St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition. Gore Charles
unity with God, through Christ and in His Spirit. Therefore the work which the Church is to accomplish is nothing less than a universal work, a work not even limited to humanity; it is the bringing back of all things visible or invisible into that unity which lies in God's original purpose of creation. St. Paul long ago had spoken to the Corinthians of a spiritual wisdom which they were not yet ready to listen to. But now St. Paul seems to feel – for reasons which we have tried in part to interpret – that the time has come when all the depth and richness of the divine secret may be spoken out. No wonder that the subject stirs his imagination and gives to his whole tone an uplifting and a glory without parallel in his other writings. And yet it would be altogether false to attach to this epistle any associations such as are commonly connected with flights of imagination or the language of rhapsody. For the epistle has the most direct bearing on matters of practical life. If St. Paul glorifies the Christian ideal it is in order that all that weight of glory may be brought to bear upon the Asiatic Christians to force them to see that their personal and social conduct must have a purity, a liberality, a wisdom, a love, a power, commensurate with the greatness of those motives which are acting upon them in their new Christian state.
THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
CHAPTER I. 1-2
Salutation
St. Paul begins this, in common with his other epistles, with a brief salutation to a particular church or group of churches, in which is expressed in summary the authority he has for writing to them, the light in which he regards them, and the central wish for them which he has in his heart.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here, then, we have three compressed thoughts.
1. The particular person Paul writes this letter because he is not only a believer in Christ but also an 'apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God.' The word apostle is a more or less general word for a delegate, as when St. Paul speaks of the 'apostles (or messengers) of the churches[50];' but by an apostle in its highest sense, 'an apostle of Jesus Christ,' St. Paul meant one of those, originally twelve in number, who had received personally from the risen Christ a particular commission to represent Him to the world. This particular and personal commission he claimed to have received, in common with the twelve, though later than they – at the time of his conversion. 'Am I not an apostle?' he cries. 'Have I not seen Jesus our Lord[51]?' 'He appeared to me also as unto one born out of due time[52].' 'In nothing was I behind the very chiefest apostles[53].' And as his claim to the apostolate was challenged by his Judaizing opponents he had to insist upon it, to insist that it is not a commission from or through Peter and the other apostles, or dependent upon them for its exercise, but a direct commission, like theirs, from the Head of the Church Himself. He is, he writes to the Galatians, 'Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor (like those subsequently ordained by himself or the other apostles, like a Timothy, or a Titus, or like the later clergy) through man,' but directly through, as well as from, the risen Jesus whom his eyes had seen, and His eternal Father[54].
It is surely a consolation to us of the Church of England, who belong to a church subject to constant attack on the score of apostolic character, to remember that St. Paul's apostolate was attacked with some excuse, and that he had to spend a great deal of effort in vindicating it, and was in no way ashamed of doing so, because he perceived that a certain aspect of the life and truth of the Church was bound up with its recognition.
2. And he writes to the Asiatic Christians as 'saints' and 'faithful in Christ Jesus.' 'Saint' does not mean primarily what we understand by it – one pre-eminent in moral excellence; but rather one consecrated or dedicated to the service and use of God. The idea of consecration was common in all religions, and frequently, as in the Asiatic worships at Ephesus and elsewhere, carried with it associations quite the opposite of those which we assign to holiness. But the special characteristic of the Old Testament religion had been the righteous and holy character which it ascribed to Jehovah. Consecration to Him, therefore, is seen to require personal holiness, and this requirement is only deepened in meaning under the Gospel. But still 'the saints' means primarily the 'consecrated ones'; and all Christians are therefore saints – 'called as saints' rather than 'called to be saints,' in virtue of their belonging to the consecrated body into which they were baptized; saints who because of their consecration are therefore bound to live holily[55]. 'The saints' in the Acts of the Apostles[56] is simply a synonym for the Church. St. Paul then writes to the Asiatic Christians as 'consecrated' and 'faithful in Christ Jesus,' i. e. believing members incorporated by baptism; and he writes to them for no other purpose than to make them understand what is implied in their common consecration and common faith.
3. And his good wishes for them he sums up in the terms 'Grace and peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Grace is that free and unmerited favour or good-will of God towards man which takes shape in a continuous outflow of the very riches of God's inmost being and spirit into the life of man through Christ; and peace of heart, Godward and manward, 'central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation' is that by the possession and bestowal of which Christianity best gives assurance of its divine origin.
We notice that these divine gifts are ascribed to 'God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' St. Paul does not generally call Christ by the title God, partly, no doubt, from long engrained habit of language, but partly also because nothing was more important than that no language should be used in the first propagation of Christianity which could give excuse for confusing the Christian belief in the threefold Name with the worship of many gods. But, from the first, Christ, in St. Paul's language, is exalted as Lord into a simply divine supremacy, and associated most intimately with all the most exclusively divine operations in the world without, and in the heart of man within. Moreover, St. Paul refuses absolutely to tolerate any association of other, however exalted, beings with Christ in lordship or mediatorship, all created beings whatever being simply the work of His hands[57]. There remains, therefore, no room to question that St. Paul believed Christ to be strictly divine: to be Himself no creature, no highest archangel, but one who, with the Holy Spirit alone, is truly proper and essential to the divine being; and it affords us, therefore, no manner of surprise that from time to time St. Paul actually calls Christ God, as in the Epistle to the Romans 'who is over all, God blessed for ever[58],' and probably in the Epistle to Titus 'our great God and saviour Jesus Christ[59].'
DIVISION I. CHAPTERS I. 3-IV. 17
St. Paul's leading thoughts
Before we read the opening paragraph of St. Paul's letter we had better review the great thoughts which are prominent in his mind as he writes. My ambition is to make my readers feel that ideas which, because they have become Christian commonplaces or because they have been blackened by controversy, have by this time a ring of unreality about them, or of theological remoteness, or of controversial bitterness, are in fact, if we will 'consider them anew,' ideas the most important, the most practical, and the most closely adapted to the moral needs of the plain man.
i
St. Paul writes to the Christians as 'in Christ,' 'in the beloved,' 'blessed with all spiritual benediction in the heavenly places in Christ,' 'adopted as sons through Jesus Christ.' We are all of us perfectly familiar with the idea of Christ as, so to speak, a personal and individual redeemer, as the holy and righteous one, the beloved and accepted Son, who is risen from the dead and exalted to supreme sovereignty in heaven. But popular theology has not been quite so familiar with the idea that Christ was and is
2 Cor. viii. 23.
1 Cor. ix. 1.
1 Cor. xv. 8.
2 Cor. xii. 11.
Gal. i. 1.
Tertullian,
Acts ix. 13, 33.
Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16.
Rom. ix. 5.
Tit. ii. 13.