Chapter 05. The Ephesians, Once "Remote," Now "Made Nigh," with Eternal Glory in Prospect

Chapter 5.
The Ephesians, Once "Remote," Now "Made Nigh," with Eternal Glory in Prospect Ephesians 2:11-22 "Tunsionibus, pressuris, expoliti lapides Suis coaptantur locis; per manus artificis Disponuntur permansuri sacris ædificiis.

"Angulare Fundamentum Lapis Christus missus est, Qui compage parietum in utroque nectitur, Quem Syon sancta suscepit, in quo credens permanet."

—From an Anonymous Poem, cent. viii. or x.

Ephesians 2:11. Wherefore remember that once you, the Nations, the Gentiles, members of the outside races,[1]in the flesh, as regards your physical descent and the absence of the physical sign of covenant, circumcision; called, as you were, and are, the Uncircumcision by that body which is called the Circumcision—only in the flesh, wrought

Ephesians 2:12. by hand[2]—remember, I say, that you were at that time, the time of your "death in trespasses and sins," separate from Christ, out of saving connexion with Israel’s Messiah, the world’s Saviour. Yes, the Pharisee was cruelly wrong in his spirit of scorn and indifference towards you; but he had just so much right in his wrong, that you were as yet isolated from actual contact with the Redeemer’s promises and power; having been alienated (for you were fallen men, and manhood, in the fall, did alienate itself from all its true blessings) from the commonwealth, the spiritual State, of Israel, the people of God^[3]; and strangers, "outlanders," to the covenants of the Promise, the many gracious compacts, as with Abraham, Moses, Levi, David, all connected with the great Promise of Redemption.

Such was your position in relation to Revelation and its blessings. And meanwhile as to your experience, as to the condition of your souls, you were conscious of no hope,[4]and Godless in the world; roving in the dark wilderness of sin and sorrow, without "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Gods many, and lords many, you had; a pantheon with, perhaps, a vast and shadowy Somewhat at its back, as the supreme Power; but not God, not the Holy One, not the eternal Love.

Ephesians 2:13. But now, in the blessed actual state of the case, as that eternal Love has ordered it, now, in Christ Jesus, in that living union with Him to which the Gospel has called you, you, the once remote, banished so far from the "commonwealth" of grace, did become near,[5] so near as to be embodied into the very life of the true Israel; in the blood of our (τοῦ) Christ; "in" it, as your sacrificial warrant and instrument; for He suffered to "sanctify His people with His own blood," the blood of death, of expiation, nay, of wonderful propitiation; and you now, believing in His Name, take place among His people, the people of His covenant.

Marvellous is this transition from far to near; but the reason is adequate for the effect. The blood has power indeed, because of Him who shed it; for He

Ephesians 2:14. is our peace, and nothing less than He. His ever-blessed Personality, giving essence and virtue to His atoning Work, is our reconciliation to God, for Jew and Gentile alike, and so it is our reconciliation to one another. Pagan and Pharisee, we embrace each other, for God has embraced us both in His dear Son, who made both the things one thing, amalgamating in Himself our several positions and relations, till all is unified into one happy Community; and did take down the parting-wall of the Fence, (the Law, that great bulwark between Israel and the Nations, dividing them—till He fulfilled it, and so brought to an end its

Ephesians 2:15. typical and separating enactments[6];)—the personal enmity between Jew and Gentile, in His flesh, in the Manhood in which He bore His great reconciling Suffering, even the law of the commandments couched in decrees, in positive revealed edicts, annulling. Even so; He found us separated, race from race. And the separation was intensified and emphasized by those institutions which were, in part, designed to isolate Israel from the world, till the fit time for the wider blessing. And He "annulled" them, by fulfilling them, in His sacrificial work; thus at once reconciling man to God and man to man. So did the Lord suffer, so did He triumph, in order that He might[7]create, might sovereignly constitute, the two parties, Israel and the Nations, in Himself,[8] in the union of each with Him, into one new man, as it were one collective Personality, all being in Him one Body; making peace, as we have seen, between man and man, as the glorious issue of the work whereby He made peace between man and God. For this supreme blessing lay at the root of the matter. He

Ephesians 2:16. suffered and overcame[9]in order that He might also reconcile both the parties, in one body, to God, by means of the Cross, killing the enmity in, by, it. His precious Death was borne in order to "reconcile to God" Israel and the Nations alike; that is to say, to bring them penitent to a pardoning God, who accepts the great atonement and welcomes the believing sinner.[10] There they meet, in the divine forgiveness, procured by the sacrifice of the Son, which was provided by the love of the Father. Meeting so, they come not only to God but to one another, in a union unimaginable before. The wounds of the Crucifixion, for those who have become "one body" with the Crucified, have been the death-wounds first of "the enmity" of the unpardoned rebel towards his blessed King, and then, and so, of "the enmity" of the unhumbled and unchanged human heart towards fellow-men. And when the work of Propitiation and Peace was effected by the great Peace-Maker, He rose up to be

Ephesians 2:17. the Messenger of His own blessings. And coming, coming from the Cross and from the Tomb, coming back from the Unseen "in the power of an endless life," He preached, He "gospelled," peace, peace with one another because of peace with God, peace to you the remote, and peace[11]to the near, the believers of the old Israel. Such was, in fact, the first word of the Risen One to His gathered followers ( John 20:19), "Peace be unto you." "God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless" us ( Acts 3:26), "preaching peace by Jesus Christ; He is Lord of all" ( Acts 10:36). And peace it is indeed, for it means nothing less than our entrance, hand in hand, into the inmost presence of a welcoming, loving, rejoicing God.

Ephesians 2:18. Because by means of Him, this blessed Christ in His atoning work, we have our (τήν) introduction, both parties of us (οἱ ἀμφότεροι), in one Spirit, unto the Father.There we are united indeed, fused into a wonderful harmony and cohesion in that secret place of blessing. "Both parties of us" are "in one Spirit"; quickened, animated, possessed, surrounded, by one "Holy Spirit of promise." "Both" have one Lord to be their ground of acceptance, and their Conductor into the inmost chamber of the spiritual home. "Both" find one Father there, welcoming and embracing all His people with equal love, in the Name of His one Beloved. Wonderful unification, deep and living as the heart of man, and as the heart of God; rooted in the Atonement, and made to live in us, and grow, and bear the fruits of Paradise, by the indwelling Spirit. The holy fact, contemplated again, lifts the Apostle into a strain of loving joy. This "Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee," cannot rest without chanting to these Asians, these recent worshippers of Artemis and Cybele, the solemn triumph-song of their equal place with Israel

Ephesians 2:19. in God’s present and eternal grace. So then you are no longer, as once you were, mere strangers and aliens, tolerated sojourners at best upon the territory of hope. No, you are[12]fellow-citizens of the saints; sharers with all who belong to God in all the privileges of His eternal City, enrolled now in the bright register of the heavenly Zion with Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Isaiah, with prophets, with apostles, and hereafter to "sit down with" them, in actual presence, within its starry walls; and members of the family of God, "children at home" with Him, by birth and by adoption too, as truly as "Israel His firstborn." All this you are, as having taken your stand upon the Gospel of Christ,

Ephesians 2:20. proclaimed to you by His messengers; having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, the "foundation" which consists of them, inasmuch as their doctrine is the basis of your faith, and so of your unity[13]; the Cornerstone, the great Stone in the angle of the substructure, where the walls meet, their mighty Bond and Unity,[14]"being Christ Jesus[15]Himself; for all the ranges of saving truth ever set before you by Apostle or by Prophet meet in Him, and get all their

Ephesians 2:21. significance and symmetry from Him; in whom, in vital union with whom, in His work and life, all the building,[16]getting in all its parts framed together, drawing as it were closer within itself, into a deeper solidity and coherence, as the union of each saint and of all of them with their Lord developes, is growing, with each new insertion into its living structure, into a holy sanctuary,[17] a place for the manifestation for ever of the eternal Presence; in the Lord, the Lord Christ, who is the Secret, as we have seen, of the coherence of the Sanctuary, and of its growth;

Ephesians 2:22. in whom you also, you as well as all the saints beside, are being built up together, to form (εἰς) a permanent abode (κατοικητήριον) of our (τοῦ) God, in the Spirit,[18] by whose sacred power you have received the life which makes you "living stones," and who now permeates the whole structure with His combining presence.

Again we pause, at the close of a long and closely connected paragraph. Not often, even in St Paul, even in this Epistle, do we find clause springing out of clause, thought out of thought, in such extended succession. My paraphrase has here and there attempted to relieve attention by making a pause where the Greek barely indicates an occasion for it; but even so the reader will have followed the thread with a sense of its close continuity throughout. The comment now shall take a very simple line. Let us first reflect a little upon the splendid close of the paragraph, and then note some of the steps which have led up to it. This order of thought will have its message for us in the end.

I. What a climax is reached in Ephesians 2:22! Here is the eternal destiny of the true Church of God. It is not only that it is to be "saved in Christ for ever," ineffable as is the wonder of that fact. It is not only that it is "to enjoy God fully for ever," though that amazing prospect is so amply and definitely revealed. It is—to be a "holy Sanctuary," a Shrine, a divine Presence-Chamber; "a permanent Habitation of God." In measure, the wonderful fact has already begun to be; already He "dwells in" His people, "and walks in them" (see 2 Corinthians 6:16); already, as we shall see later in this Epistle ( Ephesians 3:17), the eternal Son resides in the very heart of the true member of the Church, by faith. But all this is as when some building, planned already by the master in its final glory, is slowly rising, and beginning to shew, amidst fragments and dust, and the noise of the workmen, some hints and outlines of what it is to be; the owner, the intending dweller in it, walks in and out amidst the vast beginnings, and perhaps rests and shelters himself under the unfinished walls and roofs. It will be otherwise when the last stone is in place, and the last splendid equipment of the chambers is completed, and he receives his admiring friends in the banquet-chamber, and shines out amidst the shining of his palace, himself the central splendour of it in all his dignity of wealth and welcome. So it is with the saints, and with their common life as the Church of God. Wonderful are the beginnings. Amidst all the apparent confusions of the field where the building is in progress, its form and scale begin to shew themselves, across the perspective of centuries and continents. And when the stones already in place are scrutinized, it is found that each of them is a miniature of the whole; a shrine, a home of the presence of the Lord, by faith. But a day of inauguration is drawing on when "we shall see greater things than these." Then the divine indwelling in each "living stone" will be complete and ideal, "for sinners there are saints indeed." And as for the community, it will cohere and be one thing with a unity and symmetry unimaginable now.

"There all the millions of His saints Shall in one song unite, And each the bliss of all shall view With infinite delight." And the everlasting Father will perfectly reveal Himself, to all the watchers of all the regions of the eternal world, not anyhow but thus—in His glorified Church, in the Race, the Nature, once wrecked and ruined, but rebuilt into this splendour by His grace. In the Church of the Firstborn, in the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife, the blessed Universe shall see for ever God present, God resident. A transfigured Creation shall be His temple-courts; a beatified human Church shall be His sanctuary. That sanctuary shall reflect without a flaw its Indweller’s glory; our union and communion with Him shall be, in other words, perfect, absolute, ideal. And the crowning thought, for the soul which loves God, is this, that we shall be His Abode; He shall somehow find His home, His shrine, His throne, in our happy congregated being.

"It doth not yet appear," no, not yet. It is coming. Every evangelization, every conversion, every spiritual union and combination now, is a contribution to that result. It is coming. But what will it be when it is come? Then at length the desire of God will be fulfilled, and His eternal joy will be felt through all the once "groaning and travailing creation." Then, and therefore, will be at length fulfilled the innermost desire of every one of His true children; they shall all consciously contribute to the existence of what He has planned and, in the mystery of His ways, has waited for—a perfect "sanctuary," a perfect "habitation,"for Him the blessed King. "Built on the Son, in the Spirit, for the Father," and finished to the last stone with the skill of infinite love, that will be indeed a Sanctuary, for manifestation, for oracles, for worship, to the endless ages.

II. Now let us recall what the paragraph presents to us as some of the steps of truth leading up to this climax of blessing.

First, we reverently remark the uncompromising remembrance, over again, of the mercy of salvation. The Apostle cannot let the Ephesians forget the past, lest they mistake the blissful present. He is indeed in the act of reminding them that they have been brought not only into a place of mercy but into all the wealth of covenanted privilege. They are incorporated, out and out, into the true Israel of all the promises; no mere resident aliens, lodged in the suburbs of the holy Zion, but full citizens of the place, aye, members of the royal family of its King. They are one body with patriarchs, and prophets, and high-priests, and psalmists, and with the apostles of the Lamb; they cannot be nearer to God, for they are in His Christ. But then, all this is emphatically, and in their case even eminently, a gift of mere original mercy. They were outsiders once. They had not the slightest claim upon salvation. Not only as they were men, fallen and sinful, but also as they were "Gentiles," they stood upon ground where redemption found them outcast and outlawed. Sovereign mercy (it was such, of course,) had given Israel long ago a standing in a place of light, hope, and promise; but they were not there. And who should dare to say that the Eternal would have been unrighteous had He left them where they were, "dead" as they were "in trespasses and sins," at "enmity" with infinite Holiness? It was mercy from first to last; they must remember this, step by step, as they ascend, in their new life, from strength to strength, from grace to glory. It must be reiterated to them, now in this form of thought, now in that, "lest they forget"; lest their Christian life fatally degenerate by an oblivion of what went before.

III. Then, the great paragraph is full, in its central utterances, of the glory of the Atoning Work. Mercy has come to them, and lifted them up indeed to God. But it has not come anyhow; its channel is the blessed Cross. Here only in the Epistle is the Cross explicitly mentioned. "By means of the Cross" did the Lord "reconcile the two parties, in one body." "In the blood of Christ" did "the remote" become "the nigh." "In His flesh," here with a manifest reference to "the body of His flesh, in death," He "annulled the law of commandments," delivering us from its condemning power; "buying us out from its curse, becoming for us a curse" ( Galatians 3:13). Not by the mere and solitary glory of His Incarnation, no, but by "His meritorious Cross and Passion," the wonderful change of our position was effected. That, and nothing less, lies at the root of our peace, and so at the root of all the blessings which issue from our peace; among them, our spiritual cohesion with our fellow-believers, our growth into a deeper union with them, and so into a larger fitness to become "the habitation of God."

Let this not be forgotten. It comes to us with a peculiar impressiveness, this glorification of the Lord’s dying work, in the Epistle to the Ephesians. No part of the New Testament deals more than this Epistle does with the inmost, the most spiritual, the most transcendent views of our salvation. We might have imagined a priori that it would soar away altogether, or nearly so, from the blood of Golgotha, and the grave at its foot, and deal rather with the serene glories of the Person of the enthroned Redeemer. But it is far otherwise. The Epistle will not let us forget that in order to our salvation the primal need was a righteous dealing with the broken law, a reconciliation of us to God,[19] a proclamation of "peace." And the sine quâ non to that immoveable requisite was the Lord’s Cross, the Lord’s Blood, the atonement of His Death. That is the rock on which is set the ladder of our ascent to heaven.

IV. Next, let us notice the prominence in this passage of the deep and living truth of our Union with the Lord Jesus Christ. For us He died, vicariously, in expiation, standing in our place. But that truth can never be rightly taken, never be fully seen in its tender glory, if it is held alone, if it is taught without a perpetual reference to the truth of our living incorporation with Him. "In Christ Jesus, ye became nigh"; "the two were constituted one new man in Him"; "in the Lord, the whole building is growing to be a holy sanctuary." The work done for us, once for all, was done with a view to our being spiritually united to the Worker. And it is only as we are, in that spiritual Union, "very members incorporate in His mystical body," "joined unto the Lord, one Spirit," that the finished Work actually avails for our present and eternal safety.

V. Then, let us not forget but prize as a chief treasure of the paragraph, its doctrine of the Blessed Spirit. "In the Spirit," surrounded and penetrated by Him, the Lord, the Giver of the eternal life, the Maker to us of the reality and presence of Christ, "we have our introduction to the Father." The Saviour leads us in; but He leads us in as those who have in them the Spirit who glorifies Him to us, and makes us one with Him. And so "in the Spirit" the saints are "being built together" for the final Sanctuary of God. That structure and cohesion may have for its scaffolding the sacred order of the Church in her visible aspect. But the cement is not of these things; it is wholly divine; it is the Spirit, possessing each saint for God, and binding them all together by articulating them all to their Head. In these days, when longings for the outward unification of Christendom are much in the air around us, it will be well to hold this Ephesian passage in thoughtful remembrance. May we never be found in opposition to the idea of external unity, to the utmost degree in which it may be lawfully possible, without sacrifice of revealed truth, without compromise with the unrenewed world. The idea is sacred, and should be a continual guide, among other guiding lines, for our purposes and action. But let us not forget that the true growth of "the holy sanctuary" is only "in the Lord"; the "habitation of God" arrives at its perfection, stone by stone, only "in the Spirit."

^[1]Hebrew,הַגּוֹיִם,haggôyim. "Rabbinic Judaism regarded them with feelings akin to those with which an old-fashioned high-caste Hindoo regards a European.... Meanwhile, these gross distortions had behind them the spiritual fact here given by St Paul, that ’the Gentiles,’ before the Gospel, were on areallydifferent level from Israel as to covenant with God in Christ. Pharisaism took a totally wrong line, but it started from a point of truth." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[2]He means to suggest the fact that the contempt of the Pharisee for the Gentile shewed that the Pharisee was unspiritual, and so that his circumcision was not, what it ought to be, the seal of spiritual promises and blessings, but a thing valueless for those higher uses. It wasto hima thingmerely physical.Compare the close of Romans 2.

[3] It is as if he would intimate that, ideally, MAN was the "chosen people," the original "Israel"; but that he fell, and then from his ruins was taken a minor chosen race, to bear the privileges from which the race as a whole had fallen. The peculiar phrase,"having been alienated from,etc.," seems to demand this; for "alienation" implies some sort of previous connexion.

^[4]So I venture to renderἐλπίδα μὴ ἔχοντες.Μή, notοὐ, indicates here not only fact but consciousness. Not only was there actually no bright future for them, in their path of condemnation and sin; theyfelthopeless. It was mournfully thus, as a fact, as all readers of classical literature know. Even in the better regions of ancient pagan life and thought an awful uncertainty and misgiving is seen to underlie the anticipation of the future. An affecting illustration is to be found in the Lapidarian Gallery at Rome, where, on opposite sides, pagan and Christian epitaphs are arranged. The Christian mourner is full of peace and joy; the pagan lamentations are as from hearts "having no hope."

^[5]"’Nigh’ and ’far’ were familiar terms with the Rabbis, in the sense of having or not having part in the covenant.... ’A woman came to Rabbi Eliezer, to be made a proselyte, saying to him,Rabbi, make me nigh.’"(Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[6]Perhaps theμεσότοιχον τοῦφραγμοῦis a phrase suggested by theChêl,the barrier in the Temple, dividing the Court of the Gentiles from the rest. A fragment of the veryChêlof St Paul’s time is now in the Sultan’s Museum at Constantinople.

^[7]Lit. "that Hemay,"ἵνα κτίσῃ). But it is a frequent idiom in N.T. Greek to speak of a past purpose in present terms.

^[8]Probably read,ἐν αὐτῷ, "inHim." But the reference in either case is certainly to Christ Himself.

^[9]Theκαίwith which ver. 16 begins is omitted for the purposes of the paraphrase, in which its meaning is however conveyed.

^[10]Such assuredly is the true account of the meaning of "reconciliation," as the word is used in Scripture. To reconcile man to God means, primarily, not to persuade man to yield to God, but to make it possible for God (if the words may be used with reverence) to accept guilty man with peace. I may refer to myOutlines of Christian Doctrine,p. 79.

^[11]Readεἰρήνηνa second time.

^[12]Readἀλλ’ἐστέ.

^[13]I explain "the prophets" here of the prophets not of the Old Testament but of the New. This seems to be best, in view of the use of the word below,Ephesians 3:5,Ephesians 4:11. It is plain that the Christian "prophet" occupied a place of impressive importance in the primitive Church, second to that of the apostle, but only, apparently, in his not being necessarily "a witness of the Resurrection" and not taking a first place in government.—Meantime the whole New Testament makes it clear that the prophetsof the Old Testamentwere, for our Lord and the Apostles, "evangelists before the time," giving oracles full of Christ.—"The mention of [the N.T. prophets] here is in special point, because public faith and doctrine is in question. The work of the ’prophets’ had doubtless greatly contributed to the wide spread of the truth of the free acceptance in Christ ofallbelievers, Gentiles with Jews. Observe that inActs 15:32it is two ’prophets,’[Judas and Silas,] who ’exhort and confirm’ (the Greek word suggests preciselysettlement on a foundation) the Gentile believers at Antioch, in the very crisis of the conflict between Pharisaic limits and the universality of the Gospel." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[14]Cp.Isaiah 28:16.The Septuagint rendering there is quoted nearly verbatim in the parallel to this passage,1 Peter 2:6, and it runs, "I layamong the foundationsof Sion a stone, etc." St Peter’s use of the words directs the thought not upon anapexbut upon abasis.And so it seems best to take it here.

^[15]ReadΧριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ.

^[16]"R.V., ’each several building,’as if the great Temple were viewed for the moment in its multiplicity of porches, courts, and towers; each connected with the great bond of the substructure.—An interesting grammatical question arises over the reading here, and this rendering, and will occur againEphesians 3:15:—does the Greek phrase, in the best attested reading [πᾶσα οἰκοδομή, notπᾶσαἡοἰκοδομή]demandthe rendering of the R.V. as against that of the A.V.? We incline to the reply that it does not. The law of the definite article... is undoubtedly somewhat less exact in the Greek of the Scriptures than in that of the classics. And this leaves us free to use (with caution) the context to decide problems which in the classics would be decided by pure grammar. Such a case we take this to be; and the question to ask is, Does the context favour the imagery ofdetailor that oftotal?Surely the latter. The idea points to one great building, getting completed within itself, rising to its ideal." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[17]Ναός, more limited and more sacred thanἱερόν. At Jerusalem the whole precinct of the Temple-buildings was theἱερόν, the Holy House itself was theναός.

^[18]Ἐν πνεύματι: both A.V. and R.V. render this, "in (through, A.V.)theSpirit"; surely rightly, in view of the prominence through the whole Epistle of the work of the Holy Ghost.

^[19]And in the phraseology of Scripture (seeaboveonEphesians 2:16) "to reconcile to God" means, to provide a way by which God can justly pardon man, and so by which man, coming in repentance to plead that way, can receive salvation.