+Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce" the
+servants of Christ. Sardis has but "a few names that have not defiled
+their garments." Even Ephesus, though she had tried the false teachers
+and found them wanting (surely Paul's epistles to Timothy had helped her
+in this examination), has yet "left her first love." The day of trial
+has proved an evil day to these Churches. Satan has been allowed to sift
+them; and while some good wheat remains, much of the faith of the
+numerous and prosperous communities of the province of Asia has turned
+out to be faulty and vain. The presentiments that weighed on St Paul's
+mind when four years ago he took leave of the Ephesian elders at
+Miletus, and which reappear in this passage, were only too well
+justified by the course of events. Indeed, the history of the Church in
+this region has been altogether mournful and admonitory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it is time to look at the _armour_ in which St Paul bids his readers
+equip themselves against the evil day. It consists of seven weapons,
+offensive or defensive--if we count prayer amongst them: the _girdle of
+truth_, the _breastplate of righteousness_, the _shoes of readiness to
+bear the message of peace_, the _shield of faith_, the _helmet of
+salvation_, the _sword of the word_, and the continual _cry of prayer_.
+
+1. In girding himself for the field, the first thing the soldier does is
+to fasten round his waist the military _belt_. With this he binds in his
+under-garments, that there may be nothing loose or trailing about him,
+and braces up his limbs for action. Peace admits of relaxation. The
+girdle is unclasped; the muscles are unstrung. But everything about the
+warrior is tense and firm; his dress, his figure and movements speak of
+decision and concentrated energy. He stands before us an image of
+resolute conviction, of _a mind made up_. Such a picture the words "girt
+about with truth" convey to us.
+
+The epistle is pervaded by the sense of the Church's need of
+intellectual conviction. Many of the Asian believers were children,
+half-enlightened and irresolute, ready to be "tossed to and fro and
+carried about with every wind of doctrine" (iv. 14). They had "heard the
+truth as it is in Jesus," but had an imperfect comprehension of its
+meaning.[171] They required to add to their faith knowledge,--the
+knowledge won by searching thought respecting the great truths of
+religion, by a thorough mental appropriation of the things revealed to
+us in Christ. Only by such a process can truth brace the mind and knit
+its powers together in "the full assurance of the understanding in the
+knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ" (Col. ii, 2, 3).
+
+Such is the faith needed by the Church, now as then, the faith of an
+intelligent, firm and manly assurance. There is in such faith a security
+and a vigour of action that the faith of mere sentiment and emotional
+impression, with its nerveless grasp, its hectic and impulsive fervours,
+cannot impart. The luxury of agnosticism, the languors of doubt, the
+vague sympathies and hesitant eclecticism in which delicate and cultured
+minds are apt to indulge; the lofty critical attitude, as of some
+intellectual god sitting above the strife of creeds, which others find
+congenial--these are conditions of mind unfit for the soldier of Christ
+Jesus. He must have sure knowledge, definite and decided purposes--a
+soul girdled with truth.
+
+2. Having girt his loins, the soldier next fastens on his _breastplate_,
+or cuirass.
+
+This is the chief piece of his defensive armour; it protects the vital
+organs. In the picture drawn in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, the breastplate is
+made "of faith and love." In this more detailed representation, faith
+becomes the outlying defensive "shield," while righteousness serves for
+the innermost defence, the rampart of the heart. But, in truth, the
+Christian righteousness is compounded of faith and love.
+
+This attribute must be understood in its full Pauline meaning. It is the
+state of one who is right with God and with God's law. It is the
+righteousness both of standing and of character, of imputation and of
+impartation, which begins with justification and continues in the new,
+obedient life of the believer. These are never separate, in the true
+doctrine of grace. "The righteousness that is of God by faith," is the
+soul's main defence against the shafts of Satan. It wards off deadly
+blows, both from this side and from that. Does the enemy bring up
+against me my old sins? I can say: "It is God that justifieth; who is he
+that condemneth?"--Am I tempted to presume on my forgiveness, and to
+fall into transgression once more? From this breastplate the arrow of
+temptation falls pointless, as it resounds: "He that doeth righteousness
+is righteous. He that is born of God doth not commit sin." The
+completeness of pardon for past offence and the integrity of character
+that belong to the justified life, are woven together into an
+impenetrable mail.
+
+3. Now the soldier, having girt his loins and guarded his breast, must
+look well to his feet. There are lying ready for him _shoes_ of wondrous
+make.
+
+What is the quality most needed in the soldier's shoes? Some say, it is
+_firmness_; and they so translate the Greek word employed by the
+apostle, occurring only here in the New Testament, which in certain
+passages of the Septuagint seems to acquire this sense, under the
+influence of Hebrew idiom.[172] But firmness was embodied in the girdle.
+_Expedition_ belongs to the shoes. The soldier is so shod that he may
+move with alertness over all sorts of ground.
+
+Thus shod with speed and willingness were "the beautiful feet" of those
+that brought over desert and mountain "the good tidings of peace," the
+news of Israel's return to Zion (Isai. lii. 7-9). With such swift
+strength were the feet of our apostle shod, when "from Jerusalem round
+about unto Illyricum" he had "fulfilled the gospel of Christ," and is
+"ready," as he says, "to preach the glad tidings to you also that are in
+Rome" (Rom. i. 15). This readiness belonged to His own holy feet, who
+"came and preached peace to the far off and the near" (ii. 17),--when,
+for example, sitting a weary traveller by the well-side at Sychar, He
+found refreshment in revealing to the woman of Samaria the fountain of
+living water. Such readiness befits His servants, who have heard from
+Him the message of salvation and are sent to proclaim it everywhere.
+
+The girdle and breastplate look to one's own safety. They must be
+supplemented by the evangelic zeal inseparable from the spirit of
+Christ. This is, moreover, a safeguard of Church life. Von Hofmann says
+admirably upon this point: "The objection [brought against the above
+interpretation] that the apostle is addressing the faithful at large,
+who are not all of them called to preach the gospel, is mistaken. Every
+believer should be prepared to witness for Christ so often as
+opportunity affords, and needs a _readiness_ thereto. The knowledge of
+Christ's peace qualifies him to convey its message. He brings it with
+him into the strife of the world. And it is the consciousness that he
+possesses himself such peace and has it to communicate to others, which
+enables him to walk firmly and with sure step in the way of faith." When
+we are bidden to "_stand_ in the evil day," that does not mean to stand
+idle or content to hold our ground. Attack is often the best mode of
+defence. We keep our faith by spreading it. We defend ourselves from our
+opponents by converting them to the gospel, which breathes everywhere
+reconciliation and fraternity. Our Foreign Missions are our grand modern
+apologetic; and God's peacemakers are His mightiest warriors.
+
+4. With his body girt and fenced and his feet clad with the gospel
+shoes, the soldier reaches out his left hand to "take up withal the
+_shield_," while his right hand grasps first the helmet which he places
+on his head, and then the sword that is offered to him in the word of
+God.
+
+The shield signified is not the small round buckler, or target, of the
+light-armed man; but the door-like shield,[173] measuring four feet by
+two-and-a-half and rounded to the shape of the body, that the Greek
+hoplite and the Roman legionary carried. Joined together, these large
+shields formed a wall, behind which a body of troops could hide
+themselves from the rain of the enemy's missiles. Such is the office of
+faith in the conflicts of life: it is the soldier's main defence, the
+common bulwark of the Church. Like the city's outer wall, faith bears
+the brunt and onset of all hostility. On this shield of faith the darts
+of Satan are caught, their point broken and their fire quenched. These
+military shields were made of wood, covered on the outside with thick
+leather, which not only deadened the shock of the missile, but protected
+the frame of the shield from the "fire-tipped darts" that were used in
+the artillery of the ancients. These flaming arrows, armed with some
+quickly burning and light combustible, if they failed to pierce the
+warrior's shield, fell in a moment extinguished at his feet.
+
+St Paul can scarcely mean by his "fiery darts" incitements to passion in
+ourselves, inflammatory temptations that seek to rouse the inward fires
+of anger or lust. For these missiles are "fire-pointed darts _of the
+Evil One_." The fire belongs to the enemy who shoots the dart. It
+signifies the malignant hate with which Satan hurls slanders and threats
+against the people of God through his human instruments. A bold faith
+wards off and quenches this fire even at a distance, so that the soul
+never feels its heat. The heart's confidence is unmoved and the Church's
+songs of praise are undisturbed, while persecution rages and the enemies
+of Christ gnash their teeth against her. Such a shield to him was the
+faith of Stephen the proto-martyr.
+
+    "I heard the defaming of many; there was terror on every side.
+    But I trusted in Thee, O Jehovah: I said, Thou art my God!"
+
+To "take up the shield of faith," is it not, like the Psalmist, to meet
+injuries and threats, the boasts of unbelief and of worldly power, the
+poisoned arrows of the deceitful and the bitter words of unjust
+reproach, with faith's quiet counter-assertion? "Who shall separate us
+from the love of Christ?" says the apostle in the midst of tribulation.
+"God is my witness, whom I serve in the gospel of His Son," he answers
+when his fidelity is questioned. No shaft of malice, no arrow of fear
+can pierce the soul that holds such a shield.
+
+5. At this point (ver. 17), when the sentence beginning at verse 14 has
+drawn itself out to such length, and the relative clause of verse 16_b_
+makes a break and eddy in the current of thought, the writer pauses for
+a moment. He resumes the exhortation in a form slightly changed and with
+rising emphasis, passing from the participle to the finite verb: "And
+take _the helmet of salvation_."
+
+The word _take_, in the original, differs from the _taking up_ of verses
+13 and 16. It signifies the _accepting_ of something offered by the hand
+of another. So the Thessalonians "_accepted_ the word" brought them by
+St Paul (1 Thess. i. 6) and Titus "_accepted_ the consolation" given him
+by the Corinthians (2 Cor. viii. 17)--in each case a welcome gift. God's
+hand is stretched out to bestow on His chosen warrior the helmet of
+salvation and the sword of His word, to complete his equipment for the
+perilous field. We accept these gifts with devout gratitude, knowing
+from what source they come and where the heavenly arms were fashioned.
+
+The "helmet of salvation" is worn by the Lord Himself, as He is depicted
+by the prophet coming to the succour of His people (Isai. lix. 17). This
+helmet, on the head of Jehovah, is the crest and badge of their Divine
+champion. Given to the human warrior, it becomes the sign of his
+protection by God. The apostle does not call it "the _hope_ of
+salvation," as he does in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, thinking of the
+believer's assurance of victory in the last struggle. Nor is it the
+sense and assurance of past salvation that here guards the Christian
+soldier. The presence of his Saviour and God in itself constitutes his
+highest safeguard.
+
+    "O Jehovah my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
+    Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle."
+
+The warrior's head rising above his shield was frequently open to
+attack. The arrow might shoot over the shield's edge, and inflict a
+mortal blow. Our faith, at the best, has its deficiencies and its
+limits; but God's salvation reaches beyond our highest confidence in
+Him. His overshadowing presence is the crown of our salvation, His love
+its shining crest.
+
+Thus the equipment of Christ's soldier is complete; and he is arrayed in
+the full armour of light. His loins girt with truth, his breast clad
+with righteousness, his feet shod with zeal, his head crowned with
+safety, while faith's all-encompassing shield is cast about him, he
+steps forth to do battle with the powers of darkness, "strong in the
+Lord, and in the might of His strength."
+
+6. It only remains that "the _sword_ of the Spirit" be put into his
+right hand, while his lips are open in continual prayer to the God of
+his strength.
+
+The "cleansing word" of chapter v. 26, by whose virtue we passed through
+the gate of baptism into the flock of Christ, now becomes the guarding
+and smiting word, to be used in conflict with our spiritual foes. Of the
+Messiah it was said, in language quoted by the apostle against
+Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 8): "He shall smite the earth with the rod of
+His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked"
+(Isai. xi. 4). Similarly, in Hosea the Lord tells how He has "hewed" the
+unfaithful "by His prophets, and slain them by the words of His mouth"
+(Hos. vi. 5). From such sayings of the Old Testament the idea of the
+sword of the Divine word is derived. We find it again in Hebrews iv. 12:
+"The word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword";
+and in the "sword, two-edged, sharp," which John in the Revelation saw
+"coming out of the mouth of the Son of man": it belongs to Him whose
+name is "the word of God," and with it "He shall smite the
+nations."[174]
+
+This sword of the inspired word Paul himself wielded with supernatural
+effect, as when he rebuked Elymas the sorcerer, or when he defended his
+gospel against the Judaizers of Galatia and Corinth. In his hand it was
+even as
+
+                      "The sword
+    Of Michael, from the armoury of God,
+        ... tempered so that neither keen
+    Nor solid might resist that edge."
+
+With what piercing reproofs, what keen thrusts of argument, what
+double-edged irony and dexterous sword-play did this mighty combatant
+smite the enemies of the cross of Christ! In times of conflict never may
+such leaders be wanting to the Church, men using weapons of warfare not
+carnal, but mighty to "cast down strongholds," to "bring down every high
+thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and make captive
+every thought to Christ's obedience."
+
+In her struggle with the world's gigantic lusts and tyrannies, the
+Israel of God must be armed with this lofty and lightning-like power,
+with the flaming sword of the Spirit. No less in the secret, internal
+conflicts of the religious life, the sword of the word is the decisive
+weapon. The Son of man put it to proof in His combat in the wilderness.
+Satan himself sought to wrest this instrument to his purpose. With pious
+texts in his mouth he addressed our Lord, like an angel of light, fain
+to deceive Him by the very Scripture He had Himself inspired! until,
+with the last thrust of quotation, Jesus unmasked the tempter and drove
+him from the field, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"
+
+7. We have surveyed the Christian soldier with his harness on. From head
+to foot he is clothed in arms supernatural. No weapon of defence or
+offence is lacking, that the spiritual combat needs. Nothing seems to be
+wanting: yet everything is wanting, if this be all. Our text began: "Be
+strong in the Lord." It is _prayer_ that links the believer with the
+strength of God.
+
+What avails Michael's sword, if the hand that holds it is slack and
+listless? what the panoply of God, if behind it beats a craven heart? He
+is but a soldier in semblance who wears arms without the courage and the
+strength to use them. The life that is to animate that armed figure, to
+beat with high resolve beneath the corslet, to nerve the arm as it lifts
+the strong shield and plies the sharp sword, to set the swift feet
+moving on their gospel errands, to weld the Church together into one
+army of the living God, comes from the inspiration of God's Spirit
+received in answer to believing prayer. So the apostle adds: "With all
+prayer and supplication praying at every time in the Spirit."
+
+There is here no needless repetition. "Prayer" is the universal word for
+reverent address to God; and "supplication" the entreaty for such help
+as "on every occasion"--at each turn of the battle, in each emergency of
+life--we find ourselves to need. And Christian prayer is always "in the
+Spirit,"--being offered in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, who
+is the element of the believer's life in Christ, who helps our
+infirmities and, virtually, intercedes for us (Rom. viii. 26, 27). When
+the apostle continues, "_watching_ [or _keeping awake_] thereunto," he
+reminds us, as perhaps he was thinking himself, of our Lord's warning to
+the disciples sleeping in Gethsemane: "Watch and pray, lest ye enter
+into temptation." The "perseverance" he requires in this wakeful
+attention to prayer, is the resolute persistence of the suppliant, who
+will neither be daunted by opposition nor wearied by delay.[175]
+
+The word "supplication" is resumed at the end of verse 18, in order to
+enlist the prayers of the readers for the service of the Church at
+large: "with wakeful heed thereto, in all persistence and _supplication
+for all the saints_." Prayer for ourselves must broaden out into a
+catholic intercession for all the servants of our Master, for all the
+children of the household of faith. By the bands of prayer we are knit
+together,--a vast multitude of saints throughout the earth, unknown by
+face or name to our fellows, but one in the love of Christ and in our
+heavenly calling, and all engaged in the same perilous conflict.
+
+"All the saints," St Paul said (i. 15), were interested in the faith of
+the Asian believers; they were called "with all the saints" to share in
+the comprehension of the immense designs of God's kingdom (iii. 18).
+The dangers and temptations of the Church are equally far-reaching; they
+have a common origin and character in all Christian communities. Let our
+prayers, at least, be catholic. At the throne of grace, let us forget
+our sectarian divisions. Having access in one Spirit to the Father, let
+us realize in His presence our communion with all His children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[168] Comp. Rom. viii. 37, xvi. 20. _To bring down_, _overpower_,
+_conquer_ is the military sense of =katergazomai=,--not found elsewhere
+in the New Testament, but, as it seems to us, unmistakable here. It
+occurs in Ezek. xxxiv. 4 (LXX), and 1 Esdr. iv. 4.
+
+[169] Col. i. 23, ii. 5; Phil. i. 27-30, iv. 1: comp. 1 Thess. v. 8;
+Rom. xiii. 11-14; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; 2 Cor. x. 3-6.
+
+[170] 2 Thess. ii. 3; Acts xx. 29, 30; 1 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iii. 1.
+
+[171] Ch. 1. 17-23, iii. 16-19, iv. 13-15, 20-24.
+
+[172] =Hetoimasia= is adopted by the Greek translators as the equivalent
+of the Hebrew word for _foundation_, or _base_, in Ps. lxxxix. 14; Ezra
+ii. 68, iii. 3; Dan. xi. 7, 20, 21. See, however, the note of Meyer, who
+thinks that they misunderstood the Hebrew.
+
+[173] =Thyreos=: Latin _scutum_; only here in N.T.
+
+[174] Rev. i. 16, ii. 12, xix. 13-15.
+
+[175] =En pase proskarteresei=: _in every kind of persistence_,--a
+perseverance that tries all arts and holds its ground at every point.
+The verb =proskartereo= appears in the parallel passages: Col. iv. 2;
+Rom. xii. 12; also in Acts i. 14.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONCLUSION.
+
+CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    =Pepeismai gar hoti oute thanatos oute zoe oute angeloi oute archai
+    oute enestota oute mellonta oute dynameis oute hypsoma oute bathos
+    oute tis ktisis hetera dynesetai hemas chorisai apo tes agapes tou
+    Theou tes en Christo Iesou to Kyrio hemon=--ROM. viii. 38, 39.
+
+    "Love for Christ is immortal."--R. W. DALE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+_REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION._
+
+    "And [pray] on my behalf, that the word may be given unto me in
+    opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the
+    gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may
+    speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
+
+    "But that ye also may know my affairs, how I do, Tychicus, the
+    beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known
+    to you all things: whom I have sent unto you for this very purpose,
+    that ye may know our state, and that he may comfort your
+    hearts."--EPH. vi. 19-22.
+
+
+The apostle has bidden his readers apply themselves with wakeful and
+incessant earnestness to prayer (ver. 18). For this is, after all, the
+chief arm of the spiritual combat. By this means the soul draws
+reinforcements of mercy and hope from the eternal sources (ver. 10). By
+this means the Asian Christians will be able not only to carry on their
+own conflict with vigour, but to help all the saints (ver. 18); and
+through their aid the whole Church of God will be sustained in its war
+with the prince of this world.
+
+The apostle Paul himself stood in the forefront of this battle. He was
+suffering for the cause of common Christendom; he was a mark for the
+attack of the enemies of the gospel.[176] On him, more than on any other
+man, the safety and progress of the Church depended (Phil. i. 25). In
+this position he naturally says: "Watching unto prayer in all
+perseverance and supplication for all the saints--_and for me_." If his
+heart should fail him, or his mouth be closed, if the word of
+inspiration ceased to be given him and the great teacher of the Gentiles
+in faith and truth no longer spoke as he ought to speak, it would be a
+heavy blow and sore discouragement to the friends of Christ throughout
+the world. "My afflictions are your glory (iii. 13). My unworthy
+testimony to Christ is showing forth His praise to all men and
+angels.[177] Pray for me then, that I may speak and act in this hour of
+trial in a manner worthy of the dispensation given to me."
+
+Strong and confident as the apostle Paul was, he felt himself to be
+nothing without prayer. It is his habit to expect the support of the
+intercessions of all who love him in Christ.[178] He knew that he was
+helped by this means, on numberless occasions and in wonderful ways. He
+asks his present readers to entreat that "the word[179] may be given me
+when I open my mouth, so that I may freely make known the mystery of the
+gospel, on which behalf I serve as ambassador in bonds, that in it I may
+speak freely, as I ought to speak." This sentence hangs upon the verb
+"may-be-given." Jesus said to His apostles: "It shall be _given_ you in
+that hour what you shall speak, when brought before rulers and kings"
+(Matt x. 18-20). The apostle stands now before the Roman world. He has
+appealed to Caesar, and awaits his trial. If he has not yet appeared at
+the Emperor's tribunal, he will shortly have to do so. Christ's
+ambassador is about to plead in chains before the highest of human
+courts. It is not his own life or freedom that he is concerned about;
+the ambassador has only to consider how he shall represent his
+Sovereign's interests. The importance which Paul attached to this
+occasion, is manifest from the words written to Timothy (2 Ep. iv. 17)
+referring to his later trial. St Paul has this special need in his
+thoughts, in addition to the help from above continually required in the
+discharge of his ministry, under the hampering conditions of his
+imprisonment (comp. Col. iv. 3, 4).
+
+The Church must entreat on Paul's behalf that the word he utters may be
+God's, and not his own. It is in vain to "open the mouth," unless there
+is this higher prompting and through the gates of speech there issues a
+Divine message, unless the speaker is the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit
+rather than of his individual thought and will. "The words that I speak
+unto you," Jesus said, "I speak not of myself." The bold apostle intends
+to open his mouth; but he must have the true "word given" him to say. We
+should pray for Christ's ambassadors, and especially for the more public
+and eloquent pleaders of the Christian cause, that it may be thus with
+them. Rash and vain words, that bear the stamp of the mere man who
+utters them and not of the Spirit of his Master, do a hurt to the cause
+of the gospel proportioned to the blessing that comes from such lips
+when they speak the word given to them.
+
+Such inspiration would enable the apostle to "make known the mystery of
+the gospel _with freedom and confidence of speech_": the expression
+rendered "with boldness"[180] means all this. Before the emperor Nero,
+or the slave Onesimus, he will be able with the same aptness and dignity
+and self-command to declare his message and to vindicate his Master's
+name. "The mystery of the gospel" is no other secret than that which
+this epistle unfolds (iii. 3-9), the great fact that Jesus Christ is the
+Saviour and the Lord of the whole world. Jesus proclaimed Himself to
+Pilate, who represented at Jerusalem the imperial rule, as the King of
+all who are of the truth; and the apostle Paul has the like message to
+convey to the head of the Empire. It needed the greatest boldness and
+the greatest wisdom in the ambassador of the Messianic King to play his
+part at Rome; an unwise word might make his own life forfeit, and bring
+incalculable dangers on the Church.
+
+St Paul's trial, we suppose, passed off successfully, as he at this time
+anticipated.[181] The Roman government was perfectly aware that the
+political charge against their prisoner was frivolous; and Nero, if he
+personally gave Paul a hearing on this earlier trial, in all probability
+viewed his spiritual pretensions on his Master's behalf with
+contemptuous tolerance. If he did so, the toleration was not due to any
+want of courage or clearness on the defendant's part. It is possible
+even that the courage and address of the advocate of the "new
+superstition" pleased the tyrant, who was not without his moments of
+good humour nor without the instincts of a man of taste. The apostle, we
+may well believe, made an impression on the supreme court at Rome
+similar to that made on his judges in Caesarea.
+
+St Paul's bonds in Christ have now become widely "manifest" in Rome
+(Phil. i. 13). He pleads in circumstances of disgrace. But God brings
+good for His servants out of evil. As he said at a later time, so he
+could say now: "They have bound me; but they cannot bind the word of
+God."[182] He was "not ashamed of the gospel" in the prospect of coming
+to Rome years before (Rom. i. 16); and he is not ashamed now, though he
+has come in chains as an evil-doer. Through the intercessions of
+Christ's people all these injuries of Satan are turning to his salvation
+and to the "furtherance of the gospel"; and Paul rejoices and triumphs
+in them, well assured that Christ will be magnified whether by his life
+or death, whether by his freedom or his chains (Phil. i. 12-26). The
+prayers which the imprisoned apostle asks from the Church were
+fulfilled. For we read in the last verses of the Acts of the Apostles,
+which put into a sentence the history of this period: "He received all
+that came to him, preaching the kingdom and teaching the things
+concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, _with all boldness_, none forbidding
+him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The paragraph relating to Tychicus is almost identical with that of
+Colossians iv. 7, 8. It begins with a "But" connecting what follows with
+the statement the apostle has just made respecting his position at Rome.
+As much as to say: "I want your prayers, set as I am for the defence of
+the gospel and in circumstances of difficulty and peril. But Tychicus
+will tell you more about me than I can convey by letter. I am sending
+him, in fact, for this very purpose."
+
+St Paul knew the great anxiety of the Christians of Asia on his account.
+Epaphras of Colossae had "shown him the love in the Spirit" that was
+felt towards him even by those in this region who had never seen him in
+the flesh (Col. i. 8). The tender heart of the apostle is touched by
+this assurance. So he sends Tychicus to visit as many of the Asian
+Churches as he may be able to reach, bringing news that will cheer their
+hearts and relieve their discouragement (iii. 13).[183] The note sent at
+this time to Philemon indicates the hopeful tidings that Tychicus was
+able to convey to Paul's friends in the East: "I trust that through your
+prayers I shall be given to you" (Philem. 22). To the Philippians he
+writes, perhaps a little later, in the same strain: "I trust in the Lord
+that I myself shall come shortly" (Phil. ii. 24). He anticipates, with
+some confidence, his speedy acquital and release: it is not likely that
+this expectation, on the part of such a man as St Paul, was
+disappointed. The good news went round the Asian and Macedonian
+Churches: "Paul is likely soon to be free, and we shall see and hear him
+again!"
+
+In the parallel epistle he writes, "that you may know" (Col. iv. 8);
+here it is, "that you _also_ may know my affairs." The added word is
+significant. The writer is imagining his letter read in the various
+assemblies which it will reach. He has the other epistle in his mind,
+and remembering that he there introduced Tychicus in similar terms, he
+says to this wider circle of Asian disciples: "That you also, as well as
+the Churches of the Lycus valley, may know how things are with me, I
+send Tychicus to give you a full report." It is not necessary, however,
+to look beyond the last two verses for the reference of the _also_ of
+verse 21: "I have asked your prayers on my behalf; and I wish you in
+turn to know how things go with me." Possibly, there were some matters
+connected with St Paul's trial at Rome that could not be fitly or safely
+communicated by letter. Hence he adds: "He shall make known unto you all
+things." When he writes "that ye may know my affairs, how I do," we
+gather that Tychicus was to communicate to those he visited everything
+about the beloved apostle that would be of interest to his Asian
+brethren.
+
+The apostle commends Tychicus in language identical in the two letters,
+except that in Colossians "fellow-servant" is added to the honourable
+designations of "beloved brother and faithful minister," under which he
+is here introduced. We find him first associated with St Paul in Acts
+xx. 4, where "Tychicus and Trophimus" represent Asia in the number of
+those who accompanied the apostle on his voyage to Jerusalem, when he
+carried the contributions of his Gentile Churches to the relief of the
+Christian poor in Jerusalem. Trophimus, his companion, is called a
+"Greek" and an "Ephesian" (Acts xxi. 28, 29). Whether Tychicus belonged
+to the same city or not, we cannot tell. He was almost certainly a
+Greek. The Pastoral epistles show Tychicus still in the apostle's
+service in his last years. He appears to have joined St Paul's staff and
+remained with him from the time that he accompanied him to Jerusalem in
+the year 59. From 2 Timothy iv 9-12 we gather that Tychicus was sent to
+Ephesus to relieve Timothy, when St Paul desired the presence of the
+latter at Rome. It is evident that he was a man greatly valued by the
+apostle and endeared to him.
+
+Tychicus was well known in the Asian Churches, and suitable therefore to
+be sent upon this errand. And the commendation given to him would be
+very welcome to the circle to which he belonged. The apostle has great
+tact in these personal matters, the tact which belongs to delicate
+feeling and a generous mind. He calls his messenger "the beloved
+brother" in his relation to the Church in general, and "faithful
+minister in the Lord" in his special relation to himself. So he
+describes Epaphroditus to the Philippians as "your apostle and minister
+of my need." In conveying these letters and messages, this worthy man
+was Paul's apostle and minister of his need in regard to the Asian
+Churches. He is a "_minister in the Lord_," inasmuch as this office lies
+within the range of his service to the Lord Christ.
+
+We observe that in writing to the Colossians the apostle applies to
+Onesimus, the converted slave, the honourable epithets applied here to
+this long-tried friend: "the faithful and beloved brother" (Col. iv. 9).
+Every Christian believer should be in the eyes of his fellows a "beloved
+brother." And every true servant of Christ and His people is a "faithful
+minister in the Lord," be his rank high or low, and whether official
+hands have been laid upon his head or not. We are apt, by a trick of
+words, to limit to the order which we suitably call "the ministry"
+expressions that the New Testament applies to the common ministry of
+Christ's saints (comp. iv. 12). This devoted servant of Christ is
+employed just now as a newsman and letter-carrier. But what a high
+responsibility it was, to be the bearer to the Asian cities, and to the
+Church for all time, of the epistles of Paul the apostle to the
+Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon. Had Tychicus been careless or
+dishonest, had he lost these precious documents or tampered with them,
+how great the loss to mankind! We cannot read them without feeling our
+debt to this beloved brother and faithful servant of the Church. Those
+who travel upon Christ's business, who link distant communities to each
+other and convey from one to another the Holy Spirit's fellowship and
+grace, are "the messengers of the Churches and the glory of Christ" (2
+Cor. viii. 23).
+
+
+THE BENEDICTION.
+
+    "Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith,
+      From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
+    Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ
+                                In incorruption" (vv. 23, 24).
+
+Grace and Peace were the first words of the epistle,--the apostle's
+salutation to all his Churches. In _Peace and Grace_ he breathes out his
+final blessing. The benediction is fuller than in most of the epistles,
+and exhibits several peculiar features.
+
+To the Thessalonians (2 Ep. iii. 16) St Paul wished: "Peace continually,
+in all ways, from the Lord of peace Himself"; and he commends the Romans
+twice to "the God of peace" (ch. xv. 33, xvi. 20): the Corinthians he
+bids to "live in peace," so that "the God of love and peace" may be with
+them (2 Cor. xiii. 11). There is nothing in the least degree strange or
+un-Pauline in the wishes here expressed, except the fact that they are
+put in the third person--"_Peace to the brethren_," etc.--instead of
+being addressed directly to the readers in the second person, as in all
+other of the apostle's extant closing benedictions. This peculiarity, as
+we observed in the first Chapter, is in accordance with the encyclical
+and impersonal stamp of the epistle.[184] It is Paul's most catholic
+benediction, his blessing upon "all the Israel of God" (comp. Gal. vi.
+16).
+
+"With faith," that "love" is desired whereby, according to the Pauline
+ethics of salvation, faith works (Gal. v. 6), the love which as a
+vitalizing organic force creates the new man, formed in all his doings
+and dispositions after the image of Jesus Christ. From chapter iv. 1-3
+we have learnt how "peace" and "love" attend each other. Love is the
+source of the forbearance, the mutual consideration and self-sacrifice,
+without which there is no peace within the Church. Peace springs from
+love: love waits on faith. Amongst brethren in Christ, members of the
+same household of faith, peace and love have their home. These are the
+sons of peace: with good will and good hope, entering or quitting their
+abode, we say, "Peace be to this house!"
+
+The peace that the apostle looks for amongst Christian brethren is the
+fruit of peace with God through Christ. Such "peace guarding the
+thoughts and heart" of each Christian man, nothing contrary thereto will
+arise amongst them. Calm and quiet hearts make a peaceful Church. There
+are no clashing interests, no selfish competitions, no strife as to who
+shall be greatest. Differences of opinion and taste are kept within the
+bounds of mutual submission. The awe of God's presence with His people,
+the remembrance of the dear price at which His Church was purchased, the
+sense of Christ's Lordship in the Spirit and of the sacredness of our
+brotherhood in Him, check all turbulence and rivalry and teach us to
+seek the things that make for peace.
+
+"Peace _and love_," the apostle desires. Love includes peace, and more;
+for it labours not to prevent contention only, but to help and enrich in
+all ways the body of Christ. By such "toil of love" faith is made
+complete. We are bidden indeed, in certain matters, to "have faith to
+ourselves before God" (Rom. xiv. 22). This maxim holds where one has a
+special faith in regard to such things as eating flesh or drinking wine,
+in which any one of us may without offence differ from his brethren. But
+it is a poor faith that dwells upon questions of this nature, and makes
+its religion of them. The essentials of faith, as we saw them delineated
+in chapter iv. 1-6, are things that unite and not distinguish us.
+
+As faith grows and deepens, it makes new channels in which love may
+flow. "We are bound to thank God always for you," writes St Paul to the
+Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 3), "for that your faith groweth exceedingly,
+and the love of each one of you all toward one another multiplieth."
+This is the sound and true growth of faith. Where an intenser faith
+makes men disputatious and exclusive; where it fails to breed meekness
+and courtesy, we cannot but suspect its quality. Such faith may be
+sincere; but it is mixed with a lamentable ignorance, and a resistance
+to the Holy Spirit that is likely to end in grave offence. "Contending
+earnestly for the faith" does not mean contending angrily, with the
+weapons of satire and censoriousness. It is well to remember that we are
+not the judges of our brethren. There are many questions raised and
+discussed amongst us, which we may safely leave to the judgement of the
+last day. It is too easy to fill the air with matters of contention, and
+to excite a sore and suspicious temper destructive of peace, and in
+which nothing but fault-finding will flourish. If we must contend, we
+may surely debate quietly on secondary matters, while we are one in
+Christ. If we have not _love with faith_, our faith is worthless (1 Cor.
+xiii. 2).
+
+Deep beneath the peace that dwells in the Church and the love that
+fills each believer's heart, is the eternal fountain of _grace_. "Grace
+be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ," says the apostle.
+Grace is theirs already; and they desire nothing so much as its
+increase. Their love to Christ is the fruit of the grace of God that is
+with them. This wish includes all good wishes; it surpasses both our
+deservings and desires. All that God prepared for us in His eternal
+counsels, and that Christ purchased by His redeeming love, all of good
+that our nature can receive now and for ever, is embraced in this one
+word: _Grace be with you._
+
+"With all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ," Paul says; for it is to
+lovers of Christ that God gives the continuance of His grace. If our
+love to Christ fails, grace leaves us. God cannot look with favour upon
+the man who has no love to His Son Jesus Christ. In giving his blessing
+to the Corinthians, St Paul was compelled to write with his own hand:
+"If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema." The blessing
+involves the anathema. God's love is not a love of indifference, an
+indiscriminate, immoral affection. It is a love of choice and
+predilection--"If any man love me," said Jesus, "my Father will love
+him." Is not the condition reasonable,--and the inference inevitable?
+The Father cannot grant His grace to those who have seen and hated Him
+in His Son and image. By that hatred they refuse His grace, and cast it
+from them.
+
+On the other hand, a sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ opens the
+heart to all the rich and purifying influences of Divine grace. The
+sinful woman, stained with false and foul love, who washed the Saviour's
+feet with her tears, attained in that act to a height of purity
+undreamed of by the virtuous Pharisee. This new and holy flame burns
+out impure passion from the soul: it kindles lofty thoughts; it makes
+crooked natures straight, and timid and weak natures brave and strong.
+"To them that love God, we know, all things work together for good." To
+them that love Christ, all things contribute blessing; all conditions
+and events of life become means of grace. If we love Christ, we shall
+love His people,--the Church, the bride of Christ from whom He will
+never be parted in our thoughts. If we love Christ, we shall love the
+work He has laid upon us, and the word He has taught us, and the
+sacramental pledges He has given us in remembrance of Him and assurance
+of His coming. If we love Him, we shall "keep His commandments," and He
+will keep His promise to send us the "other Helper, to be with us for
+ever, even the Spirit of truth." The gift of the Holy Spirit is the
+all-sufficiency of grace.[185] Here is the innermost sanctuary of our
+religion, the fountain and beginning of the soul's eternal life,--in the
+love which joins it to the Lord in one spirit.
+
+_In incorruption_ is the last and sealing word of this letter, which we
+have been so long studying together. It "stands as the crown and climax
+of this glorious epistle" (Alford). Like so many other words of the
+epistle, at first sight its interpretation is not clear. The apostle has
+used the term in several other passages, as synonymous with
+_immortality_[186] and denoting the state of the blessed after the
+resurrection, when they will stand before God complete in body and in
+spirit, with all that is mortal in them swallowed up of life--"raised in
+incorruption." But there is nothing in this context to lead up to the
+idea of personal, bodily immortality. Those who construe the apostle's
+words in this sense, place a comma before the final clause and treat it
+as a qualification of the main predicate of the sentence: "Grace be with
+all them that love our Lord,--grace [culminating] in incorruption"--or
+in other words, "grace crowned with glory!" But it must be admitted that
+this is somewhat strained.
+
+The rendering of our ordinary version, "in sincerity" (in the Revised
+rendering, "uncorruptness"), gives an ethical sense to the word that is
+scarcely borne out by usage. It is a different, though kindred
+expression that St Paul employs to express "uncorruptness" in Titus ii.
+7.[187]
+
+It appears to us that the term "incorruption," in its ordinary
+significance, applies fitly to the believer's love for the Lord, when
+the word is read in accordance with the symbolism of the epistle. This
+love is the life of the body of Christ. In it lies the Church's
+immortality. The gates of death prevail not against her, rooted and
+grounded as she is in love to the risen and immortal Christ. "May that
+love be maintained," the apostle says, "in its deathless power. Let it
+be an unspoilt and unwasting love."
+
+Of earthly love we often say with sadness:--
+
+    "Space is against thee: it can part!
+    Time is against thee: it can chill!"
+
+Not so with the love of Christ. Neither death nor life parts the soul
+from Him. Our love to the Lord Jesus Christ seats us with Him in the
+heavenly places,--above the realm of decay, above this wasting flesh and
+perishing world.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[176] Col. i. 24--ii. 1; Phil. i. 16.
+
+[177] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 10; Phil. i. 20; 2 Tim. iv. 17.
+
+[178] I Thess. v. 25; 2 Thess. iii. 1; Rom. xv. 30-32; Col. iv. 3, etc.
+
+[179] Out of the instances in which the English Version renders =logos=
+in St Paul by _utterance_, the Revisers have substituted _word_ for
+_utterance_ only in Col. iv. 3. One wishes they had done so throughout.
+For =logos= surely implies the _content_, the _import_ of what is said.
+This passage reminds us of John xvii. 14: "I have given them Thy word";
+and xiv. 24: "The word which ye hear is not mine, but His."
+
+[180] =En parresia=: comp. iii. 12; Phil. i. 20; Philem. 8; 2 Cor. vii.
+4; 1 Thess. ii. 2, etc.
+
+[181] Phil. i. 25, 26, ii. 23, 24; Philem. 22.
+
+[182] 2 Tim. i. 7-12, ii. 3-10.
+
+[183] Comp. Phil. i. 24-26.
+
+[184] See pp. 13-17.
+
+[185] Ch. i. 14, iv. 30. See Chapter IV., above.
+
+[186] Rom. ii. 7; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 50, 53, 54; 2 Tim. i. 10. See Alford's
+excellent note on this passage.
+
+[187] =Aphthoria=: =aphtharsia= is deleted in the critical texts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS (_Expositor's Bible_). Crown 8vo, cloth.
+
+COMMENTARY ON COLOSSIANS (_Pulpit Commentary_).
+
+COMMENTARY ON I. & II. THESSALONIANS (_Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_).
+
+AN ESSAY ON THE PASTORAL EPISTLES (SABATIER'S _The Apostle Paul_).
+
+THE EPISTLES OF PAUL THE APOSTLE: _a Sketch of their Origin and
+Contents._
+
+
+
+
+THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
+
+_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
+
+
+FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
+
+  Colossians.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
+
+  St. Mark.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  Genesis.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  1 Samuel.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  2 Samuel.
+  By the same Author.
+
+  Hebrews.
+  By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
+
+
+SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.
+
+  Galatians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Pastoral Epistles.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Book of Revelation.
+  By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
+
+  1 Corinthians.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  The Epistles of St. John.
+  By Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.
+
+
+THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
+
+  Judges and Ruth.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Jeremiah.
+  By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
+
+  Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  St. Matthew.
+  By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
+
+  Exodus.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  St. Luke.
+  By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
+
+
+FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.
+
+  Ecclesiastes.
+  By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
+
+  St. James and St. Jude.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Proverbs.
+  By Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
+
+  Leviticus.
+  By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+
+FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  1 and 2 Thessalonians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  The Book of Job.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Ephesians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+
+SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
+
+  1 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Philippians.
+  By Principal RAINY, D.D.
+
+  Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Joshua.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Epistles of St. Peter.
+  By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
+
+
+SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
+
+  2 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Romans.
+  By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Books of Chronicles.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  2 Corinthians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  Numbers.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
+
+
+EIGHTH SERIES, 1895-6.
+
+  Daniel.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  The Book of Jeremiah.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  Deuteronomy.
+  By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.
+
+  The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Ezekiel.
+  By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.
+
+  The Book of the  Twelve Prophets.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two Vols.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
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