The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Ephesians. Findlay George Gillanders
grave, bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen glory as one refreshed from slumber.
But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for their marvel, that take place upon this earth day by day. When a human soul awakes from its trespasses and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart that was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God breathes into a spirit lying powerless and buried in the flesh, there is as true a rising from the dead as when Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was of this spiritual resurrection that He said: “The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily resurrection of mankind: “Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth!” The second wonder only matches and consummates the first (John v. 24–28).
“This is life eternal, to know God the Father,” – the life, as the apostle elsewhere calls it, that is “life indeed.” It came to St Paul by a new creation, when, as he describes it, “God who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ.” We are born again – the God-consciousness is born within us: an hour mysterious and decisive as that in which our personal consciousness first emerged and the soul knew itself. Now it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: “I have seen God face to face; and my life is preserved.” God and the soul have met in Christ – and are reconciled.
The words the apostle uses —gave us life—raised us up—seated us in the heavenly places– embrace the whole range of salvation. “Those united with Christ are through grace delivered from their state of death, not only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation of Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed to them; but by the life-giving energy of God they are brought out of their condition of death into a new and actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of the Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration” (Beck). This comprehensive action of the Divine grace upon believing men takes place by a constant and constantly deepening union of the soul with Christ. This is well expressed by A. Monod: “The entire history of the Son of man is reproduced in the man who believes in Him, not by a simple moral analogy, but by a spiritual communication which is the true secret of our justification as well as of our sanctification, and indeed of our whole salvation.”
There is no repetition in the three verbs employed, which are alike extended by the Greek preposition with (syn). The first sentence (raised us up with the Christ) virtually includes everything; it shows us one with Christ who lives evermore to God. The second sentence gathers into its scope all believers – the you of verse 1 and the we of verse 3: “He raised us up together, and together made us sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Nothing is more characteristic of our epistle than this turn of thought. To the conception of our union with Christ in His celestial life, it adds that of our union with each other in Christ as sharers in common of that life. Christ “reconciles us in one body unto God” (ver. 16). We sit not alone, but together in the heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this completes our salvation.
CHAPTER VIII.
SAVED FOR AN END
“That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.” – Eph. ii. 7–10.
The plan which God has formed for men in Christ is of great dimensions every way, – in its length no less than in its breadth and height. He “raised us up and seated us together [Gentiles with Jews] in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages which are coming on He might show the surpassing riches of His grace.” All the races of mankind and all future ages are embraced in the redeeming purpose, and are to share in its boundless wealth. Nor are the ages past excluded from its operations. God “afore prepared the good works in which” He summons us to walk. The highway of the new life has been in building since time began.
Thus large and limitless is the range of “the purpose and grace given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal” (2 Tim. i. 9). But what strikes us most in this passage is the exuberance of the grace itself. Twice over the apostle exclaims, “By grace you are saved”: once in verse 5, in an eager, almost jealous parenthesis, where he hastens to assure the readers of their deliverance from the fearful condition just described (vv. 1–3, 5). Again, deliberately and with full definition he states the same fact, in verse 8: “For by grace you are saved, through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It does not come of works, to the end that none may boast.”
These words place us on familiar ground. We recognize the Paul of Galatians and Romans, the dialect and accent of the apostle of salvation by faith. But scarcely anywhere do we find this wonder-working grace so affluently described. “God being rich in mercy, for the great love wherewith He loved us – the exceeding riches of His grace, shown in kindness toward us – the gift of God.” Mercy, love, kindness, grace, gift: what a constellation is here! These terms present the character of God in the gospel under the most delightful aspects, and in vivid contrast to the picture of our human state outlined in the beginning of the chapter.
Mercy denotes the Divine pitifulness towards feeble, suffering men, akin to those “compassions of God” to which the apostle repeatedly appeals.80 It is a constant attribute of God in the Old Testament, and fills much the same place there that grace does in the New. “Of mercy and judgement” do the Psalmists sing – of mercy most. Out of the thunder and smoke of Sinai He declared His name: “Jehovah, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands.” The dread of God’s justice, the sense of His dazzling holiness and almightiness threw His mercy into bright relief and gave to it an infinite preciousness. It is the contrast which brings in “mercy” here, in verse 4, by antithesis to “wrath” (ver. 3).81 These qualities are complementary. The sternest and strongest natures are the most compassionate. God is “rich in mercy.” The wealth of His Being pours itself out in the exquisite tendernesses, the unwearied forbearance and forgivingness of His compassion towards men. The Judge of all the earth, whose hate of evil is the fire of hell, is gentler than the softest-hearted mother, – rich in mercy as He is grand and terrible in wrath.
God’s mercy regards us as we are weak and miserable: His love regards us as we are, in spite of trespass and offence, His offspring, – objects of “much love” amid much displeasure, “even when we were dead through our trespasses.” What does the story of the prodigal son mean but this? and what Christ’s great word to Nicodemus (John iii. 16)? —Grace and kindness are love’s executive. Grace is love in administration, love counteracting sin and seeking our salvation. Christ is the embodiment of grace; the cross its supreme expression; the gospel its message to mankind; and Paul himself its trophy and witness.82 The “overpassing riches” of grace is that affluence of wealth in which through Christ it “superabounded” to the apostolic age and has outdone the magnitude of sin (Rom. v. 20), in such measure that St Paul sees future ages gazing with wonder at its benefactions to himself and his fellow-believers. Shown “in kindness toward us,” he says, – in a condescending fatherliness, that forgets its anger and softens its old severity into comfort and endearment. God’s kindness is the touch of His hand, the accent of His voice, the cherishing breath of His Spirit. Finally, this generosity of the Divine grace, this infinite goodwill of God toward men, takes expression in the gift– the gift of Christ, the gift of righteousness (Rom. v. 15–18), the gift of eternal life (Rom. vi. 23); or – regarded, as it is here, in the light of experience and possession —the gift of salvation.
The opposition of gift and debt, of gratuitous salvation through faith to salvation earned by works of law, belongs
Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The οἰκτιρμοὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ, σπλάγχνα καὶ οἰκτιρμοί, rendered in our Version “mercies of God,” denotes something even more affecting, – God’s sense of the woefulness of human life, – “the pitying tenderness Divine.”
Comp. Rom. ix. 22, 23.
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