The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Ephesians. Findlay George Gillanders
sentence compels us to feel the insufficiency of our powers for its due rendering.
The apostle surveys in this thanksgiving the entire course of the revelation of grace. Standing with the men of his day, the new-born community of the sons of God in Christ, midway between the ages past and to come,26 he looks backward to the source of man’s salvation when it lay a silent thought in the mind of God, and forward to the hour when it shall have accomplished its promise and achieved our redemption. In this grand evolution of the Divine plan three stages are marked by the refrain, thrice repeated, To the praise of His glory, of the glory of His grace (vv. 6, 12, 14). St Paul’s psalm is thus divided into three strophes, or stanzas: he sings the glory of redeeming love in its past designs, its present bestowments, and its future fruition. The paragraph, forming but one sentence and spun upon a single golden thread, is a piece of thought-music, – a sort of fugue, in which from eternity to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by Paul’s bold and exulting thought.
Despite the grammatical involution of the style here carried to an extreme, and underneath the apparatus of Greek pronouns and participles, there is a fine Hebraistic lilt pervading the doxology. The refrain is in the manner of Psalms xlii.–xliii., and xcix., where in the former instance “health of countenance,” and in the latter “holy is He” gives the key-note of the poet’s melody and parts his song into three balanced stanzas. In such poetry the strophes may be unequal in length, each developing its own thought freely, and yet there is harmony in their combination. Here the central idea, that of God’s actual bounty to believers, fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there is a pause within it, at verse 10, which in effect resumes the idea of the first strophe and works it in as a motif to the second, carrying on both in a full stream till they lose themselves in the third and culminating movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying expression the phrase “in Christ – in the Beloved – in Him – in whom,” weaving the verses into subtle continuity. The theme of the entire composition is given in verse 3, which does not enter into the threefold division we have described, but forms a prelude to it.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath blessed us,
In every blessing of the spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ.”
Blessed be God!– It is the song of the universe, in which heaven and earth take responsive parts. “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” this concert began, and continues still through the travail of creation and the sorrow and sighing of men. The work praises the Master. All sinless creatures, by their order and harmony, by the variety of their powers and beauty of their forms and delight of their existence, declare their Creator’s glory. That praise to the Most High God which the lower creatures act instrumentally, it is man’s privilege to utter in discourse of reason and music of the heart. Man is Nature’s high priest; and above other men, the poet. Time will be, as it has been, when it shall be accounted the poet’s honour and the crown of his art, that he should take the high praises of God into his mouth, making hymns to the glory of the Supreme Maker and giving voice to the dumb praise of inanimate nature and to the noblest thoughts of his fellows concerning the Blessed God.
Blessed be God!– It is the perpetual strain of the Old Testament, from Melchizedek down to Daniel, – of David in his triumph, and Job in his misery. But not hitherto could men say, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He was “the Most High God, the God of heaven,” – “Jehovah, God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things,” – “the Shepherd” and “the Rock” of His people, – “the true God, the living God, and an everlasting King”; and these are glorious titles, which have raised men’s thoughts to moods of highest reverence and trust. But the name of Father, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, surpasses and outshines them all. With wondering love and joy unspeakable St Paul pronounced this Benedictus. God was not less to him the Almighty, the High and Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in the days of his youthful Jewish faith; but the Eternal and All-holy One was now his Father in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name: and let the whole earth be filled with His glory!
The apostle’s psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving to God blessing and blessed. The second clause rhythmically answers to the first. True, our blessing of Him is far different from His blessing of us: ours in thought and words; His in mighty deeds of salvation. Yet in the fruit of lips giving thanks to His name there is a revenue of blessing paid to God which He delights in, and requires. “O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel,” grant us to bless Thee while we live and to lift up our hands in Thy name!
By three qualifying adjuncts the blessing which the Father of Christ bestowed upon us is defined: in respect of its nature, its sphere, and its personal ground.
The blessings that prompt the apostle’s praise are not such as those conspicuous in the Old Covenant: “Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and in the field; in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the increase of thy kine; blessed shall be thy basket, and thy kneading-trough” (Deut. xxviii. 3–5). The gospel pronounces beatitudes of another style: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted.” St Paul had small share indeed in the former class of blessings, – a childless, landless, homeless man. Yet what happiness and wealth are his! Out of his poverty he is making all the ages rich! From the gloom of his prison he sheds a light that will guide and cheer the steps of multitudes of earth’s sad wayfarers. Not certainly in the earthly places where he finds himself is Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus blessed; but “in spiritual blessing” and “in heavenly places” how abundantly! His own blessedness he claims for all who are in Christ.
Blessing spiritual in its nature is, in St Paul’s conception of things, blessing in and of the Holy Spirit.27 In His quickening our spirit lives; through His indwelling health, blessedness, eternal life are ours. In this verse justly the theologians recognize the Trinity of the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. – Blessing in the heavenly places is not so much blessing coming from those places – from God the Father who sits there – as it is blessing which lifts us into that supernal region, giving to us a place and heritage in the world of God and of the angels. Two passages of the companion epistles interpret this phrase: “Your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. iii. 3); and again, “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. iii. 20). – The decisive note of St Paul’s blessedness lies in the words “in Christ.” For him all good is summed up there. Spiritual, heavenly, and Christian: these three are one. In Christ dying, risen, reigning, God the Father has raised believing men to a new heavenly life. From the first inception of the work of grace to its consummation, God thinks of men, speaks to them and deals with them in Christ. To Him, therefore, with the Father be eternal praise!
“As He chose us in Him before the world’s foundation,
That we should be holy and unblemished before Him:
When in love He foreordained us
To filial adoption through Jesus Christ for Himself,
According to the good pleasure of His will, —
To the praise of the glory of His grace” (vv. 4–6a).
Here is St Paul’s first chapter of Genesis. In the beginning was the election of grace. There is nothing unprepared, nothing unforeseen in God’s dealings with mankind. His wisdom and knowledge are as deep as His grace is wide (Rom. xi. 33). Speaking of his own vocation, the apostle said: “It pleased God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, to reveal His Son in me” (Gal. i. 15, 16). He does but generalize this conception and carry it two steps further back – from the origin of the individual to the origin of the race, and from the beginning of the race to the beginning of the world – when he asserts that the community of redeemed men was chosen in Christ before the world’s foundation.
“The world” is a work of time, the slow structure of innumerable yet finite ages. Science affirms on its own grounds that the visible universe had a beginning, as it has its changes and its certain end. Its structural plan, its unity of aim and movement,
Ch. ii. 7, iii. 5, 21; Col. i. 26.
Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2–6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22–25.