St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition. Gore Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ and probably in the Epistle to Titus 'our great God and saviour Jesus Christ[59].'

      DIVISION I. CHAPTERS I. 3-IV. 17

§ I. CHAPTER i. 3-14St. Paul's leading thoughts

       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 all this in our manhood, not simply because He was God as well as man (true as this is); but because as man He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God: that it was in the power of that Spirit that He lived His life of holiness and wrought His miracles of power: that it was in the power of that Spirit that He taught and suffered and died and was glorified. Nor has popular Christianity been familiar with the resulting truth: that by that divine Spirit which possessed Him as man, the life of Christ is extended beyond Himself to take in those who believe in Him, and make them members of 'the church which is his body.' Yet, in fact, this extension is implied even in the name Christ. The king Messiah, the Christ of the Old Testament, is but the central figure of a whole kingdom associated with Him, and all the characteristic phrases for Christ in the New Testament express the same idea. He is the 'first-born among many brethren[60]'; He is the 'first fruits[61]' of a great harvest; He is the 'head of the body[62]'; He is the 'bridegroom' inseparable from 'the bride[63]'; He is the second Adam, that is, head of a new humanity[64]. Thus if the heavens closed around the ascending Christ, and hid Him from view, they opened again around the descending Spirit, descending into the heart of the Christian society to perpetuate Christ's life and presence there. This historical ascent and descent only embody in unmistakable facts the truth that the life-giving Spirit, who made the manhood of Christ so satisfying to our moral aspirations, is also and with the same reality, though not with the same perfection or freedom, living and working in that great society which He founded to represent Him on earth. Because this society is possessed by the Spirit, therefore it lives in the same life as Christ, it and all its individual members are 'in Christ.' In one place, indeed, St. Paul includes the Church, the body, with its head under the one name 'the Christ[65].'

       Life in Christ

      It is because the Church thus shares Christ's life that it is already spoken of as sharing His exaltation. We 'sit together in the heavenly places with Christ' for no other reason than because, though we are on earth, our life is bound up invisibly but in living reality with the life of the glorified Christ, and we have in Him free access into the courts of heaven. For this reason again, as the fulness of the divine attributes dwells in the glorified Christ – all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, so the same fulness is attributed, ideally at least, to the Church too. It too is 'the fulness of him that filleth all in all.' To St. Paul's mind there is one true human life in which men are one with one another because they are at one with God. That true human life is Christ's life, which He once lived on earth, and which He is at present living in the glory of God, and which is fulfilled with all the completeness of the divine life itself. But that true human life is also shared by each and every member of His Church, without exception, without reference to race or learning, or wealth, or sex, or age.

      I have said that this is ideally the case. This identification of Christ with the Church, that is to say, is not yet fully realized. The Church is not yet glorified, not yet morally perfected nor full grown in the divine attributes. Its particular members may be living deceitful and dishonourable lives. This is to say in other words that God's work in 'redemption of his own possession,' His acquirement of a people to Himself, is not yet complete. The purchase-money is paid, but it has not yet taken full effect. But redemption is an accomplished fact in the sense that all the conditions of the final success are already there. The ideal may be freely realized in every Christian because he has received the 'earnest' or pledge of the Spirit, the pledge, that is, of all that is to be accomplished in him. And this Spirit was received by each Christian at a particular and assignable moment. We know what stress St. Paul laid at Ephesus on proper Christian baptism and the laying on of hands which followed it[66]. By baptism men were spoken of as incorporated into Christ. With the laying on of hands was associated the bestowal of the Spirit. Henceforth a Christian had no need to ask for the Spirit as if He were not already bestowed upon him; he had only to bring into practical use spiritual forces and powers which the divine bounty had already put at his disposal.

      If we compare this set of ideas with those that have been current in our popular theology, we shall find that the main difference lies in this, that here the stress is laid on the work of Christ in man by His Spirit, while the theology which has been popular among us has laid the stress rather on the 'vicarious' work of Christ outside us and for us, by making a propitiation for our sins. Now in fact this latter doctrine is an unmistakable part of St. Paul's teaching in this epistle and elsewhere. And all the mistakes to which it has led are due to its not having been kept in proper relation to the set of ideas which I have just been endeavouring to expound. 'Christ for us,' the sacrifice of propitiation has been separated from 'Christ in us,' our new life; whereas really the sacrifice was but a necessary removal of an obstacle, preliminary to the new life.

      It was a necessary preliminary that Christ should put us on a fresh basis, should enable us to break from our past and make a fresh start in the divine acceptance. This He did by making atonement for our sins, offering as a propitiatory sacrifice His life, even to the shedding of His blood, that the Father might be enabled to forgive our sins. This transaction is always represented in the New Testament as being the act of the Father as well as of the Son, for the divine persons are not separable – neither an act by which the Son forces the unwilling hand of the Father, nor an act in which the Father lays an undeserved burden upon an unwilling Son – and the idea of propitiation seems to St. Paul, as indeed it has seemed to men generally, a thoroughly natural idea. Only in one place does he make any suggestion as to why such a preliminary sacrifice of propitiation was necessary. There[67] he seems to find the moral necessity for it in the fact that through long ages God's 'forbearance' had left men to work through their own resources and so to find out their need of Him. 'He suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.' He 'winked at' or 'overlooked times of ignorance.' He 'passed over sins[68].' This was part of His educative process. One result of it, however, was a lowering of the moral ideas entertained of the divine character. Thus God's righteousness, which means holiness and compassion combined, needed to be declared especially at that crisis of the divine dealings when God was coming out towards men, whom He had educated by His seeming absence to feel their need of Him, with the offer of His love. The free bounty of His mercy must not be misunderstood as if it were indifference or laxity about moral wickedness. Thus the proclamation of His compassion must be associated with something which would make unmistakable the severity of His holiness and СКАЧАТЬ