07. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 The Epistle examined for its account of the Christian--Not the unusual but the normal Christian--His privileges and inner experience--Eternal provision made for him--He ’begins fallen’--His recovery and blessings in Christ--Session in the heavenly places--All is mercy--His salvation complete from one view-point, progressive from another--These truths are facts for us in our day.

We open once more our Epistle, to study it as a new-found treasure. We take up this authentic relic of the earliest, the apostolic age, this true product of the pen and of the soul of the man who indeed ’heard the words of God and saw the vision of the Almighty’; and we again interrogate it, with the curiosity of a new research, following one definite line of its contents. That line now is, its picture of the primitive Christian.

When, a few years ago, under circumstances of great interest andd almost of romance, the Apology of Aristides was recovered from its long oblivion,^[13] with what keen and eager scrutiny did its readers turn, amidst its many treasures of information about second-century conditions, to Aristides’ panegyric upon the life of Christians as he saw it then! Every sentence was marked; every side of the simple but radiant picture was scrutinized--the practical beneficence, the scrupulous honesty, the forgiveness, the sympathy, the brotherly considerateness of the master for the slave, the self-sacrificing care for the poor and for the stranger, the blessed thankfulness and happiness of spirit, the holy modesty and dignity of woman, the habitual prayerfulness, the joyful thoughts of the peace and bliss of the beloved ones gone to the Lord, so that funerals were almost transfigured into triumphs of light and song.

^[13] See, for an excellent popular account, Mrs Rendel Harris’s little volume, The Apology of Aristides. That was indeed a lovely picture, calling for thankful, and for humiliated, study. But it was only the stream of which this Ephesian portrait gives us, as it were, the fountain. Here the reporter is not the philosophic observer of a second or third generation, but the apostolic friend and educator of the first, and we have his very words before us. We will gladly make such slight effort of imagination as may awaken anew our curiosity for what he has to say of the Christian life as it could be lived, and as assuredly it was lived, in Asian circles in the year 63, to the glory of the grace of God. The Epistle shall be asked then to yield us--as if for the first time--its portrait of the New Testament Christian. We will remember as we do so, on the threshold, that it is the portrait not of an unusual Christian but of the Christian. Throughout the Epistle there is not a hint of any abnormal circumstances attached to any of the lives in question. When first it was read in the assemblies, no one would hear one word about life or duty which, as to practical precepts, travelled further or higher than the common day of the ordinary man or woman. No distinction, no éclat, is indicated, even in the way of suffering. No solemn words occur, as in some other epistolary passages, e.g., in Romans 8:1-39, in Php 1:1-30., in 2 Timothy, in I Peter, about the sorrows and the glories of confessorship or martyrdom. The Ephesian Letter aims its counsels and revelations, in a very remarkable degree, only at life lived under average conditions. The more immediately interesting it is therefore to us under our present circumstances, and the more keenly searching, when it draws in front of that prosaic background the picture of a life so holy, so harmless and undefiled, and having meanwhile its source and secret higher than the heavens.

One of the great and most necessary aims of the pastoral teacher in the English parish is to persuade men and women to believe, by the grace of God, that not a select few here and there but all who name the name of Christ as Saviour and Master are called--not to respectability but to holiness; to a life in the whole of which the Lord Christ is secret power and outward rule. The intended normal Christian life is that in which Christ governs, from the centre, the whole circumference; in which the honest aim is a total abstinence from known sinning and a positive doing of all God’s known will; in which religion, that is to say, the Lord Jesus Christ, is indeed ’kept in its place,’ and therefore ’in all places, and at all times.’ In pressing that great fact of the Gospel upon the people let us always reanimate ourselves by fresh researches into the Word of God alike for the rule and practice of the life of holiness and (let us not forget) for its spiritual secret. Such researches we are attempting now. The Epistle puts before us the Christian under two main aspects. First we have the hidden ’pulse of the machine,’ the springs of grace, the heavenly secret behind the veil, the possessions and experience of the true member of the Lord’s true body. This is given us in Ephesians 1:1 -23; Ephesians 2:1-22; Ephesians 3:1-21, with a few gatherings from the remaining pages. Then we have the resulting walk and work, the character, the conduct; the use of time, of tongue, of means, the discharge of duty in the relationships of life. This is given us in chapters 4-6. I propose to examine the two parts of the picture separately, while remembering of course their vital relation. We might with equal advantage, perhaps, approach them in either order; studying the conduct first and the secret last, or the secret first and the conduct last. But the latter is the order of the Epistle.

I. The Secrets and Experience of the New Testament Christian’s life.

Here one word must be said about my treatment of the matter individual-wise, so as to look at the New Testament Christian rather than at the New Testament Church. I fully remember the grandeur and the importance of the presentation in the Epistle, above all in its first chapters, of the Ecclesia. Wonderful is the depth and power of the truth, set forth more fully here than anywhere else in the Scripture, of the divinely-ordered ’solidarity’ of all the true members in the glorious Head. And in the picture of the individual, as we study it, we shall feel that a light from above and from around is shed upon the whole portrait by the presence and remembrance of that other truth, the truth of the Church. The man we shall consider, while whole and genuine in himself as an individual, is whole and genuine as a member only as he recollects, and seeks to act upon, his connexion through the Head with all who also are in Him. The multitude of the faithful are not a heap of crystals but limbs of a body in the Lord. Yet for our present purpose, and certainly I think for the purposes of our pastoral teaching, while the ’solidarity’ of the living Church is the truth which, so to speak, harmonizes the total of the picture, the individual aspect of the matter is the likelier to come quite home to conscience and to faith in practical application. And of the lawfulness of such an inference, from truths of the Church to truths of the soul, I am sure, with Scripture before me. Is Christ the Head of the Church? He is also (1 Corinthians 11:3) ’the Head of every man,’ κεφαλὴ παντὸς ἀνθρώπου. Is He the Bridegroom of the Church? He is also so related to the individual believer that the individual is described as ’joined unto the Lord,’ κολλώμενος τῷ Κυρίῳ (1 Corinthians 6:17), in a context full of the thought of bridal union. Did Christ love the Church and give Himself for it? He also, so says the believing man, ’loved me and gave Himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).

What then, in this wonderful document, are the secrets of the state and life of the true member of the true Church of God? ’In Christ,’ his Head, he looks back so far as to ’before the foundation of the world,’ and he is told that he was then ’blessed with all spiritual benediction in Him’ (Ephesians 1:3). ’In Him’ he was ’chosen out to be holy and blameless in the love’ of God (Ephesians 1:4); ordained beforehand to the wonderful position of His adopted son (Ephesians 1:5); ’accepted([*]So I would still render there, having regard to the connexion of the word ἐχαρίτωσεν.) in the Beloved One (Ephesians 1:6).’ Descending from Eternity into the Time which it overshadows, we find the man beginning his individual life under conditions which little portend the realization of the heavenly and archetypal Will. How it is not here explained, (we must go to other Scriptures, and particularly to other Pauline Scriptures, for the how,) but somehow so it was (and the experience of humanity affirms the truth only too well) that he was ’dead in his trespasses and his sins’ (Ephesians 2:1): he was ’darkness’ (Ephesians 5:8); he was under the mysterious power not only of abstract evil but of malign antagonists of God, headed by the rebel prince of sin, ’the ruler of the authority of the air, ruler of the Spirit-force (τοῦ πνεύματος; so I would explain) now working in the sons of disobedience’ (Ephesians 2:2). (I attempt no exegesis in detail of this dark passage, only saying that ’the air,’ so far as I can see, is used here in a sense which hovers between the mystical and the literal. Viewless yet palpable, ’the air’ is, if not the element, at least the reminding symbol, of the surrounding agents of evil in their subtle yet operative presence). Yes, the man was ’walking according to that authority,’ just so far as he was not the loyal subject of God. Whether he was profligate or humanly virtuous, this was alike the case with him. Profligacy and human virtue are unutterably different in other respects; but in this respect they make no difference; the man might live in either camp and yet not love God. And if so, he went, in that deep respect, the way not of God, but of God’s adversary. So says St Paul in this very place, by implication, about himself; ’We all had our life-course in the past in the lusts of the flesh,’ i.e., in the biases and likings of the self-life, ’fulfilling the lusts of the flesh and of the mind; and we were by nature,’ as distinguished from grace, ’children of wrath;’ involved in just such divine displeasure as must attach to the being who is morally discordant with God.

Thus did the biography of the New Testament Christian begin, whether he had been Trophimus the heathen or Saul the Hebrew of Hebrews. And no resources of his own could strike life out of death, holiness out of-spiritual discord. He was ’apart from Christ’ (Ephesians 2:12), ’without God,’ ’without hope.’ But then came the mighty ’grace,’ the uncaused active favour, from the ’God who is rich in mercy.’ Christ, following out the ’eternal purpose,’ had died, had risen, had gone to the throne (Ephesians 2:5), Man for men; on purpose that those who should join themselves to Him should be as if they had died, had risen, had gone to the throne, to the very side, to the very heart, of the Father. And the New Testament Christian, thanks to the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8), had ’believed through grace’ (Acts 28:27), and so on his part had received his union with his Head. So in Christ, with Christ, he had been ’brought to life’ (Ephesians 2:5), and with Him had--passed into the heavens. Astonishing thought! Συνεκάθισεν ἡμᾶς ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ.

Let us not forget that side of the truth of our salvation. It is a side sometimes exaggerated, but very much more often forgotten. Sacred and precious is the truth that the Lord is with His people here, everywhere, always; blessed be His name. But do not let us forget the mighty antecedent truth that we, believing, are with Him there, in an unspeakable union, in living membership, in divine acceptance, through Him and in Him Who is our Head in the life of the Spirit, and Who is now not standing before the Throne, but seated, after His sacrifice once offered, upon it.

Looking altogether to Him let us embrace this wonderful fact of the New Testament Christian’s inmost life and power--his session with Christ above, as faith, that is to say Christ trusted, makes Christ’s exaltation ours. So the Ephesian Christian ’has’ indeed (Ephesians 1:7) ’redemption, even the forgiveness of his sins,’ in this exalted Christ. And he remembers, amidst all his possession of this place of peace and glory, how it was won for him; ’in His blood’ (Ephesians 1:7), ’in the blood of Christ’ (Ephesians 2:13), ’by the Cross’ (Ephesians 2:16). So he was ’made nigh,’ ’reconciled,’ pardoned. The exaltation of his acceptance never obscures for him the remembrance of the forgiveness which was its first vital step, and which humbles him in his own eyes for ever. He cannot lose sight ever of of the death of unknown sinbearing through which His Lord passed for him to the throne. Nor does he forget the call, the κλῆσις, the compassionate and most tender fiat, which brought him in fact into union with his Lord (Ephesians 1:8; Ephesians 4:1). Always, in his most illuminated assurance of his lot in Christ, (and he is meant indeed to know, to be assured; Ephesians 1:18; Ephesians 3:18-19,) he remembers the wonderful mercy of the whole, the atoning blood, the will-transforming grace. So the New Testament Christian is now alive, and privileged and incorporated, His ’Head’ is Christ, in the sense, as we have seen, not only of being his Chief and King, but also of being the living Source of his new life, the Secret of his strength and growth. The reality of this wonderful union, which is the bright and harmonizing centre of all the truths of grace, is ’sealed’ for the New Testament Christian by ’the Holy Spirit of promise’ (Ephesians 1:13; Ephesians 4:30), Who now, as received by faith (see Galatians 3:14), dwells in mysterious speciality within him, and, whether by effects of abnormal wonder or no, whether by tongues and signs or wholly by the fruit of divine love, peace, and strength, proves that the man’s union with Christ is ’a sober certainty of waking bliss.’ Nor is the ’Seal’ given only for his comfort, but also for his wakening and his warning. For the ’Seal’ denotes property; it marks him (Ephesians 1:11; Ephesians 1:14) as a piece of the Lord’s inheritance, the Lord’s ’purchased possession,’ absolutely belonging to Him now, and ’in the day of redemption’ (Ephesians 4:30) to be fully and actually appropriated by Him for endless uses. Yes, he is nothing now if not the dedicated property of Him Who has so much blessed him. He is ἅγιος, consecrated (Ephesians 1:1). He is ’Christ’s bond servant,’ δοῦλος (Ephesians 5:6; Ephesians 5:8). He exists, in his redeemed, and forgiven, and Spirit-gifted life, ’to the praise of God’s glory’ (Ephesians 1:12). He is a limb in the Body which is made for its Head. He is a stone in the Temple (Ephesians 2:22) which is built for its Indweller. For this supreme end, for this life in Christ lived ’not unto himself,’ he is endowed with a power not his own; ’the exceeding greatness of God’s power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of the strength of His might, which he exerted in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead’ (Ephesians 1:19-20). So he is to be, so in faith he can indeed be, ’strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might’ (Ephesians 6:10). That exhortation is no rhetorical appeal; it is a call to use a secret given. For his deliverance from evil and his power for good, in Christ, is a fact; only it is a fact waiting to be used. He has, in Christ (so I would interpret Ephesians 4:22-24), ’put off the old man,’ the old state and union, as he was condemned and helpless, and ’put on the new,’ as he is accepted and forgiven in Christ the Second Man. But he must use what he has, he must be what he is. So circumstanced, and with such aims, the Christian of our Epistle is indeed to grow, not only in character and conduct but--behind it, and in order to ’it--in spiritual experience. From one great view-point, as we have seen, he is with humble assurance to think himself, in Christ, complete; complete in his acceptance, his membership, his union, his endowment in the Lord, his appropriation by the Lord. In these respects he is σεσωσμένος, completely saved (Ephesians 2:8). But then, as regards the insight into his treasures and the use of his endowment, he is to grow always; and in particular he is to seek, and covet, and expect definite ascents and growths of holy experience as the Spirit of God works in him. See the two great prayers of the Apostle, Ephesians 1:15, etc.; Ephesians 3:14, etc. In the first it is asked for him that, ’holy and believing’ as he is already, accepted and richly blest as he is, the Spirit may so deal with him that he may be, in view of his possessed but as yet unrealized treasures, like a blind man brought to see; ’The eyes of your heart’ (so read) ’being illuminated, that you may know’ (as if ignorant now) ’what is the hope of His calling,’ the brightness of the eternal prospect opened by the ’call’ which has brought you to Him, ’and what the wealth of the glory of His inheritance amongst His saints, and what’ the grandeur of that loving power which raised and exalted your Lord for you. In the latter prayer (Ephesians 3:14, etc.) the request is that the Spirit of the Father would so strengthen the Christian, ’deep in the inner man’ (εἰς τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον) that into his heart, the heart of the man already gifted in Christ as richly as we have seen, Christ may yet come--as if for the first time--to dwell; κατοικῆσαι, ’come into permanent abode.’ It asks that the man may so use his ’root and foundation in love,’ in the love of God, ’that he may get strong enough to grasp’ the dimensions of the plan of grace, ’and to know the thought-surpassing love of Christ,’ and so may receive fully into his ’frail vessel’ the πλήρωμα, the ’fulness,’ of God; all that which, being attribute in Him, can be grace in us. And let us not forget that other precept for perpetual growth in the Christian’s experience and spiritual condition (we touched upon it in a previous reading), the πληροῦσθε ἐν πνεύματι of Ephesians 5:18. Spiritual man as he is, he must yet always seek and receive, as a thing not of course indeed but of faith, the fulness of the Spirit, the presence and power of the Holy Ghost in all regions of his being.

So, in the Apostle’s description, and in his precepts and his prayers, the New Testament Christian stands out in the primal glory of his riches and his possibilities in Christ. And what have eighteen hundred and thirty years to do with the eternal facts and principles which have been thus unrolled before us? Is their light and power less now than then? No; for they are the gifts of Him with whom a thousand years are as a watch in the night. The heavenly calling, the power of grace, the peace of the atoning Cross, the emancipation of the soul in Christ, the perfect freedom of the limb in true union with its Head, the fulness of the Spirit, the indwelling of the Lord--these are things which, like their Source, know no variableness nor shadow of turning. Innumerable hearts at this hour are proving that so it is.