FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations will be explained in the exposition.[2]The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson’sIntroduction to the N. T.; see also Baur’sPaul, Pfleiderer’sPaulinism, Hilgenfeld’sEinleitung, Hatch’s article on “Paul” in theEncyclopædia Britannica. The case for the defence may be found in Weiss’, Salmon’s, Bleek’s, or Dods’N. T. Introduction—the last brief, but to the point; in Reuss’History of the N. T.; Milligan’s article on “Ephesians” inEncycl. Brit.; Gloag’sIntroduction to the Pauline Epp.; Meyer’s, or Beet’s, or Eadie’sCommentary; Sabatier’sThe Apostle Paul.[3]Rom. xi. 16–24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.[4]Gal. iii. 10–13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.[5]Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.[6]See ch. i. 9–13, ii. 11–22, iii. 5–11, iv. 1–16, v. 23–32.[7]Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.[8]Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17–20.[9]1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.[10]Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.[11]Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses(Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than this of Holtzmann, we do not know.Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann’s collaborateur in the newHand-Commentar, accepts Colossians in its integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.[12]Matt. xvi. 15–18; John xvii. 10:I am glorified in them.[13]See hisSaint Paul, Introduction, pp. xii.–xxiii.[14]See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20–23.[15]E.g., in Rom. i. 1–7, viii. 28–30, xi. 33–36, xvi. 25–27.[16]See the Winer-MoultonN. T. Grammar, p. 709: “It is in writers of great mental vivacity—more taken up with the thought than with the mode of its expression—that we may expect to find anacolutha most frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style of the apostle Paul.”[17]Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.[18]Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.[19]Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.[20]“My brethren” in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in thethird person—a thing unexampled in St Paul’s epistles.[21]Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7–9.[22]Compare Maclaren onColossians and Philemon, p. 406, in this series.[23]Τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ... καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῳ Ἰησοῦ. The interposition of the heterogeneous attributive betweenἁγίοιςandπιστοῖςis harsh and improbable—not to say, with Hofmann, “quite incredible.” The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck and of von Soden (in theHand-Commentar), interpreters of opposite schools, agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regardingπιστοῖςas the complement ofτοῖς οὖσιν.[24]Origen, in his fanciful way, makes ofτοῖς οὖσινa predicate by itself: “the saintswho are,” who possess real being like God Himself (Exod. iii. 14)—“called from non-existence into existence.” He compares 1 Cor. i. 28.[25]See,e.g., ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.

[1]The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations will be explained in the exposition.

[2]The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson’sIntroduction to the N. T.; see also Baur’sPaul, Pfleiderer’sPaulinism, Hilgenfeld’sEinleitung, Hatch’s article on “Paul” in theEncyclopædia Britannica. The case for the defence may be found in Weiss’, Salmon’s, Bleek’s, or Dods’N. T. Introduction—the last brief, but to the point; in Reuss’History of the N. T.; Milligan’s article on “Ephesians” inEncycl. Brit.; Gloag’sIntroduction to the Pauline Epp.; Meyer’s, or Beet’s, or Eadie’sCommentary; Sabatier’sThe Apostle Paul.

[3]Rom. xi. 16–24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.

[4]Gal. iii. 10–13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.

[5]Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.

[6]See ch. i. 9–13, ii. 11–22, iii. 5–11, iv. 1–16, v. 23–32.

[7]Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.

[8]Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17–20.

[9]1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.

[10]Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.

[11]Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses(Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than this of Holtzmann, we do not know.Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann’s collaborateur in the newHand-Commentar, accepts Colossians in its integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.

Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann’s collaborateur in the newHand-Commentar, accepts Colossians in its integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.

[12]Matt. xvi. 15–18; John xvii. 10:I am glorified in them.

[13]See hisSaint Paul, Introduction, pp. xii.–xxiii.

[14]See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20–23.

[15]E.g., in Rom. i. 1–7, viii. 28–30, xi. 33–36, xvi. 25–27.

[16]See the Winer-MoultonN. T. Grammar, p. 709: “It is in writers of great mental vivacity—more taken up with the thought than with the mode of its expression—that we may expect to find anacolutha most frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style of the apostle Paul.”

[17]Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.

[18]Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.

[19]Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.

[20]“My brethren” in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in thethird person—a thing unexampled in St Paul’s epistles.

[21]Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7–9.

[22]Compare Maclaren onColossians and Philemon, p. 406, in this series.

[23]Τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ... καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῳ Ἰησοῦ. The interposition of the heterogeneous attributive betweenἁγίοιςandπιστοῖςis harsh and improbable—not to say, with Hofmann, “quite incredible.” The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck and of von Soden (in theHand-Commentar), interpreters of opposite schools, agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regardingπιστοῖςas the complement ofτοῖς οὖσιν.

[24]Origen, in his fanciful way, makes ofτοῖς οὖσινa predicate by itself: “the saintswho are,” who possess real being like God Himself (Exod. iii. 14)—“called from non-existence into existence.” He compares 1 Cor. i. 28.

[25]See,e.g., ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.

Οὓς προέγνω, καὶ προώρισενσυμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ,εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν πρωτότοκον ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδέλφοις;οὕς δὲ προώρισεν, τούτους καὶ ἐκάλεσεν;καὶ οὓς ἐκάλεσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδικαίωσεν;οὓς δὲ ἐδικαίωσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδόξασεν.Rom.viii. 29, 30.

We enter this epistle through a magnificent gateway. The introductory Act of Praise, extending from verse 3 to 14, is one of the most sublime of inspired utterances, an overture worthy of the composition that it introduces. Its first 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 sentenceand spun upon a single golden thread, is a piece of thought-music,—a sort offugue, 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 amotifto 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 bethe 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 ofFather, andFather of our Lord Jesus Christ, surpasses and outshines them all. With wondering love and joy unspeakable St Paul pronounced thisBenedictus. God was not less to him the Almighty, the High and Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in the days ofhis 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 Godblessing 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 itsnature, itssphere, and itspersonal 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” howabundantly! His own blessedness he claims for all who are in Christ.

Blessingspiritualin 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.—Blessingin the heavenly placesis 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 themin 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 usTo 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 thebeginning 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, show it to be the creation of a vast Intelligence. Harmony and law, all that makes science possible is the product of thought. Reason extracts from nature what Reason has first put there. The longer, the more intricate and grand the process, the farther science pushes back the beginning in our thoughts, the more sublime and certain the primitive truth becomes: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The world is a system; it has a method and a plan, therefore a foundation. But before the foundation, there wasthe Founder. And man was in His thoughts, and the redeemed Church of Christ. While yet the world was not and the immensity of space stretched lampless and unpeopled,wewere in the mind of God; His thought rested with complacency upon His human sons, whose“name was written in the book of life from the foundation of the world.” This amazing statement is only the logical consequence of St Paul’s experience of Divine grace, joined to his conviction of the infinite wisdom and eternal being of God.

When he says that God “chose us in Christbefore the foundation of the world”—orbefore founding the world—this is not a mere mark of time. It intimates that in laying His plans for the world the Creator had the purpose of redeeming grace in view. The kingdom which the “blessed children” of the Father of Christ “inherit,” is the kingdom “preparedfor themfrom the foundation of the world” (Matt. xxv. 34). Salvation lies as deep as creation. The provision for it is eternal. For the universe of being was conceived, fashioned, and built up “in Christ.” The argument of Colossians i. 13–22 lies behind these words. The Son of God’s love, in whom and for whom the worlds were made, always was potentially the Redeemer of men, as He was the image of God (Col. i. 14, 15). He looked forward to this mission from eternity, and was in spirit “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. xiii. 8). Creation and redemption, Nature and the Church, are parts of one system; and in the reconciliation of the cross all orders of being are concerned, “whether the things upon the earth or the things in the heavens.”

Evil existed before man appeared on the earth to be tempted and to fall. Through the geological record we hear the voice of creation groaning for long æons in its pain.

“Dragons of the prime,That tare each other in their slime,”

grim prophets of man’s brutal and murderous passions,bear witness to a war in nature that goes back far towards the foundation of the world. And this rent and discord in the frame of things it was His part to reconcile “in whom and for whom all things were created.” This universal deliverance, it seems, is dependent upon ours. “The creation itself lifts up its head, and is looking out for the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing its bondage to corruption, God prepared through His elect sons in Christ a deliverance the glory of which will make its sufferings to seem but a light thing. “In thee,” said God to Abraham, “shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed”: so in the final “adoption,—to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. viii. 23), all creatures shall exult; and our mother earth, still travailing in pain with us, will remember her anguish no more.

The Divine election of men in Christ is further defined in the words of verse 5: “Having in love predestined us,” and “according to the good pleasure of His will.”Electionis selection; it is the antecedent in the mind of God in Christ of the preference which Christ showed when He said to His disciples, “I have chosen you out of the world.” It is, moreover, afore-ordination in love: an expression which indicates on the one hand the disposition in God that prompted and sustains His choice, and on the other the determination of the almighty Will whereby the all-wise Choice is put into operation and takes effect. In this pre-ordaining control of human history God “determined the fore-appointed seasons and the bounds of human habitation” (Acts xvii. 26). The Divine prescience—that “depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God”—as well as His absolute righteousness, forbids the treasonable thoughtof anything arbitrary or unfair cleaving to this pre-determination—anything that should override our free-will and make our responsibility an illusion. “Whom He didforeknow, He also did predestinate” (Rom. viii. 29). He foresees everything, and allows for everything.

The consistence of foreknowledge with free-will is an enigma which the apostle did not attempt to solve. His reply to all questions touching the justice of God’s administration in the elections of grace—questions painfully felt and keenly agitated then as they are now, and that pressed upon himself in the case of his Jewish kindred with a cruel force (Rom. ix. 3)—his answer to his own heart, and to us, lies in the last words of verse 5: “according to the good pleasure of His will.” It is what Jesus said concerning the strange preferences of Divine grace: “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” What pleases Him can only be wise and right. What pleases Him, must content us. Impatience is unbelief. Let us wait to see the end of the Lord. In numberless instances—such as that of the choice between Jacob and Esau, and that of Paul and the believing remnant of Israel as against their nation—God’s ways have justified themselves to after times; so they will universally. Our little spark of intelligence glances upon one spot in a boundless ocean, on the surface of immeasurable depths.

The purpose of this loving fore-ordination of believing men in Christ is twofold; it concerns at once theircharacterand theirstate: “He chose us out—that we should be holy and without blemish in His sight,” and “unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself.” These two purposes are one. God’s sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons. For this end “we” were elected of God in the beginning. Nay,with this end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to provide God with such sons[28]and that Christ might be “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. viii. 28–30).

“That we should be holy”—should besaints. This the readers are already: “To the saints” the apostle writes (ver. 1). They are men devoted to God by their own choice and will, meeting God’s choice and will for them. Imperfect saints they may be, by no means as yet “without blemish”; but they are already, and abidingly, “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. i. 2) and “sealed” for God’s possession “by the Holy Spirit” (vv. 13, 14). In this fact lies their hope of moral perfection and the impulse and power to attain it. Their task is to “perfect” their existing “holiness” (2 Cor. vii. 1), “cleansing themselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit.” Let no Christian say, “I do not pretend to be a saint.” This is to renounce your calling. Youarea saint if you are a true believer in Christ; and you are to be an unblemished saint.

Thus the Church is at last to be presented, and every man in his own order, “faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy.”[29]God could not invite us in His grace to anything inferior. A blemished saint—a smeared picture, a flawed marble—this is not like His work; it is not like Himself. Such saintship cannot approve itself “before Him.” He must carry out His ideal, must fashion the new man as he was created in Christ after His own faultless image, and make human holiness a transcript of the Divine (1 Peter i. 16).

Now, this Divine character is native to the sons of God. The ideal which God had for men was always the same. The father of the race was made in His image. In the Old Testament Israel receives the command: “You shall be holy, for I, Jehovah your God, am holy.” But it was in Jesus Christ that the breadth of this command was disclosed, and the possibility of our personal obedience to it. The law of Christian sonship, manifest only in shadow in the Levitical sanctity, is now pronounced by Jesus: “You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: God elected us in Christ to be perfect saints; for He predestined us through Jesus Christ to be His sons.

Sonship to Himself is the Christian status, the rank and standing which God confers on those who believe in His Son; it accrues to them by the fact that they are in Christ.[30]It is defined by the termadoption, which St Paul employs in this sense in Romans viii. 15, 23, as well as in Galatians iv. 5. Adoption was a peculiar institution of Roman law, familiar to Paul as a citizen of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile believers their relation to the family of God.“By adoption under the Roman law an entire stranger in blood became a member of the family into which he was adopted, exactly as if he had been born in it. He assumed the family name, partook in its system of sacrificial rites, and became, not on sufferance or at will, but to all intents and purposes a member of the house of his adopter.... This metaphor was St Paul’s translation into the language of Gentile thought of Christ’s great doctrine of the New Birth. He exchanges the physical metaphor of regeneration for the legal metaphor of adoption. The adopted becomes in the eye of the law a new creature. He was born again into a new family. By the aid of this figure the Gentile convert was enabled to realize in a vivid manner the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of the faithful, the obliteration of past penalties, the right to the mystic inheritance. He was enabled to realize that upon this spiritual act ‘Old things passed away and all things became new.’”[31]

This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose of God from eternity; but as a matter of fact it was instituted “through Jesus Christ,” the historical Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in God’s house or (Gentile) aliens excluded from it (ii. 12), those who believed in Jesus as the Christ received a spirit of adoption and dared to call GodFather! This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for them through the ages past in God’s hidden wisdom. Throughout the wild course of human apostasy the Father looked forward to the time when He might again through Jesus Christ make men His sons; and His promises and preparations were directed to this one end. The predestination having such an end, how fitly it is said: “in lovehaving foreordained us.”

Four times, in these three verses, with exulting emphasis, the apostle claims this distinction for “us.”Who, then, are the objects of the primordial election of grace? Does St Paul use the pronoun distributively, thinking of individuals—you and me and so many others, the personal recipients of saving grace?or does he mean the Church, as that is collectively the family of God and the object of His loving ordination? In this epistle, the latter is surely the thought in the apostle’s mind.[32]As Hofmann says: “The body of Christians is the object of this choice, not as composed of a certain number of individuals—a sum of ‘the elect’ opposed to a sum of the non-elect—but as the Church taken out of and separated from the world.”

On the other hand, we may not widen the pronoun further; we cannot allow that the sonship here signified is man’s natural relation to God, that to which he was born by creation. This robs the word “adoption” of its distinctive force. The sonship in question, while grounded “in Christ” from eternity, is conferred “through” the incarnate and crucified “Jesus Christ”; it redounds “to the praise of the glory of Hisgrace.” Now, grace is God’s redeeming love toward sinners. God’s purpose of grace toward mankind, embedded, as one may say, in creation, is realized in the body of redeemed men. But this community, we rejoice to believe, is vastly larger than the visible aggregate of Churches; for how many who knew not His name, have yet walked in the true light which lighteth every man.

There lies in the words “in Christ” a principle of exclusion, as well as of wide inclusion. Men cannot be in Christ against their will, who persistently put Him, His gospel and His laws, away from them. When we close with Christ by faith, we begin to enter into the purpose of our being. We find the place prepared for us before the foundation of the world in the kingdom of Divine love. We live henceforth “to the praise of the glory of His grace!”

FOOTNOTES:[26]Ch. ii. 7, iii. 5, 21; Col. i. 26.[27]Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2–6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22–25.[28]εἰς αὐτόν,for Him; notαὐτῳ,to Him.[29]Ch. v. 25–27; Col. i. 27–29; Jude 24.[30]Onsonship, see Chapters XV.–XVII. and XIX. inThe Epistle to the Galatians(Expositor’s Bible).[31]From a valuable and suggestive paper by W. E. Ball, LL.D., on “St Paul and the Roman Law,” in theContemporary Review, August 1891.[32]See vv. 12, 13, where Jews and Gentiles, collectively, are distinguished; and ch. ii. 11, 12, iii. 2–6, 21, iv. 4, 5, v. 25–27.

[26]Ch. ii. 7, iii. 5, 21; Col. i. 26.

[27]Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2–6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22–25.

[28]εἰς αὐτόν,for Him; notαὐτῳ,to Him.

[29]Ch. v. 25–27; Col. i. 27–29; Jude 24.

[30]Onsonship, see Chapters XV.–XVII. and XIX. inThe Epistle to the Galatians(Expositor’s Bible).

[31]From a valuable and suggestive paper by W. E. Ball, LL.D., on “St Paul and the Roman Law,” in theContemporary Review, August 1891.

[32]See vv. 12, 13, where Jews and Gentiles, collectively, are distinguished; and ch. ii. 11, 12, iii. 2–6, 21, iv. 4, 5, v. 25–27.

“Which grace He bestowed on us, in the Beloved One:In whom we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,According to the riches of His grace:Which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of His will,According to His good pleasure:Which He purposed in Him, for dispensation in the fulness of the times,Purposingto gather into one body all things in the Christ—The things belonging to the heavens, and the things upon the earth—yea, in Him,In whom also we received our heritage, as we had been foreordained,According to purpose of Him who worketh all thingsAccording to the counsel of His will,—That we might be to the praise of His glory.”[33]Eph.i. 6b–12a.

The blessedness of men in Christ is not matter of purpose only, but of reality and experience. With the wordgracein the middle of the sixth verse the apostle’s thought begins a new movement. Wehave seen Grace hidden in the depths of eternity in the form of sovereign and fatherly election, lodging its purpose in the foundation of the world. From those mysterious depths we turn to the living world in our own breast. There, too, Grace dwells and reigns: “which grace He imparted to us, in the Beloved,—in whom we have redemption through His blood.”

The leading word of this clause we can only paraphrase; it has no English equivalent. St Paul perforce turnsgraceinto a verb; this verb occurs in the New Testament but once besides,—in Luke i. 28, the angel’s salutation to Mary: “Hail thou that art highly favoured (made-an-object-of-grace).”[34]If we could employ our verbto gracein a sense corresponding to that of the noungracein the apostle’s dialect and nearly the opposite ofto disgrace, thengracedwould signify what he means here, viz.,treated with grace, made its recipients.

God “showed us gracein the Beloved”—or, to render the phrase with full emphasis, “in that Beloved One”—even as He “chose us in Him before the world’s foundation” and “in love predestined us for adoption.” The grace is conveyed upon the basis of our relationship to Christ: on that ground it was conceived in the counsels of eternity. The Voice from heaven which said at the baptism of Jesus and again at the transfiguration, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” uttered God’s eternal thought regarding Christ. And that regard of God toward the Son of His love is the fountain of His love and grace to men.

Christ is the Beloved not of the Father alone, but of the created universe. All that know the Lord Jesusmust needs love and adore Him—unless their hearts are eaten out by sin. Not to love Him is to be anathema. “If any man love me,” said Jesus, “my Father will love him.” Nothing so much pleases God and brings us into fellowship with God so direct and joyous, as our love to Jesus Christ. About this at least heaven and earth may agree, that He is the altogether lovely and love-worthy. Agreement in this will bring about agreement in everything. The love of Christ will tune the jarring universe into harmony.

1. Of grace bestowed, the first manifestation, in the experience of Paul and his readers, wasthe forgiveness of their trespasses(comp. ii. 13–18). This is “the redemption” that “wehave.” And it comes “through Hisblood.” The epistles to the Galatians and Romans[35]expound at length the apostle’s doctrine touching the remission of sin and the relation of Christ’s death to human transgression. Toredemptionwe shall return in considering verse 14, where the word is used, as again in chapter iv. 30, in its further application.

In Romans iii. 22–26 “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” is declared to be the means by which we are acquitted in the judgement of God from the guilt of past transgressions. And this redemption consists in the “propitiatory sacrifice” which Christ offered in shedding His blood—a sacrifice wherein we participate “through faith.” The language of this verse contains by implication all that is affirmed there. In this connexion, and according to the full intent of the word,redemption isrelease by ransom. The life-blood of Jesus Christ was thepricethat He paid in order to secure our lawful release from the penalties entailed by our trespasses.[36]This Jesus Christ implied beforehand, when He spoke of “giving His life a ransom for many”; and when He said, in handing to His disciples the cup of the Last Supper: “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Using another synonymous term, St Paul tells us that “Christbought us out ofthe curse of the law”; and he bases on this expression a strong practical appeal: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.”[37]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 whicharises 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. Wehave 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 aredeparting 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 usin 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 bestowmentsof 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 uswisdom.” 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 inspiredpages. 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:phronēsisas well assophia,—the bestowment not only of deep spiritual thought, but of moral sagacity, good sense and thoughtfulness. This is a choicecharism—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 knowthe 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], according to His purpose who works all things according to the counsel of His will.”

Following Meyer and other great interpreters, we prefer in this passage the rendering of the English Authorized Version (we obtained an inheritance) to that of the Revised (we were made a heritage).[39]“Foreordained” carries us back to verse 5—to the phrase “foreordained to sonship.” The believer cannot be predestinated to sonship without being predestinated to an inheritance.[40]“If children, then heirs” (Rom. viii. 17). But while in the parallel passage we are designated heirswithChrist, we appear in this place, according to the tenor of the context, as heirsinHim. Christ is Himself the believer’s wealth, both in possession and hope: all his desire is to gain Christ (Phil. iii. 8). The apostle gives thanks here in the same strain as in Colossians i. 12–14, “to the Father who qualified us [by making us His sons] to partake of the inheritance of the saints in the light.” In that thanksgiving we observe the same connexion as in this between ourforgiveness(ver. 7) and ourenfeoffment, or investment with the forfeited rights of sons of God (vv. 5, 11).[41]

The heritage of the saints in Christ is theirs already, by actual investiture. The liberty of sons of God, access to the Father, the treasures of Christ’s wisdom and knowledge, the sanctifying Spirit and the moral strength and joy that He imparts, these form a rich estate of which ancient saints had but foretastes and promises. In the all-controlling“counsel of His will,” God wrought throughout the course of history to convey this heritage to us. We are children of “the fulness of the times,” heirs of all the past. For us God has been working from eternity. On us the ends of the world have come. Thus from the summit of our exaltation in Christ the apostle looks backward to the beginning of Divine history.

From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the end. God’s purpose embraces the ages to come with those that are past. His working will not cease till the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise of infinitely more; and the Holy Spirit is the “earnest of our inheritance” (ver. 14). God intends “that we should be to the praise of His glory.” As things are, His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be,”—and it will not appear until the unveiling of the sons of God (Rom. viii. 18–25). One day God’s glory in us will burst forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and earth will then singto the praise of His glory, when it is seen in His redeemed and godlike sons.

Verses 9 and 10 (which He purposed ... upon the earth) are, as we have said, a parenthesis or episode in the passage just reviewed. Neither in structure nor in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this clause been wanting. With the “in Him” repeated at the end of verse 10, St Paul resumes the main current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment while he dwells on “the mystery of God’s will.”

This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he has said in verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He will pause for an instant to set forth once more theeternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the Church is now admitted. The communication of this mystery is, he says, “according to God’s good pleasure which He purposed in Christ [comp. ver. 4], for a dispensation of the fulness of the times, intending to gather up again all things in the Christ—the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.”

God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation of His grace, in due time to re-unite the universe under the headship of Christ. This mysterious design, hitherto kept secret, He has “made known unto us.” Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all the wisdom of former ages.[42]Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.

The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for its interpretation. Thefulness of the times, in St Paul’s dialect, can only be the time of Christ.[43]The dispensation which God designed of old is that in which the apostle himself is now engaged;[44]it is the dispensation, or administration (economy), of the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ, whether God be conceived as Himself the Dispenser, or through the stewards of His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul’s Jewish thought the dénouement of antecedent history. How long this age would continue, into what epochs it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for him the fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was come; the kingdom of God was amongst men. It wasthe beginning of the end. It is a mistake to relegate this text to the dim and distant future, to some far-off consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The decisive epoch fell when “God sent forth His Son.” All that has followed, and will follow, is the result of this mission. Christ is all things, and in all; and we are already complete in Him.

What, then, signifies thisgathering-into-oneorsumming-upof all things in the Christ? Ourrecapitulateis the nearest equivalent of the Greek verb, in its etymological sense. In Romans xiii. 8, 9 the same word is used, where the several commands of the second table of the Decalogue are said to be “comprehended in this word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This summing up is not a generalization or compendious statement of the commands of God; it signifies their reduction to a fundamental principle. They are unified by the discovery of a law that underlies them all. And while thus theoretically explained, they are made practically effective: “For love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Similarly, St Paul finds in Christ the fundamental principle of the creation. For those who think with him, God has by the Christian revelation already brought all things to their unity. This summing up—the Christian inventory and recapitulation of the universe—the apostle has formally stated in Colossians i. 15–20:“Christ is God’s image and creation’s firstborn. In Him, through Him, for Him all things were made. He is before them all; and in Him they have their basis and uniting bond. He is equally the Head of the Church and the new creation, the firstborn out of the dead, that He might hold a universal presidence—charged with all the fulness, so that in Him is the ground of the reconciliation no less than of the creation of all things in heaven and earth.” What can we desire more comprehensive than this? It is the theory and programme of the world revealed to God’s holy apostles and prophets.

The “gathering into one” of this text includes the “reconciliation” of Colossians i. 20, and more. It signifies, beside the removal of the enmities which are the effect of sin (ii. 14–16), the subjection of all powers in heaven and earth to the rule of Christ (vv. 21, 22),[45]the enlightenment of the angelic magnates as to God’s dealings with men (iii. 9, 10),—in fine, the rectification and adjustment of the several parts of the great whole of things, bringing them into full accord with each other and with their Creator’s will. What St Paul looks forward to is, in a word, the organization of the universe upon a Christian basis. This reconstitution of things is provided for and is being effected “in the Christ.” He is the rallying point of the forces of peace and blessing. The organic principle, the organizing Head, the creative nucleus of the new creation is there. The potent germ of life eternal has been introduced into the world’s chaos; and its victory over the elements of disorder and death is assured.

Observe that the apostle says “inthe Christ.”[46]He is not speaking of Christ in the abstract, considered in His own Person or as He dwells in heaven, but in Hisrelations to men and to time. The Christ manifest in Jesus (iv. 20, 21), the Christ of prophets and apostles, the Messiah of the ages, the Husband of the Church (v. 23), is the author and finisher of this grand restoration.

Christ’s work is essentially a work ofrestoration. We must insist, with Meyer, upon the significance of the Greek preposition in Paul’s compound verb (ana-, equal tore-inrestoreorresume). The Christ is not simply the climax of the past—the Son of man and the recapitulation of humanity, as man is of the creatures below him, summing up human development and lifting it to a higher stage—though He is all that. Christrehabilitatesman and the world. He re-asserts the original ground of our being, as that exists in God. He carries us and the world forward out of sin and death, by carrying us back to God’s ideal. The new world is the old world repaired, and in its reparation infinitely enhanced—rich in the memories of redemption, in the fruit of penitence and the discipline of suffering, in the lessons of the cross.

All thingsin heaven and earth it was God’s good pleasure in the Christ to gather again into one. Is this a general assertion concerning the universe as a whole, or may we apply it with distributive exactness to each particular thing? Is there to be, as we fain would hope, no single exception to the “all things”—no wanderer lost, no exile finally shut out from the Holy City and the tree of life? Are all evil men and demons, willing or against their will, to be embraced somehow and at last—at last—in the universal peace of God?

It is impossible that the first readers should have so construed Paul’s words (comp. v. 5). He has not forgotten the “unquenchable fire,” the“eternal punishment”; nor dare we. “If anything is certain about the teaching of Christ and His apostles, it is that they warned men not to reject the Divine mercy and so to incur irrevocable exile from God’s presence and joy. They assumed that some men would be guilty of this supreme crime, and would be doomed to this supreme woe” (Dale). There is nothing in this text to warrant any man in presuming on the mercy or the sovereignty of God, nothing to justify us in supposing that, deliberately refusing to be reconciled to God in Christ, we shall yet be reconciled in the end, despite ourselves.

St Paul assures us that God and the world will be reunited, and that peace will reign through all realms and orders of existence. He does not, and he could not say that none will exclude themselves from the eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made it possible for them to contradict Him, so long as they have any being. The apostle’s words have their note of warning, along with their boundless promise. There is no place in the future order of things for aught that is out of Christ. There is no standing-ground anywhere for the unclean and the unjust, for the irreconcilable rebel against God. “The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity.”

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