Chapter 06. A Digression: The Gospel, and Its World-Wide Scope

Chapter 6.
A Digression: The Gospel, and Its World-Wide Scope Ephesians 3:1-13 "All, all as one we praise Thee, Great Giver of salvation I Whose equal grace nor time, nor place, Nor language knows, nor nation.

We praise, and wait imploring Thy hour of final favour;

Gall in Thine own, reveal Thy throne, And o’er us reign for ever." IN the paragraph just closed, we have seen the vision of the spiritual Temple of God. The saints of the Asian Churches have appeared in that vision as stones built one by one into the wonderful structure. Rising upon their foundation in Christ, and compacted in Him their Corner Stone, they are destined at length to form, for ever, the complete and faultless Sanctuary to be inhabited by the eternal Presence, the Shrine for the manifestation of God to the universe in the endless ages.

Toward that "far-off divine event" moves all the work of the Gospel. The labours of the evangelist and the pastor are indeed inestimably precious as they affect the salvation and development of the redeemed individual. Assuredly, did there exist only one human being, a unique specimen, race and individual at once, made in the image of God, and fallen from Him, the Gospel which should bring to bear on that one soul the saving powers of the world to come would do a work worthy of God. But as the case is, the Gospel has innumerable souls to deal with. And it has to deal with them not only as the individual multiplied, but as the saved, vivified, sanctified, glorified Community. Its result is to be not only a vast collection of chiselled marbles, but those marbles, each faultless in itself, constructed into a Temple, with its courts, and towers, and Holy Place. If the metaphor may be changed for a moment, the saints are not to be strewn as scattered pearls or rubies upon the floor of heaven; they are to be "made up" ( Malachi 3:17) by the great Artificer into one glorious brilliant, in which jewel shall shine upon jewel, and each set off the whole.

Great and splendid then is the aim which is to animate the Christian evangelist. He is working amidst dust and turmoil, but it is for no less a result than the completed Temple of the heavenly Solomon, When that temple is inaugurated at last, he shall be permitted to look upon its symmetry and grandeur, and to think, I too was used in the production of the Habitation of God.

Such surely is the thought of the Apostle at this point in the writing of his Letter. If I read correctly the opening of the third chapter, he was just about to follow up here the theme of the Habitation. But then he turns aside on a sudden to the theme of the Gospel, and of his own part in its enterprise for the world. He was about to say something like this: "You are being built together into the eternal Shrine, the Holy Place, for the residence of God for ever. Therefore, because of such a future, my prayers are going up for you that you may have a corresponding blessing in the present. You are being collected and erected into one Temple, for the abode (κατοικητήριον) of God. I pray therefore that your individual hearts may even now, each one of them, be nothing short of an abode (κατοικῆσαι, Malachi 3:17) of Christ, as the way to your full fruition of every spiritual gift and power. I pray that you may be individually sanctified by the Indwelling now, in order to your being collectively glorified by the Indwelling hereafter." This seems to be the ultimate connexion between the close of the second chapter, with its κατοικητήριον, (followed by the τούτου χάριν of Malachi 3:1,) and the close of the third chapter, with its τούτου χάριν ( Ephesians 3:14) and its κατοικῆσαι. But here comes in this great and memorable digression. He touches now the thought of his apostolic commission, his call to gather in "the Nations "to be built up into the spiritual shrine. And that touch irresistibly impels him to further utterances about that commission, and the grandeur of his message, and the wonder in his own eyes that he, unworthy, should be called to carry it to the world. So we have to wait awhile for the precious sentences about the residence of Christ in the heart by faith, and the love which surpasses knowledge, and the fulness of God. But while we wait we listen to an interlude full of spiritual music. St Paul has to tell us of "the unsearchable wealth of Christ" poured out upon "the Gentiles," free as the golden sunshine, and of a "fellowship" for them all in the long-hidden "mystery" of His salvation, and of the angelic princes of the heavenly world watching the Church to read there their brightest, deepest lesson in the "variegated wisdom of God," and how, in view of such a glory of grace, he sees himself to be "less than least of all the saints."

It is a digression quite abnormal on strict rhetorical principles. But it is of a kind which carries with it its own peculiar eloquence and impression. Such tangents and excursions of thought are characteristic of overflowing minds, from St Paul of old to Thomas Chalmers in a recent generation; Chalmers wrote his sermons, because he could never reach the end of any great subject without the curb of manuscript, so strong was the impulse to diverge into the rich fields beside the road. And where is the parenthesis of St Paul that does not give the Church some conspicuous treasures of revelation?

Let us listen then, while we wait:

Ephesians 3:1. On this account, in view of such a goal of all my work, and of all your hopes, I Paul, yes, no other than this conscious Ego,[1] wonderful as that fact is to myself, I, the prisoner of our (τοῦ) Christ Jesus, (His prisoner, because my captivity is due to the fact that I belong to Him, and in that captivity am wholly His possession still,) on behalf of, in the interests of the Gospel for, you, the Nations, (for in you I see, by representation, "the

Ephesians 3:2. Gentiles" as a whole;) if, if indeed (εἴγε), you did ever hear of the stewardship of that grace of God which was given me toward you, even the grace, the sovereign gift, of apostolic commission for labour among the Nations[2]—:

Here on purpose I leave a broken sentence as the close of a paragraph. For it is just here that the line of thought quits the circle at the tangent. The Apostle begins here to dilate on the glory of the Gospel for "the Nations," and the wonder of his own commission, postponing the account of the prayer in which he beseeches for his converts that they may all experience the indwelling of Christ in the heart. That account is suspended till Ephesians 3:14, where at length we see him on his knees to the Father, asking for the promised Spirit, that the saints may each receive the fulness of the blessing of the Son. Let us leave the soul-disturbed construction as it stands, and proceed:

Ephesians 3:3. I assume then that you did once hear that, revelation-wise, by no mere cogitations, reasonings, aspirations of my own, but by the personal, supernatural information of my Lord, there was made known[3]to me the mystery, the Secret, undiscoverable except as revealed[4]; as I have written above in brief,[5]referring

Ephesians 3:4. to which utterance (πρὸςὅ) you are able, you have the materials, as you read the words over, to perceive my intelligence (σύνεσιν), my God-given insight, in the mystery, the Secret, of our (τοῦ) Christ; the hidden wisdom, the long-buried treasures, stored in His work and glory. And what is that Secret? It is the divine

Ephesians 3:5. purpose which in[6]other, different (ἑτέραις), generations was not made known to the sons of men, Jewish or Gentile, as (on the scale and with the unreserved distinctness with which) it has now been unveiled[7]to His holy apostles and prophets,[8] the recipients of His developed message of salvation, who receive it and proclaim it in the Spirit, in the possessing power, in the revealing light, of the Holy Ghost. And now, once more, what is this deep Secret of the loving will of God? It is no astounding but unprofitable curiosity of the unseen world; nothing which appeals to man except as man is conscious of himself as a sinner, and awake to his need of peace and amity with eternal Holiness, and athirst for present purity and immortal glory to follow. But let man be thus awake, and then indeed the Secret of the Lord is wonderful to him, and is welcome. Let him be some "Gentile," European, or Asiatic, or from African Cyrene or Abyssinia, who knows himself at all, and who has heard indeed of a God of truth and glory, but only through the message of the Pharisee; he wonders whether after all there is room for him in the house of salvation, for him, with all his secular and uncovenanted conditions; for him, on the wrong side of that awful "wall of partition" within which Israel walks in supernatural privilege, on the way to an endless heaven. Let such be the hearer of the apostolic news, (and the heathen world then, even as now, was scattered all over with souls in just such a wistful mood, whatever special form it took in its expression,) and indeed he would hail the Secret as life from the dead. For it is this:

Ephesians 3:6. That the Nations are, in God’s purpose now at last revealed, after the long age of discipline and reserve, co-heritors of the spiritual estate of a common Father, for they are made His children in His Son, and co-members[9] in the one Body animated by the new life, and co-partakers of the Promise in Christ, the Promise of the full blessing of Abraham, laid up for all who are bound up with Abraham’s Lord and Seed, Messiah. And this union with Him has become a fact for them by means of the Gospel; that life-bringing message of a Saviour and of a Holy Ghost, by which ( 1 Corinthians 4:15) man, believing, is "begotten again," and so passes into all that is meant by living union with God in Christ. For it is the message which unfolds at last "the end," the final cause, of that "Law" which seemed as if it were only the barrier between "the Nations" and eternal life. It shews the wonderful Christ, who was, as it were, prepared and developed within that barrier, now rising and overflowing it, and pouring Himself, like the rivers of Paradise, upon all the world, for the blessing of "whosoever will." This Gospel presents Him to "the Gentile" as no mere casual and accidental, however wonderful, Gift of heavenly compassion; He is the eternally-intended Lord of a Covenant "ordered in all things and sure." Israel was for a season the solitary trustee of that Covenant. But the time has come now for its unreserved conveyance to "all the seed, not to that which belongs to the Law only, but to that which belongs to Abraham’s faith" ( Romans 4:16).

Wonderful Gospel, wonderful in this universality of its covenant-scope! How little do we, so long used to its abundant blessings, understand its wonder! But those primeval heathen converts did. And we too begin again to do so whenever, under conviction of sin, we get a real conviction of mercy, and own that all might have been utterly otherwise. The Eternal might have dealt with a disloyal race "according to their works." But He has dealt with them "according to His abundant mercy," according to "the Son of His love," whom He "gave for the life of the world." The thought of that Gospel fires more and more the heart and utterance of the Apostle.

Ephesians 3:7. Of which message I became minister,διάκονος, working servant and agent, according to, in the spirit and with the strength of, the free giftδωρεά, the benignant boon, of commission and inspiration in my apostleship; the gift of, conferred on me by, the grace which was given me, according to the working of His power; yes, according to nothing less than that divine inward resource. I was made the Apostle of the Nations, "according to a gift" as regarded my illumination and commission, and "according to His power" as regarded my capacity to carry through the vast work in all its weight and fulness. Woe to me if I sent myself; but He sent me. Woe yet more to me if I seek to sustain myself in self-born energies and enthusiasm; but He is in me, "working His works" ( John 14:10). With such a power lodged within me, there is no discouragement, while there is unspeakable humiliation, in the fact that the "vessel" is so truly "earthen," in itself so immeasurably unworthy of its contents.

Ephesians 3:8. To me, even me (the emphatic ἐμοί), the less than least[10]of all saints,—seen by my inmost self, in all I know of myself, to be no more than that, (a "saint," yes, a true limb of Christ, a genuine devotee to Him; but the really unworthiest among them all,)—has been given this grace, this sovereign, unearned bounty—to the Nations[11]to tell as Gospel the unsearchable, the "untrackable," the labyrinthine ἀνεξιχνίαστον, wealth of our (τοῦ) Christ; the boundless source and resource in Him for all that man needs for the bliss of his whole being, in time, in eternity, in

Ephesians 3:9. life, in death, in glory; and to illuminate all men, to pour round them, whoever they may be, a flood of sunlight, as to what is, in its amazing fact and character, the dispensation,[12] the worldwide distribution, as God designs it, through His servants, of the mystery, the Secret of a world’s covenant-blessing in Christ, which has been hidden away, since the ages began, in the God, our God, who created all things,[13] and who in His plan of Redemption has not forgotten that fact of His universal Creatorship. And this "worldwide distribution" of the tidings of such a mercy, what is it to do? It is to gather in a Church of believers out of universal man. And the work of that Church, what is it to be? A work for extension indeed! It is not only even to illuminate the human world; it is to cast a reflected glory upwards, to the eyes of the watchers of the world above; that

Ephesians 3:10. now, now at last, in the Gospel age, to the governments and the authorities, the "princes" ( Daniel 10:21, etc.) of the angelic host, representatives of that host itself, in the celestial regions, may be made known, intimated, given as information (γνωρισθῇ), by means of the Church, by that great object-lesson in what omnipotent Love can do with the material of a ruined race, the variegated, the versatile, the manifold, wisdom of God; the "wisdom" which is never at a loss to carry out its purposes of grace, be the problems presented by its subject what they may.

It is a wonderful scene, as the Apostle lifts the veil, and bids us, like Elisha’s lad at Dothan, see the invisible around us and above. Behold "the Church," "the company of the faithful." "Whence came they?" From the Fall, from the death of sin, from the city of destruction, from a profound preference of self to God. Each one of that company, if interrogated, will say that he, that she, was antecedently as unworthy as possible of grace, justly under sentence, "in the flesh," in which "no good thing dwelleth." "Whence came they?" From the real circumstances of mortal life; from the scenes of common toil, and prosaic incident, and everyday intercourse; from the hopes and fears, the laughter and weeping, the births and deaths of time, just as we know them. They have come to Christ "in the body," "in this tabernacle," "being burthened." They have been received by Him so, and kept by Him so, and under these conditions joined together in Him in the wonderful organism of the limbs of the living Head. Men, women, children, behold them there, upon the earth; not in the heavenly future only, as they shall be, but "now" in the present, as they are. And then above them see, bending to the contemplation, "the governments and the authorities in the celestial regions." The spirits of immortality are intently studying the mortal scene below them. They possess in their own ethereal consciousness the experience of all the past since they "sang together" ( Job 38:7) over creation. They live where the vision of God is given to them as it is not given yet to us; they "always behold His face"; they "stand in His presence." What then have they to learn from us? Ah, they have to learn something which makes them watch us with wonder and with awe. They see in us indeed all our weakness, and all our sin. But they see a nature which, wrecked by itself, was yet made in the image of their God and ours. And they see this God at work upon that wreck to produce results not only wonderful in themselves but doubly wonderful because of the conditions.

It is a thought to inspire the weakest and the least advanced disciple, that he, just as "a man in Christ," is a specimen, an instance, a part and member, of this Object of the attention of "our elder brethren of the sky." The "angel that excels in strength" has things to learn here which he cannot learn from all he sees among his own bright peers of the celestial Order. He has to learn what grace can do with the mortal nature, and under the burthen of the flesh, as it is carried about perhaps by some poor and despised disciple, some young convert in the lanes of the English city, or in the kraal of the African wilderness. His cloudless intelligence finds matter for profound reflection in the phenomenon of firm and reasonable faith exercised by the man who knows God by grace but is utterly unable, from his earthly point of view, to see through some riddle of his Providence, or to comprehend some dark saying of His Word. In his own immortality, never touched by one drop of our cold river, it is instructive to him beyond all our thought to see his God triumphing over pain and death in some sufferer in the fire of martyrdom, or in the torture of cancer, or in the shipwreck, or just in the silent awe of any form of our departure from the body. "In all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us." And what He who loved us is, in His "multifold wisdom," is seen thus "through the Church," as nowhere else in the universe, by the Principalities and Powers.

All this, moreover, this education of heaven through earth, if we may dare to phrase it so, is a matter of

Ephesians 3:11. the plan and will of God; it is according to the purpose, the programme, of the ages, the long "dispensations" of the slow history of Redemption leading up to the Church Universal of living saints; the purpose which He, the Father, formed, in the Christ, even Jesus our Lord. For all was planned, as all was to be carried out, "in Him"; "both Idea and Working were altogether bound up with Him. ’In Christ’ God was to ’reconcile the world’; ’in Christ’ the saints were to ’have redemption, in His blood’; ’in Him’ to be ’rooted and built up’; ’complete in Him’; ’abiding in Him’; ’walking in Him’; ’dying in the Lord’; ’in Christ made alive.’"

"So God hath greatly purposed." And the Principalities and Powers see God working that purpose out in a material that only illustrates to the utmost, by its difficulty, His glory. And now what do they see as the innermost wonder of the phenomenon they study? They see these fallen and mortal beings, this Community of the lost and saved, not only bearing and doing for God here on earth, but spiritually present with Him in the Holy of Holies above. The "saints" are in Christ, who is in God. So they are the intimates of their Father’s heart; His subjects, His vassals, His bondmen, on the one side, but on the other, His own dear children, who can say anything to Him. For they are one with the

Ephesians 3:12. Well-Beloved, in whom we have our (τήν) freedom of utterance, παῤῥησίαν, our unreserved leave of intercourse, and our introduction, through our (τῆς) faith in Him (αὐτοῦ). For this whole wonderful life is "from faith to faith." To rely, to confide, to act upon the promise, is the secret and the means, alike when the penitent comes first to the feet of divine Compassion, and when the disciple goes deepest into the recesses of "the secret of the Presence."

Ephesians 3:13. Wherefore I ask you,[14] I appeal to you, not to lose heart, as in your loving sympathy you might do, as if you had to feel with me under a failure,amidst (ἐν) my troubles suffered on your behalf; for this (ἥτις) is your glory. In the propagation of such a Gospel the messenger may well be willing to suffer for the sake of the converts, and they in their turn may well not be discouraged when they see him suffer for them. And such a Gospel supplies the very motive to the spirit breathing here, the spirit which cannot pause to contemplate its own "troubles" as such, but thinks only of those for whom they are endured, and of their need of hope and cheer. So closes the long and magnificent digression. It has roved from the immediate theme in hand, but not for a moment has it stepped outside of Christ. It is a sudden turn taken in a green labyrinth. But the labyrinth is all alike the ἀνεξιχνίαστος πλοῦτος, "the wealth not to be tracked by footprints," of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us return now, with St Paul, to the original matter of the context. But let us only the more involve ourselves, as to faith and love, in the glorious Maze of Him whose Name, with all that it contains, is a boundless Paradise of the believing soul.

"Our Garden is a Labyrinth too, Whose paths no clue can tell;

It spreads about us, ever new, A wealth unsearchable."

^[1]He frequently writesἐγὼΠαῦλος. So2 Corinthians 10:1, "I Paul myself beseech you";Galatians 5:2, "Behold I Paul say unto you";Colossians 1:23, "whereof I Paul am made a minister." This is no commonplaceegotism; it is the voice of an intense and powerful personality, filled with a vivid consciousness of relation and responsibility.

^[2]Εἴγεἠκούσατε. As I understand this "if," it is the expression of a certain graciousirony.The commission of St Paul to "the Gentiles" had been well known through the whole circle of his missions for years, and was notorious of course at Ephesus, and generally in Asia (it was at Ephesus that he first definitely withdrew the converts from the synagogue,Acts 19:8-9). And just this notoriety of the fact gives occasion for a gentle, an almostpleasant,hypothetical allusion to it: "You may possibly have heard of such a thing as my being the Apostle of the Gentiles!"

Τῆς χάριτος...τῆς δοθείσης. Observe that he speaks here not of the "stewardship" but of the "grace" as the "gift." See for comment the wordsbelow,Ephesians 3:8, "to me... was this grace given, to preach, etc." So probablyPhp 1:7, "partakers of my grace," i.e. of my apostolic work and suffering.

^[3]Readἐγνωρίσθη, notἐγνώρισε.

^[4]Such is always the meaning ofμυστήριονin the N.T. See onEphesians 1:9.

^[5]Προέγραψαἐνὀλίγῳ. The Greek aorist is here best represented by our perfect, as the "writing" was so recent. He refers to previous passages in this Epistle,Ephesians 1:9, etc.,Ephesians 2:11, etc. Hence our "above" seems better as a rendering than "before."

^[6]’Probably omitἐν. But the English will be the same.

^[7]Νῦνἀπεκαλύφθη. Again an aorist, but demanding the English perfect to represent it, as the reference is to a recent past whose results are present.

^[8]Beyond doubt here the reference is to the "prophets" of the Christian Church, like Silas and Agabus.See above,Ephesians 2:20, and remarks there.

^[9]ΣύσσωμαI sacrifice a literal rendering to preserve the balance in form of the termsσυγκληρονόμα, σύσσωμα, κ.τ.λ.

^[10]Ἐλαχιστοτέρῳ, literally "leaster"; a "comparative superlative" coined by his glowing thought for this unique use.

^[11]Readτοῖςἔθνεσιν, notὲν τ.ἐ.

^[12]Certainly readοἰκονομία, notκοινωνία

^[13]Omitδιὰ ἸησοῦΧριστοῦ.

^[14]It seems far better to explainαἰτοῦμαιthus than of prayer to God.Thatis spoken of in the next sentence, and in much stronger terms.