06. Chapter 6
Chapter 6 The account in the Epistle of the Father’s relation to the Church--Examinations in detail of Ephesians 2:8-9 --His Glory manifested through the Church--Children of God--Temple of God--The doctrine of the Epistle about the Holy Spirit--Veni Creator.
It remains to collect and review what the Epistle says of the Father as He is seen in His relation to the Church, to the mystical Body and Members of the Son. Much of this class of truths has been already before us, but from other points of view. As for us then, who by grace are in the Son of God, we read here as follows about the whole ’blessed Company’ and all its true members. In the Father (Ephesians 3:9) was ’hid away from all eternity the dispensation of the mystery’ of our redemption; its οἰκονομία (so read), its management and distribution through the work of the Son, lay as a purpose, as a destiny, deep in the will of the Father, above all time, to be manifested in the fulness of times. It is the Father who designs and destines the salvation of the Church in Christ, with all its everlasting and ever-growing issues. He chooses us out (Ephesians 1:4); He marks us out beforehand (Ephesians 1:5); and He does so, we observe, not only that we may be somehow rescued from wrath into peace, but ’that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love’; that we should be ’adopted as children’ to Himself. It is He Who, in pre-temporal purpose, ’spoke (εὐλογήσας) all spiritual benediction upon us in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:3), assigning as it were articulately to us the right and title to all His grace, by the Spirit, in virtue of our union with His Son. It is He Who (Ephesians 1:18, Ephesians 4:1) ’calls’ us (ἡ ἐλπὶς τῆς κλήσεως αὐτοῦ); that is to say, following the un-unvarying use of καλεῖν and its cognates in the Epistles, in spiritual references, it is He Who not only invites us but actually and prevailingly brings us in. (See, for a specimen of the proof of this, 1 Corinthians 1:23-29.) It is He Who (Ephesians 2:5, etc.) ’has saved us’ (σεσωσμένοι ἐστέ) ’by grace, through faith, not in consideration of works,’ χάριτι, διὰ τῆς πίστεως, οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων. It it all the Father’s gift; Θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον.
Let us pause a few moments upon these well-known words, Ephesians 2:8-9, for a short study of their phraseology and inner connexion. Τῆ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσωσμένοι διὰ πίστεως· (καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν· Θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον·) οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων, ἵνα μή τις καυχήσηται. I read these clauses at full length, and in the Greek, on purpose. It is a question, as my reader well knows, whether the Apostle here does or does not assert faith to be the gift of God. It is maintained by many expounders that he cannot mean to assert it, for the Greek grammar is against it; he writes διὰ πίστεως, καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὐμῶν, κ.τ.λ,, not διὰ πίστεως, καὶ αὓτη, κ.τ.λ.; so that, grammatically ’faith’ and ’that’ are out of direct mutual connexion; and so καὶ τοῦτο and τὸ δῶρον must be referred to the previous statement of the gratuity of our salvation, not to the detail of a supposed ’gift’ of our faith. But I maintain nevertheless that there is a reference of καὶ τοῦτο--not indeed grammatically to the noun πίστις, but--practically to the thought and fact that we have believed.
What is the habitual function of the phrase ’and that,’ καὶ τοῦτο? It is to give a new point, a new factor, to the thought in hand; to enhance what has gone before. So 1 Corinthians 6:6; 1 Corinthians 6:8; ’Brother goeth to law with brother, καὶ τοῦτο before the unbelievers’; ’Ye do wrong and defraud, καὶ τοῦτο your brethren.’ Καὶ τοῦτο is nothing if not a note of new and distinctive fact. Now what does the καὶ τοῦτο here touch naturally with its proper point? Not the whole context, not the general idea. For that, as a whole, needs no such addition. It has already stated the gratuitousness of our salvation in general in terms of overwhelming strength. But let καὶ τοῦτο point its emphasis just at the last detail in the statement, just at the idea given by ’through your faith,’ διὰ τῆς πίστεως, and we see at once the truest pertinence. For exactly there the reader would need reminding that what seemed to be (and in a sense really was) his own part in the matter--his faith, his believing, his taking God at His word--is yet, ultimately, ’not his own, but given.’ True, it is his act, personal and genuine, and so it will be to the last. But that he acts thus is God’s gift. For it is God Who has brought him to such a sight of his sin and of his Lord that by a deep necessity, a necessity not mechanical but moral, he must believe, he must commit himself to Jesus Christ: ’to whom else should he go?’ This is a considerable digression on a single point. But it bears all the while upon our main present theme, the work and grace of the Father in our salvation. ’Of Him’ indeed ’are all things’; Of Him are we in Christ Jesus’ (1 Corinthians 1:30). He (Ephesians 2:4-10), ’wealthy in pity, on account of His great love with which He loved us, being, as we were, dead men in our trespasses, He woke us to life, in union with Christ (by grace you stand saved, σεσωσμένοι; and raised us from the grave in that union; and in that union seated us in the heavenly world in Christ Jesus; that He might demonstrate, in the ages that are coming on, the overwhelming wealth of His grace in kindness poured upon us in Christ Jesus. For by His (τῇ) grace you stand saved, through your (τῆς) faith (aye, and that part of the matter is not of you; God’s is the gift); not of works’ (a phrase on which the Roman Epistle throws ample light; it means to exclude human merit, root and branch, to negative everything that can intrude between the trusting penitent and the perfect Christ), ’that no one might boast. For His making (ποίημα) are we, created in Christ Jesus,’ a creation coincident in idea with our regeneration and union, ’with a view to good works, which God,’ which the Father, ’prepared beforehand, that in them we might walk.’ What does this wonderful paragraph not contain? Here is the work of the sacrificed and risen Christ, and the provision of it for us by the free favour of the Father. Here is our part and lot in it, sure and present, through faith; and the origin of both provision and possession lies in the Father’s grace. Here is the path of holiness prepared by the Father, in which the redeemed walk, not to attain but to fulfil their spiritual rest in God. And here are the eternal issues, in their unknown and wonderful developments, when ’the ages that are coming on,’ whatever ranks and worlds of spectators shall occupy them, will see, in the Church of ’the saved ones by grace, through faith,’ the supreme manifestation of the glory of the Father’s ’kindness.’ This last thought recurs again and again, the thought of the ulterior issues of our salvation, as the Father uses the Church of His dear Son as the chosen channel for the manifestation of Himself in His universe. So Ephesians 1:12; we are to be ’to the praise of the glory of His grace.’ In Ephesians 3:21, ’glory’ is to come to Him, the Father, ’in the Church,’ ’unto all the generations of the age of ages’; a sentence in which language seems to labour under a weight of futurity too great for it to bear; a sentence in which there lie hid we know not what issues for life and blessing, through the Church, for the universe. And already, not only in an illimitable coming time but now, we, if indeed we are in Christ, are being used to the Father’s praise. For see Ephesians 3:10, with its connexion, and its wonderful intimation. The Apostle is rejoicing in the thought of his mission, as he is used in the hand of God ’to preach among the nations the unsearchable wealth of Christ,’ and to ’illuminate’ (Ephesians 3:8) the fact and nature of the secret of redemption which was ’hid in God’ so long. And what does he say about the aim and outcome of the work? Not now that it will elevate humanity, or that it will console the sorrows and heal the sins of earth; but ’that now to the principalities and to the powers in the heavenly world might be made clear through the Church the multifold wisdom of God.’ So then, at this hour, the believing company, the Lord’s true Body, is being observed from the unseen. And that observation is not the compassionate curiosity which the poet assigns to angels as they watch the workings of the human mind:-- ’Superior beings, when of late they saw A mortal man unfold all nature’s law, Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape, And show’d a Newton as we show an ape!’[9] [9] Essay on Prayer of Manasseh, 2:31
No; that is not the Scripture doctrine of man. In Scripture, with unbroken consistency, man, while laid in the dust before God as creature, and most of all as sinner, is viewed with awe and with congratulation as regards his place and function in creation. And here, somehow, so it is indicated, the grace, the power, the life of God in the Church of redeemed men is said to be the deep study of angelic intelligences, who see there the sphere in which to trace, not the abnormal achievements of the creature, but the manifold wisdom of the Father, calling life out of death, glory out of the Fall, making His power perfect in weakness, uniting man to Himself in Christ.
Men thus redeemed, in their community in Christ, are now (Ephesians 2:19) inmates of the home of the Father, His οἰκεῖοι, His necessarii ’members of His family.’ They are in truth and fact His children; by adoption, υἱοθεσία (Ephesians 1:5), and by new nature, τεκνὰ (Ephesians 5:1), ’children born.’ We note that here, as almost everywhere in Scripture, the terms of Fatherhood and Childhood are used of the relationship not of Creation but of Redemption, not of nature but of grace. Great and wonderful is the relationship in nature between the Maker and the being made of old in His image. But very rarely at the most, so it seems to me, does the language of birth, and Fatherhood, and family, attach to that relationship in either the Old Testament or the New. It is reserved for man in Christ. In grace, in Christ, as vivified and raised in Him, we are indeed, as to the Father, ’children,’ ’dear children,’ υἱοὶ Θεοῦ, τεκνὰ Θεοῦ, ἀγαπητά τεκνά. So to Him as to our very Father, in a sense of that word as intense as it is definite, we have ’introduction’ (προσαγωγή Ephesians 2:18; Ephesians 3:12). He welcomes our inmost approaches, behind all scenes of outward life. He meets us and listens to us, not only as a Sovereign on some day of state receives his peers, and perhaps his children among them, to an intercourse elaborate, limited, reserved because of its very pomp; but rather as that same Sovereign in the recesses of home life and love clasps his children to his heart, and hears all they have to say, and gives them an affection no longer hampered in its exercise but quickened in its pulse and joy by the fact of his royalty and theirs.[10] [10] I owe the suggestion of this sentence to a noble passage in Miss Alcock’s Spanish Brothers, ch. ix.
Meanwhile from another side, and in view now mainly of the eternal future, this Church in the Son of God, these men chosen, called, saved, raised, seated in the heavenly regions, children of God entering with absolute confidence into their Father’s inmost presence, are viewed as the Father’s ’temple.’ See Ephesians 2:21-22. There the picture is of a vast unfinished rising structure, furnished indeed already with foundation and with corner-stone, but growing still; not completed, not inaugurated yet. ’All the building’ (so, in the light of the whole context and imagery, I would render πᾶσα οἰκοδομή) ’is growing into a holy shrine (ναός) in the Lord; ye are getting built together’ (with all other saints) ’for God’s permanent abode, in the Spirit’ Such is the wonderful destiny of the believing company. It is to become at length perfectly, and as it were in public consecration, what it has only in part as yet begun to be. In its heavenly perfectness it is to be the scene of the unremoving Presence of the Father in His final manifestation, the vehicle for the showing of His glory to whatever witnesses Eternity shall bring to see it.
Meantime, in these years and ages of preparation, it is the Father, in the Son, Who comes already, as faith receives Him, to fill the narrow house of the disciple’s ’heart’ (Ephesians 3:19). The man (so prays the Apostle) is to know the love of Christ, in order that he may be ’filled unto all the fulness of God’; up to the limit, if we may speak of limit here, of the Father’s communicability, in His grace and power, to the believing man.
’Lord, we ask it, hardly knowing What this wondrous gift may be;
Yet fulfil to overflowing;
Thy great meaning let us see.’
We have thus reviewed the witness of our new-discovered Epistle to the glory of the Father. In a briefer way of exposition let us now examine its oracles on the power and working of the Holy Spirit. The passages where the Spirit is named we find not to be many. Yet they are not few, and they are of the most sacred weight. And we note the remarkable emphasis given here to this side of truth, in contrast to the equally remarkable silence upon it in the Epistle to the Colossians; a silence which I do not attempt to explain, for in any case this is not the occasion.[11] Before collecting the passages here, we observe that in only some of them the article goes with Πνεῦμα (see Ephesians 1:13; Ephesians 3:6; Ephesians 4:30; Ephesians 5:17). I hardly need remind the reader that it is often maintained that Πνεῦμα with the article denotes the Spirit as personal, and that Πνεῦμα without it denotes Spirit in a sense more vague and impersonal; spiritual influence, or the effect of it. For myself I cannot find any satisfactory law in the matter. And for our purpose now it seems sufficient, looking at the New Testament as a whole, to say that the word Πνεῦμα, as we shall find it here, denotes at least the personal operation, if not the Person. The distinction, therefore, need not be pressed in translation and in practical exposition here.
[11]It is as noteworthy in Colossians as is the absence of all mention of the Lord’s glorious Return in Ephesians. The Epistle then gives us the following as its doctrine of the Spirit. The Spirit is personal, if words are to be understood in their natural meaning; see that appeal to the Christian’s heart, Ephesians 4:30 : ’Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.’ We have here in the Spirit, manifestly, not ’It’ but ’Him’; One able personally, however mysteriously, to be ’wounded’ by the Christian’s sin. No explicit mention occurs of the Spirit’s work in our regeneration. As we have seen, the Father is here presented in His life-giving action, without mention of His divine Co-agent. But the mention of the Spirit in Ephesians 4:3-4, as the One Spirit of the One Body--the body of those risen with Christ and seated with Him in His exaltation, the body in fact of the true Church--at least suggests His action in the beginning as in the maintenance of the life of the members. The Epistle rather dwells however on His operation in them when they are already alive by grace in Christ. He (Ephesians 1:13; Ephesians 4:30) is the divine Seal upon their union with their Lord; πιστεύσαντες ἐσφραγίσθητε. ’on believing you were sealed,’ ’sealed unto the day of redemption.’ Perhaps he refers here to the χαρίσματα, the tongues and prophecies; but it is at least noticeable that in this group of Epistles, the Epistles of the first Roman imprisonment, there is (putting this passage aside) no explicit reference to those mysteries. In any event I cannot think that he refers to them alone, but also, if not only, to the far profounder and more wonderful gift of the new conscious life of the Spirit in the believer, evidenced by its holy fruits, love, joy, peace, and all that radiant circle (Galatians 5:21-22).[12] ’In the Spirit,’ animated and enabled by Him, the Christian ’has his (τὴν) access to the Father’ (Ephesians 2:18). The presence of the Spirit in him is the earnest of his heavenly inheritance (Ephesians 1:14), ’the bud of heaven,’ ’glory begun below.’ Yet though already thus possessed of the Spirit, the man may, yea does, need Him as it were to come again, in new developments of His power. In Ephesians 1:17the Apostle’s prayer is for the gift, by the Father, of ’the Spirit of wisdom and unveiling in the true knowledge of God’; as if they still had all to learn about the greatness of their blessings. In Ephesians 3:16 he beseeches the gift of the same blessed Agent, to strengthen the saints ’deep in the (εἰς τὸν) inner man,’ enabling them to a surrender of faith which should bring Christ in a new and wonderful measure to ’reside,’ to be at home, in their hearts. In Ephesians 5:18 he lays it upon them not as an ambition, but (let us note it well) as a precept of Christian duty, to ’be filled in the Spirit,’ πληροῦσθαι ἐν Πνεύματι. This filling was to be ’in Him,’ for already He was ’about’ them, in His blessed potency; but they might yet need, in faith and surrender, to welcome His full power and presence into all their being and all their life. The weapon of their soul’s victory was to be ’the sword of the Spirit’ (Ephesians 6:17), the Word inspired, and to be applied, by Him. And their prayer (Ephesians 6:18) was to be ’always with all supplication in the Spirit,’ as they gave themselves to Him to form their wills and to uphold their trust. Their songs of praise were to be ’spiritual,’ πνευματικὰ, (Ephesians 5:19), prompted and vivified by Him.
[12] We must not quote Ephesians 5:9 in this connexion; for there certainly we read φωτὸς, not πνεύματος. In the sphere of the Church at large, the Father ’through the Spirit’ has revealed (Ephesians 3:5) His plan of universal blessing to His Apostles and Prophets. And the One Spirit and the One Body (Ephesians 4:4) are correlatives in the life of the true organism, whose oneness is supremely a oneness of the Spirit. And it is the ’Spirit’ ’in’ which it grows (Ephesians 2:22) to its eternal completion as the habitation of the Father.
I close without one word of summing up, only with a humble prayer, quickened in the heart by this review. May we, in the Ephesus of our day, experience always in holy reality the counterpart of this Ephesian theology of the Spirit!
Veni, Creator Spiritus, Mentes tuorum visita;
Imple supernâ gratiâ
Quae Tu creasti pectora. Amen.