St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians Part 4

This great and rich idea of the election of the Church as a special body to fulfil a universal purpose of recovery, cannot be expressed better than in the very ancient prayer which forms part of the paschal ceremonies of the Latin liturgy. 'O G.o.d of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favourably on Thy whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery, and by the tranquil operation of Thy perpetual providence, carry out the work of man's salvation; and let the whole world feel and see that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things are returning to perfection through Him, from whom they took their origin, even through our Lord Jesus Christ.'

iv.

[Sidenote: _The divine secret disclosed_]

This universal reconciliation through a catholic church was G.o.d's eternal purpose, but it was kept secret from the ages and the generations, only at last to be disclosed to His {73} apostles and prophets. The word 'mystery' in the New Testament means mostly a divine secret which has now been disclosed. Just as the secret of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, i.e. the purpose of G.o.d in the then order of the world, was imparted to Daniel, so now the great disclosure of the divine mystery or secret has been made, primarily indeed to apostles and prophets, but through them to the whole body of the faithful. The faithful must of course begin by receiving that simplest spiritual nourishment which is milk for babes. They are to welcome the divine forgiveness of their sins in Christ, and the gift of new life through Him in their baptism and the laying-on of hands. They are to be taught the rudimentary truths and moral lessons which are the first principles of the oracles of Christ. But they are not to stop with this. They are, and they are all of them without exception[27], intended to grow up to the full apprehension of the wisdom of the 'perfect' or perfectly initiated. They are to dwell upon the divine secret, now revealed, of G.o.d's purpose for the universe through the church till their whole heart and intellect and imagination is enlightened and enriched by it.

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v.

[Sidenote: _It is all of grace_]

And is the greatness of this exaltation and knowledge vouchsafed to the Church to be a renewed occasion of pride--that spiritual pride, the fatal results of which had already become apparent through the rejection of the Jews? No: unless through a complete mistake, the very opposite must be the result. The strength of human pride, as St. Paul had seen long ago, lay in the idea that man could have merit of his own, face to face with G.o.d: could have good works which were his own and not G.o.d's, and which gave him a claim upon G.o.d. That Jewish doctrine of merit[28] had been convicted of utter falsity in St. Paul's own spiritual experience. He had found himself brought to acknowledge, like any sinner of the Gentiles, his simple dependence upon the divine compa.s.sion for forgiveness and acceptance. This spiritual experience of St. Paul was only the realizing through one channel of what is, in fact, an elementary truth about human nature. The idea of human independence is demonstrably a false idea. As a matter of fact, man draws his life, physical and spiritual, from {75} sources beyond himself--from the one source, G.o.d. In constant dependence on G.o.d he lives necessarily from moment to moment, whether to breathe, or think, or will. The freedom of will which he has is not really originative or creative power, but a capacity of voluntary correspondence with what is given him from beyond himself. In that power of correspondence, or refusal to correspond, man's liberty begins and ends. He creates nothing. It is not that man does something and then G.o.d does the rest.

The truth is that when we track man's good action to its root in his will, we find for certain that G.o.d has been beforehand with him. The good he does is in correspondence with moral and physical laws and forces of the universe, or, in other words, with divine powers and purposes lent and suggested to him. To attempt independence of G.o.d, to have schemes and plans absolutely one's own, is to work arbitrarily and ignorantly, and ultimately to fail and to know that one has failed.

Thus men, when they realize the facts of their condition, must depend, and rejoice to depend, wholly upon G.o.d as for forgiveness where they have done wrong, so also for suggestion and power that they may do anything aright. There is {76} then no room for human pride. It is a mistake. We come back to recognize, what St. Paul realized in his own deep spiritual experience and taught the Church at the beginning.

Whatever is good in the world is all of divine initiation and of divine grace. It is all, not to our glory, but (as St. Paul three times repeats in the opening paragraphs of our epistle) 'to the praise of his glory,' or 'to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely bestows on us' out of His pure love and goodwill.

[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_]

These are the great leading thoughts which are in St. Paul's mind as he begins to write to the Asiatic Christians. His heart, his imagination, his intellect is full of the thought of the catholic society as it exists in Christ, the extension of His life; of this society as the outcome of an eternal and slow-working purpose of G.o.d; of this society, as serving universal divine ends for humanity and for the universe; of this society, as affording a sphere in which all men's faculties may be enlightened and delighted with the depth and largeness of the divine purpose; while his whole being is kept, safe from all the delusions of pride, in continual and conscious dependence upon divine grace. {77} With these thoughts reflected in our minds we shall find that we have the main clue to the whole of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and more particularly to all the words of the opening chapter, which St. Paul begins with a great ascription of praise to G.o.d for the blessing of the Church.

Blessed _be_ the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly _places_ in Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespa.s.ses, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in him, _I say_, in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ: in whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,--in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of _G.o.d's_ own possession, unto the praise of his glory.

[1] Rom. viii. 29.

[2] 1 Cor. xv. 23.

[3] Eph. iv. 15, 16.

[4] Eph. v. 32; Rev. xxi. 9.

[5] 1 Cor. xv. 45; Rom. v. 12-19.

[6] 1 Cor. xii. 12.

[7] Acts xix. 1-7.

[8] Rom. iii. 24-26. I have tried to develope St. Paul's hint.

[9] Rom. iii. 25; Acts xiv. 16; Acts xvii. 30.

[10] The earliest and simplest expression of the matter is that in St.

Paul's earliest epistle (1 Thess. v. 10), Christ 'died for us ... that we should live together with him.'

[11] Eph. i. 7; cf. ii. 13 ff.

[12] Rom. ix. 21.

[13] 1 Cor. xii. 22 ff.

[14] Cf. St. Matt. xiii. 13-15; St. John xii. 39, 40. We are not (Rom.

ix. 17) told _why_ Pharaoh was brought out on the stage of history as an example of G.o.d's hardening judgement. But no doubt there was a moral reason.

[15] Rom. ix-xi.

[16] Rom. xi. 29.

[17] Rom. xi. 33.

[18] 1 Tim. ii. 4.

[19] 1 Cor. ix. 27.

[20] Rom. viii. 38, 39

[21] I am using the word here not in its Bible sense, for in the Bible G.o.d is said to 'know' men in the sense of fixing His choice or approval upon them; and to 'foreknow' is therefore to approve or choose beforehand, as suitable instruments for a divine purpose. I am using the word in its ordinary sense.

[22] Rom. viii. 28-30.

[23] Phil. i. 6.

[24] Amos iii. 2.

[25] On the Jewish idea of election, cf. app. note C, p. 261.

[26] Col. i. 1.

[27] Col. i. 28.

[28] See app. note C, p. 257.

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DIVISION I. -- 2. CHAPTER I. 15-23.

_St. Paul's Prayer._

St. Paul follows up this first expression of the great thoughts that fill his mind with a deep and comprehensive thanksgiving for that large measure of correspondence with the divine purpose which is reported from the Asiatic churches, and with a prayer for their full enlightenment in heart and intellect. He prays that they may rise to the true science of what their Christian calling, as fellow-inheritors with the saints of the divine blessing, really means; and to an adequate expectation of what G.o.d intends to do in them, on the a.n.a.logy of what He has already done in Christ their head.