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The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Ephesians. George G. Findlay
These sayings, and others like them, point unmistakably to the fact that our trespasses as men against God’s inflexible law, apart from Christ’s intervention, must have issued in our eternal ruin. By His death on the cross Christ has made such amends to the law, that the awful sentence is averted, and our complete release from the power of sin is rendered possible.
On rising from the dead our Saviour commissioned the apostles to “proclaim in His name repentance and remission of sins to all nations” (Luke xxiv. 47). It was thus He proposed to save the world. This proclamation is the “good news” of the gospel. The announcement meets the first need of the serious and awakened human spirit. It answers the question which arises in the breast of every man who thinks earnestly about his personal relations to God and to the laws of his being. We cannot wonder that St. Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the bestowments of God’s grace, and makes it the foundation of all the rest.
Does it occupy the like position in modern Christian teaching? Do we realize the criminality of sin, the fearfulness of God’s displeasure, the infinite worth of His forgiveness and the obligations under which it places us, as St. Paul and his converts did? or even as our fathers did a few generations ago? “It is my impression,” writes Dr. R. W. Dale,[38] “that both religious people and those who do not profess to be religious must be conscious that God’s Forgiveness, if they ever think of it at all, does not create any deep and strong emotion. … The difference between the way in which we think of the Divine Forgiveness and the way in which it was thought of by David and Isaiah, by Christ Himself, by Peter, Paul, and John; by the saints of all Christian Churches in past times, both in the East and in the West; … by the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in the last century—the difference, I say, between the way in which the Forgiveness of sins was thought of by them, and the way in which we think of it, is very startling. The difference is so great, it affects so seriously the whole system of the religious thought and life, that we may be said to have invented a new religion. … The difference between our religion and the religion of other times is this—that we do not believe that God has any strong resentment against sin or against those who are guilty of sin. And since His resentment has gone, His mercy has gone with it. We have not a God who is more merciful than the God of our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a God who is not righteous, a God who does not glow with fiery indignation against sin, is no God at all.”
These are solemn words, to be deeply pondered. They come from one of the most sagacious observers and justly revered teachers of our time. We have made a real advance in breadth and human sympathy; and there has been throughout our Churches a genuine and much needed awakening of philanthropic activity. But if we are departing from the living God, what will this avail us? If “the redemption through Christ’s blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,” is no longer to us the momentous and glorious fact that it was to the apostles, then it is time to ask whether our God is in truth the same as theirs, whether He is still the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—whether we are not, haply, fabricating for ourselves another gospel. Without a piercing sense of the shame and ruin involved in human sin, we shall not put its remission where St. Paul does, at the foundation of God’s benefits to men. Without this sentiment, we can only wonder at the passionate gratitude with which he receives the atonement and measures by its completeness the riches of God’s grace.
II. Along with this chief blessing of forgiveness, there came another to the apostolic Church. With the heart the mind, with the conscience the intellect was quickened and endowed: “which [grace] He shed abundantly upon us in all wisdom and intelligence.”
This sequel to verse 7 is somewhat of a surprise. The reader is apt to slur over verse 8, half sensible of some jar and incongruity between it and the context. It scarcely occurs to us to associate wisdom and good sense with the pardon of sin, as kindred bestowments of the gospel. Minds of the evangelical order are often supposed, indeed, to be wanting in intellectual excellencies and indifferent to their value. Is it not true that “not many wise after the flesh were called”? Do we not glory above everything in preaching a “simple gospel”?
But there is another side to all this. “Christ was made of God unto us wisdom.” This attribute the apostle even sets first when he writes to the wisdom-seeking Greeks, mocked by their worn-out and confused philosophies (1 Cor. i. 30). To a close observer of the primitive Christian societies few things must have been more noticeable than the powerful mental stimulus imparted by the new faith. These epistles are a witness to the fact. That such letters could be addressed to communities gathered mainly from the lower ranks of society—consisting of slaves, common artizans, poor women—shows that the moral regeneration effected in St. Paul’s converts was accompanied by an extraordinary excitement and activity of thought. In this the apostle recognised the work of the Holy Spirit, a mark of God’s special favour and blessing. “I give thanks always for you,” he writes to the Corinthians, “for the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched by Him, in all word and all knowledge.” The leaders of the apostolic Church were the profoundest thinkers of their day; though at the time the world held them for babblers, because their dialect was not of its schools. They drew from stores of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ, which none of the princes of this world knew.
Of such wisdom our epistle is full, and God “has made it to abound” to the readers in these inspired pages. Paul’s “understanding in the mystery of Christ” was always deepening. In his lonely prison musings the length and breadth of the Divine counsels are disclosed to him as never before. He sees the course of the ages and the universe of being illuminated by the light of the knowledge of Christ. And what he sees, all men are to see through him (iii. 9). Blessed be God who has given to His Church through His apostles, and through the great Christian teachers of every age, His precious gifts of wisdom and prudence, and made His grace richly to overflow from the heart into the mind and understanding of men!
This intellectual gift is twofold: phronēsis as well as sophia—the bestowment not only of deep spiritual thought, but of moral sagacity, good sense and thoughtfulness. This is a choice charism—a mercy of the Lord. For want of it how sadly is the fruit of other graces spoilt and wasted. How brightly it shines in St. Paul himself! What luminous and wholesome views of life, what a fund of practical sense there is in the teaching of this letter.
St. Paul rejoices in these gifts of the understanding and claims them for the Church, having in his view the false knowledge, the “philosophy and vain deceit” that was making its appearance in the Asian Churches (Col. ii. 4, 8, etc.). Our safeguard against intellectual perils lies not in ignorance, but in deeper heart-knowledge. When the grace that bestows redemption through Christ’s blood adds its concomitant blessing of enlightenment, when it elevates the mind as it cleanses the heart, and abounds to us in all wisdom and prudence, the winds of doctrine and the waves of speculation blow and beat in vain; they can but bring health to a Church thus established in its faith.
Verses 9 and 10 describe the object of this new knowledge. They state the doctrine which gave this powerful mental impulse to the apostolic Church, disclosing to it a vast field of view, and supplying the most fertile and vigorous principles of moral wisdom. This impulse lay in the revelation of God’s purpose to reconstitute the universe in Christ. The declaration of “the mystery of His will” comes in at this point episodically, and by the way; and we reserve it for consideration to the end of the present Chapter.
But let us observe here that our wisdom and prudence lie in the knowledge of God’s will. Truth is not to be found in any system of logical notions, in schemes and syntheses of the laws of nature or of thought. The human mind can never rest for long in abstractions. It will not accept for its basis of thought that which is less real and positive than itself. By its rational instincts it is compelled to seek a Reason and a Conscience at the centre of things—a living God. It craves to know the mystery of His will.
III. Verse 11 fills up the measure of the bestowment of grace on sinful men. The present anticipates the future; faith and love are lifted to a glorious hope. “In whom also—i.e., in Christ—we received our heritage, predestinated [to it],