Ephesians 2

22. Head over all things to the church.

That is, he hath placed him at the head of all things, and given him supreme dominion over them; so that the highest angels are only servants in his kingdom, whom he sends forth to minister to the heirs of salvation. But his relation to his Church carries in it a more close and intimate connection. He is not only head over his Church in respect of supreme authority, but he is the head of his Church in respect of vital influence; for so the apostle himself explains it in the following chapter, verse 19: He is that head “from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.” R. W.—We need the Prophet to give us the knowledge and arouse in us the feeling of what religious duty is. We need the Priest of sacrifice to restore and reconcile and pardon us when duty has been lost. We need, too, the holy and governing Head to preside over and guide and intercede for and quicken us till we come into the assembly of the just, the Church of the First-born—when the kingdoms of this world are all made the kingdoms of our Lord. In these three celestial characters of the Son we find the manifestation of what we are taught to believe are the three great attributes of God—wisdom, love, power—wisdom in the Teacher, love in the Sacrifice, power in the King. Every one of the three offices, with the three corresponding dispositions in us—docility to the Teacher, faith in the

Propitiator, loyalty to the Ruler—becomes a theme of thanksgiving. No one of them depresses, disempowers, or restrains our energies. They all uplift, encourage, and liberate. They are full of animation, promise, gladness. The Teacher enlightens; and what more glorious or gladdening gift than light? The living Sacrifice rolls away the burdens of remorse, and sets us in a world where love is seen for ever victorious, with the cross for its sign. The “Head over all things to his Church” inspires us with the felicity of a divine friendship, opens to us the inviting doors of that kingdom which is not of this world—embracing earth and heaven, the holy life here and the holy life everlasting. F. D. H.

All in all. Alike in ancient prophecy, in direct personal claim, in apostolic description, and in the yet loftier portraitures of the future world, a Being is found to move through the Bible, invested with characters of dignity beyond which no higher exaltation is conceivable by man. To this Being a power is by his own hallowed lips declared to be “committed,” which embraces all things in heaven and in earth. A prophet, who is subsequently interpreted by a prophet, represents Him as surrounded by the adoring hosts of heaven, who veil their faces in presence of his surpassing luster; and the last book of divine prediction discloses the same transcendent abode, not merely as evermore resounding his praises, but even as owing the very light that fills and beautifies it to Him. And if it be true of the sinless heaven that “the Lamb is the light thereof,” no marvel that He should be designated as “the light of this world”; or that, from every department of our lower creation, a tribute should be levied to celebrate His praise who is declared to be the one that “filletth all in all.” W. A. B.

1. AND you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past 2 ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of 3 the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we 4 all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the 5 flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But 6 God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were 7 dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) and hath 8 raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in 9 the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward 10 us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of your- 11 selves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his 12 workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

11. Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Un- 12 circumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: 13 but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of 14 Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle 15 wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of com- mandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so mak- 16 ing peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having 17 slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to 18 them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. 19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the 20 saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and 21 prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly 22 framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded to- gether for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

A DYING body is adapted to the world of sense and time, a deathless spirit is meant and made for a world immortal as itself. The life for eternity is already begun; we are, from the very hour of our re- generation, introduced into the spiritual world—a world which, though mysterious and invisible, is as real as the world of sense around us; the Christian’s life of heavenliness is the first stage of heaven itself! “The Father,” saith the apostle, “hath (already supernaturally) made us meet for the inheritance of the saints.” Christian men are already in a true though most mysterious sense raised with Christ Jesus and set in heavenly places in him; they are now virtually in the very presence and kingdom of God; they already possess the seed of immortality; “he that hath the Son hath life”; that life is now “hid with Christ in God,” to be manifested when he “shall be manifested” in glory. There is a power now within us in the germ, of which our celestial immortality shall be the proper fruit. The dawn of heaven hath already begun in all who are yet to rejoice in its noontide glory. No thought surely can be more awaken- ing than this; none of more urgent practical importance. Christianity is but half unfolded to us with- out this doctrine of the present indwelling of the powers of the world to come. W. A. B.

1-22. The course and progress of the Church through the Son, thus subdivided: 1. The power of the Father in quickening us, both Gentiles and Jews, in and with Christ (vs. 1-6); his purpose in mani- festing this power (v. 7); inference respecting the method of our salvation (v. 10). 2. Hortatory ex- pansion of the foregoing into detail; reminding them what they once were (vs. 11, 12); what they now were in Christ (vs. 13-22).

1. “In trespasses and sins” should read “by reason of your trespasses and sins.” A.—2, 3. When we read of this evil spirit working in the dis- obedient, and when we consider more closely the very nature of spiritual influences, we can scarcely refuse to recognize in this diabolical agency that in- dwelling tyranny, separate from the man, but so mysteriously interwoven in his nature that the will is a will and yet a captive, and the tyrant and the slave blended inconceivably in one. W. A. B.— If we do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are but too sure that the evil spirit is there. We know him by the sign of an increasing selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions of our nature, all for ever calling out “Give, give”; all for ever impatient, complaining when their gratification is withheld, when the call of duty is set before them. We know him by pride and self-importance, as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own opin- ions, judgment, feelings, were to be consulted in all things. We know him by the deep ungodliness which he occasions—no thought of God, much less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or, at least, while health and prosperity continue. T. A.—Either our sins, our self-right- eousness, our evil and good works condemn us, or we are born again into the kingdom of God, and we escape condemnation; a third state is impossi- ble. Either children of wrath or children of grace. A. C.

4. Rich in mercy.** A thought of unfathom- able meaning and sweetness with which the apostle introduces the fact and the fruit of God’s great love, a love that quickens us from the death of sin, and raises us purified to the heavenly fellowship of Christ. It reveals the riches of his wisdom and power as subordinated to the supreme purpose of mercy in achieving “his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” B.

5. By grace ye are saved.** “The doctrines of grace” is the best name that can be given to that system of truth distinguished from all other by the deep impression it has ever made, and the incalculable importance its recipients ever attached to it—the tenacious truth, ever holding its own, ever recovering from attack, and from which all divergencies have ever wandered more and more until lost in the utter darkness of atheistic infidelity. This was its essential orthodoxy: a great perdition from which to be rescued, a great and most real peril to man, a great salvation, a great and divine Saviour. Grace is the significant word—grace as distinct from every idea that ever springs from any mere earthly thinking. Man ruined by himself, and saved by God; lost in Adam, found in Christ. Here has been the Church, the visible Church—visible in the light of this Word. With this Church we should love to be in communion, to agree with it in doctrine, to interpret by it and with it the Word of God. T. L.

6. What hope for single souls or for the world in the knowledge that Christ was good, or in the belief that he had gone up on high? The eyes that have grown wan with waiting will have no light of hope kindled in them by such a gospel as that. But bid them look, languid and weary as they are, to him who is lifted up, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish—that vision will give to the still loftier sight of Christ on the throne its true meaning, as not a barren triumph for himself alone, but as victory for us—yea, our victory in him. If we can say, “God hath quickened us together,” then we can add, “and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Jesus Christ.” A. M.—Believers are in Christ, so as to be partakers in all that He does, and has, and is. They died with him, and rose with him, and live with him, and in him are seated in heavenly places. When the eye of God looks on them they are found in Christ, and there is no condemnation to those that are in Him, and they are righteous in his righteousness, and loved with the love which rests on him, and are sons of God in his sonship, and heirs with him of his inheritance, and are soon to be glorified with him in his glory. T. D. B.—Assuming the human, not the angelic nature, and glorifying it with the robe of a holy resurrection and immortality, He carried it above all heavens, above all choirs of angels, above the cherubim and seraphim, placing it at God’s right hand. There it is praised by angels, adored by dominions, and all the powers of heaven bow before the God-man above them. This human nature is my whole hope and all my confidence. For in our Lord Jesus Christ himself is a portion of each one of us, flesh and blood. Where, therefore, a portion of me is reigning, there I believe that I shall reign myself. Where my flesh is glorified, there I know that I shall be glorious. Aug.

Together in Christ. Shall we meet friends again so as to know them, or shall they not be separated from us by the vast expanses of that world, and by the varied courses they may have to pursue? We may have our thoughts about these things tranquilized, if we bring them into connection with Christ. Our eternal life begins in union with Him, and it must for ever so continue. If we are gathered round Him in heaven, and know him, and are known of him, this will insure acquaintance with one another. It is strange that it ever could be made matter of doubt. And when we think that he gave us human hearts and took one into his own breast—that he bestowed on us human homes and affections, and solaced himself with them—we need not fear that he will deny us our heart’s wish, where it is natural and good. Ker.

7. Riches of grace.** It is a figure under which he seems to delight in describing them. The Lord, he says, is “rich in mercy”; he is “rich unto all that call upon him.” He tells us of “the riches of his goodness,” “the exceeding riches of his grace,” “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” The gospel which proclaims his mercy he calls “a treasure,” and says that in it, or rather in that Saviour of whom it testifies, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” C. B.—Forgiveness is according to the riches of God’s grace, wherein he has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence. Grace can continue to pardon, favor, and save—from falls, in falls, and out of falls. Grace can comfort, relieve, and help those that have hurt themselves; and grace can bring the unworthy to glory. This the law can not do, man can not do, angels can not do; this God can not do but only by the riches of his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Bun.

8. Through faith.** Faith is the hand by which we seize the pardon, the promises, the love of the Father; and the providing us with this spiritual hand forms the second miracle of grace. Grace is therefore the cause, the source of salvation; faith is only the means, or, if you will, there are two graces: one which is performed out of us, and which the apostle calls simply grace, and another which is accomplished in us, and which the apostle calls faith. In principle grace is one; but it has different moments, different places, different forms. There are several gifts, but the whole is gift. Grace out of us, grace in us; such is the Gospel. A. V.—Though a gift of God, faith is withal an act or habit of the human mind; like every other virtue, it is on the one hand a boon of heaven, on the other, the exercise of unfettered human agency—it is the natural result of evidence duly and impartially considered, and no man can be guiltless who willfully turns away from the contemplation of that evidence. W. R. W.

Faith as the gift of God is not the Saviour, as our act doth merit nothing. Faith was not the cause that God gave Christ, neither is it the cause why God converts men to Christ; but faith is a gift bestowed upon us by the gracious God, the nature of which is to lay hold on Christ, whom God before did give for a ransom to redeem sinners. If we speak properly, it was God’s grace that moved him to give Christ a ransom for sinners, and the same God with the same grace that doth give to the soul faith to believe and by believing to close in with him whom God out of his love and pity did send into the world to save sinners; so that all the works of the creature are shut out as to justification and life, and men are saved freely by grace. Bun.—It is indeed Jesus Christ who is the object of faith, and he has been made of God wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; all of these jointly, and none of them severally. But all these together constitute grace. To have faith is to believe all those things of which the center and the source is Jesus Christ crucified. Under the name of grace, therefore, it is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ wholly, that we have set forth as the object of faith; not merely his God-head, but his humanity; not merely his death, but his life; not merely his doctrine, but his example; not merely his sacrifice, but his glory; for it is by all these things united, without excepting any or diminishing any, that Christ Jesus is our Saviour. A. V.

9. Not of works.** It is not by a painful counting up of duties undone, and sins committed, and by a resolving ever so earnestly to be more careful in all these things for the time to come, that we can be saved; “by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Much less is it by a fond trust in outward rites and ceremonies, or the belonging to what is in such a sense most falsely called Christ’s holy church. We must belong to Christ’s church through Him, to that church which will be his for ever, not to him through his church. Salvation is not in even the most faithful church which ever followed its Lord, but in Him only. T. A.

10. His workmanship.** There is no moment of life in which some part of the work is not going on under the hand of the new-creative power. In the hands of God, who carries out his perfect and loving idea, it is Faith which, by a patient and perpetual energy, operates with ten thousand separate shaping influences of Truth, all carrying forward the living sculpture, and bringing out the eventual form of holy grace, which shall be the everlasting delight of angels and of God. J. W. A.

That we should walk in them. The law has said, “Do these things, and live,” but the language of the gospel is, “Live, and do these things.” The gospel declares that we are saved, not by our works, but before our works. It gives rest and enlargement to the heart. Conquered by gratitude, the believer is seized with a desire to do everything for Him who hath first loved him, and given himself for him. The law will become to him more dear and sacred. But he will observe it in another spirit—as the law of love, as the law of a Father and a Saviour. It will no longer be necessary to say to him, In the name of your eternal interests, in the name of the terrors of the judgment, do this and live; because his eternal interests have been provided for, and the sentence which condemns him has been nailed to the cross. But it will be said to him, “Walk in good works, for which ye were created in Christ Jesus.” A. V.

If we live a dumb, unpositive life, under the power of the world, selfish still as before, and self-pursuing; if the old man is not crucified, and the new man, Christ, is certainly not being formed within, then our profession signifies nothing but the mere respectability of our sin. What is our supposed piety but this, if it have no spiritual and inwardly transforming power? Christ is redemption only as he actually redeems and delivers our nature from sin. If he is not the law and spring of a new spirit of life, he is nothing. H. B.

11-22. The commonwealth of Israel was the outward type of that spiritual community of which God is the head, and in which holiness is the life. The Gentiles, who followed other gods, were aliens from that commonwealth, and could have no part in its promises or blessings. But when the Jews had begun to boast this as their salvation, the walls of the material city were broken down, and the true spiritual Jerusalem came forth as the household of God, embracing all believers. This commonwealth has its temple; a temple built of living stones. The prophets, who had taught of the coming of Christ, and the apostles, who witnessed for his doctrine, his death, and his resurrection, joined in laying their faith upon Christ himself as the chief corner-stone. On that same foundation all true believers are established; in that same faith they are builded together, so that, without distinction of name, race, or country, all who believe constitute one household, in which God himself abides, pervading every heart with his Spirit. J. P. T.

12. No hope.** Let a night be never so dark or tempestuous, yet the hope of the morning is a mercy and a light. How sick, then, they who are hopeless. Everlastingness is the sting and poison of all miseries; it is, indeed, the sting of hell. Heaven is a day that shall never see any approaches of night. Hell is a night that shall never see any dawning of day. Caryl.

“Without God in the world.” Think what a description, and applicable to individuals without number! If it had been “without friends, without shelter, without food,” that would have had a gloomy sound; but “without God”! Without Him! that is, in no happy relation to him who is the very origin, support, and life of all things; without him who can make good flow to his creatures from an infinity of sources; without him whose favor possessed is the best, the sublimest of all delights, all triumphs, all glories; without him who can confer an eternal felicity! We fall unspeakably below the true and dreadful emphasis of the expression, after we have given our utmost aggravation to its significance. And still it is but the description of an actual condition. The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is no communion with him, maintained or even sought with cordial aspiration; no pouring out of the soul in fervent desires for his illuminations, his compassion, his forgiveness, his transforming operations; no earnest, penitential, hopeful pleading in the name of the glorious Intercessor; no solemn, affectionate dedication of the whole being; no animation and vigor obtained for the labors and the warfare of a Christian life. J. F.

14. He is our peace.** “He has made peace through the blood of his cross.” That which makes peace, and which gives peace, has been finished and perfected in Him upon the cross. Peace is not a thing to be made by us. It was made by Him. He finished the reconciling work, the peace-making work, eighteen hundred years ago. It is done. Bonar.

—Our communion may be subject to sad alternations of warmth and coldness; our love may burn strongly to-day and feebly to-morrow. But that does not change our real standing before God. We can not now be in a state of justification and now out of it. As God has put the terms of salvation so high that we could not of ourselves make them, so he has put our title-deeds to salvation so high that we may not mar them, having hidden them “with Christ in God.” As Rutherford says, “Unbelief may perhaps tear the copies of the covenant which Christ hath given you; but he still keeps the original in heaven with himself. Your doubts and fears are no part of the covenant, neither can they change Christ.” If Christ is the complete and only reason of our acceptance, must there not be some greater reason for our rejection than our doubts and misgivings? If “in Christ Jesus we who sometime were afar off are made nigh,” will it not take something more than our distrust and despair to remove us far off again, and set us among aliens and strangers? A. J. G.

Made both one. Four thousand years of

Jewish and Gentile self-righteousness had proved that there is no self-recovering power in humanity alone. That power must be lodged in a Person who has in him both of the estranged natures that are to be reconciled to each other; it must be a mediation between an everlasting law of purity and right which every man is concerned in having kept honorable and inviolate, and the weak but repenting soul which has violated its commandment; it must be a suffering so free and so glorious in its charity that it shall be a bond of union between believers, mightier than the wall of partition which it broke down. Beyond all the blessings of the Saviour’s life among men was the mediatorial mercy and reconciliation of his death. So runs the teaching and testimony of the gospel from first to last. F. D. H. —The death of Jesus Christ, as being every way powerful for reconciliation and union, did not only break the partition wall of guiltiness that stood betwixt God and man, but the wall of ceremonies that stood betwixt the Jews and Gentiles; made all that believe one with God, and made of both one—united them one to another. Christ’s work in the world was union. He began the union in the wonderful union made in his person that was to work it—made God and man one. And by what he performed the persons of men are united to God. Faith makes them one with Christ, and he makes them one with the Father; and from these results oneness among themselves, concentrating and meeting in Jesus Christ; and in the Father, through him, they are made one together. And that this was his great work we may read in his prayer, where it is the burden and great request that they may be one as we are one.

16. He hath reconciled us by his cross, having slain the enmity;** he killed the quarrel betwixt God and us; killed it by his death. He thus brings the parties together, and hath laid a sure foundation of agreement in his own sufferings; appeases his Father’s wrath by them, and by the same appeases the sinner’s conscience. All that God hath to say in point of justice is answered there; all that the poor humbled sinner hath to say is answered too. He hath offered up such an atonement as satisfies the Father; so he is content that sinners come in and be reconciled. I.

18. The entire Trinity is bound up in prayer. To the Father the petition is offered. Through the Son’s mediation, and through his intercession, it is rendered acceptable. From the Spirit’s instigation it took its rise, and by the Spirit helping our infirmities, and making intercession within us with groanings which can not be uttered, it is ultimately brought to the birth. And so it is written, “Through Him we have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” E. M. G.—I behold in my once-crucified Redeemer a glorious Mediator. Seeing that I have such a