FOOTNOTES:

“His love the conquest more than wins;To all I shall proclaim:Jesus the King, the Conqueror reigns;Bow down to Jesu’s name!”

He gives out of the spoil of His war with evil,—gives what He receives. Yet He gives notasHe receives. Everything laid in His hands is changed by theirtouch. Publicans and Pharisees become apostles. Magdalenes are made queens and mothers in His Israel. From the dregs of our streets He raises up a host of sons to Abraham. From the ranks of scepticism and anti-Christian hate the Lord Christ wins new champions and captains for His cause. He coins earth’s basest metal into heaven’s fine gold. He takes weak things of the earth and foolish, to strike the mightiest blows of battle.

What may we not expect from Him who has led captive such a captivity! What surprises of blessing and miracles of grace there are awaiting us, that shall fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with singing—gifts and succours coming to the Church from unlooked-for quarters and reinforcements from the ranks of the enemy. And what discomfitures and captivities are preparing for the haters of the Lord,—if, at least, the future is to be as the past; and if we may judge from the apostle’s word, and from his example, of the measure of the gift of Christ.

III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the last word of verse 8, and is drawn out in verses 11 and 12. “He gave giftsto men—He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, with a view to the full equipment of the saints for work of ministration, for building up of the body of Christ.” Yes, and some martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and Christian statesmen, some poets, some deep thinkers and theologians, some leaders of philanthropy and helpers of the poor; all given for the same end—to minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with the means for carrying on its mission, and to enable every saint to contribute his part to the commonwealthof Christ according to the measure of Christ’s gift to each.

Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes, seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The “work of ministering” and the “building up of the body of Christ” are not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling. Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see that the laity do their duty, of “the ministry” to make each saint a minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership of Christ’s body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times. Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances. It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in 58, and at Ephesus in 66A.D.That is the best Church system, under any given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the spiritual energy of the body of Christ.

The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The “deacons” are wanting; although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed in Pauline Churches.Pastors(shepherds)—a title only employed here by the apostle—is a fitting synonym for the “bishops” (i.e., overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were spiritual and disciplinary as well asadministrative. Addressing the Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them “shepherd the Church of God.”

In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon his “fellow-elders,” that they should “shepherd the flock of God, making themselves examples” to it; Christ Himself he has previously called “Shepherd and Bishop of souls” (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true and false shepherd of God’s flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,—words familiar and dear to His disciples.

The office ofteaching, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined with that of shepherding. From that passage we infer that the freedom of teaching so conspicuous in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was still recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made identical, nor inseparable functions, any more than in Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently associated, and hence are coupled together here.—Of apostolicevangelistswe have examples in Timothy and the second Philip;[102]men outside the rank of the apostles, but who, like them, preached the gospel from place to place. The name apostles (equivalent to ourmissionaries) served, in its wider sense, to include ministers of this class along with those directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus.[103]

Theprophets,[104]like the apostles and evangelists, belonged to the Church at large, rather than to onelocality. But their gift of inspiration did not carry with it the claim to rule in the Church. This was the function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops, or elders, locally appointed.

The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) linked Church to Church and served the entire body; the last two (pastors and teachers) had charge of local and congregational affairs. The apostles (the Twelve and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the foundation was laid and the deposit of revealed truth was complete. The evangelistic and pastoral callings remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety of Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists, with apostles or missionaries, bring new souls to Christ and carry His message into new lands. Pastors and teachers follow in their train, tending the ingathered sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they shepherd and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.

Marvellous were Christ’s “gifts for men” bestowed in the apostolic ministry. What a gift to the Christian community, for example, was Paul himself! In his natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in his training and early experience, in the supernatural mode of his conversion, everything wrought together to give to men in the apostle Paul a man supremely fitted to be Christ’s ambassador to the Pagan world, and for all ages the “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.” “Achosen vesselunto me,” said the Lord Jesus, “to bear my name.”

Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man of the most powerful intellect and will, master of the thought and life of his time. Long an alien from the household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle,and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the awful crisis of the fifth century, when the Roman empire was breaking up and the very foundations of life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to re-establish faith in the Divine order of the world.

Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the captive of justifying grace, won from the monastery and the bondage of Rome to set Germany and Europe free. What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of the Reformation; and he blew a blast that waked the sleeping peoples of the North, and made the walls of Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift to Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul breathed the spirit of religion into the life of a nation, and gave it a body and organic form in which to dwell and work for centuries.

Such a gift to England was John Wesley. Can we conceive a richer boon conferred by the Head of the Church upon the English race than the raising up of this great evangelist and pastor and teacher, at such a time as that of his appearance? Standing at the distance of a hundred years, we are able to measure in some degree the magnitude of this bestowment. In none of the leaders and commanders whom Christ has given to His people was there more signally manifest that combination of faculties, that concurrence of providences and adjustment to circumstances, and that transforming and attempering influence of grace in all—the “effectual working in the measure of each single part” of the man and his history, which marks those special gifts that Christ is wont to bestow upon His people in seasons of special emergency and need.

We are passing into a new age, such as none of these great men dreamed of, an age as exigent and perilous as any that have gone before it. The ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement of the masses, the universal spread of education, the emancipation of critical thought, the gigantic growth of the press, the enormous increase and aggregation of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the world-wide facilities of intercourse,—these and other causes more subtle are rapidly transforming human society. Old barriers have disappeared; while new difficulties are being created, of a magnitude to overtask the faith of the strongest. The Church is confronted with problems larger far in their dimensions than those our fathers knew. Demands are being made on her resources such as she has never had to meet before. Shall we be equal to the needs of the coming times?—Nay, that is not the question; but willHe?

There is nothing new or surprising to the Lord Jesus in the progress of our times and the developments of modern thought, nothing for which He is not perfectly prepared. He has taken their measure long ere this, and holds them within His grasp. The government is upon His shoulders—“the weight of all this unintelligible world”—and He can bear it well. He has gifts in store for the twentieth century, when it arrives, as adequate as those He bestowed upon the first or fifth, upon the sixteenth or the eighteenth of our era. There are Augustines and Wesleys yet to come. Hidden in the Almighty’s quiver are shafts as polished and as keen as any He has used, which He will launch forth in the war of the ages at the appointed hour. The need, the peril, the greatness of the time will be the measure of the gift of Christ.

There is a danger, however, in waiting for great leaders and in looking for signal displays of Christ’s power amongst men. His “kingdom comes not with observation,” so that men should say, Lo here! or Lo there! It steals upon us unforeseen; it is amongst us before we know. “We looked,” says Rutherford, “that He should take the higher way along the mountains; and lo, He came by the lower way of the valleys!” While men listen to the earthquake and the wind rending the mountains, a still, small voice speaks the message of God to prepared hearts. Rarely can we measure at the first the worth of Christ’s best gifts. When the fruit appears, after long patience, the world will haply discover when and how the seed was sown. But not always then.

“The sower, passing onward, was not known;And all men reaped the harvest as their own.”

Those who are most ready to appraise their fellows are constantly at fault. Our last may prove Christ’s first; our first His last! “Each of us shall give account of himself to God”: each must answer for his own stewardship, and the grace that was given to each. “Let us not therefore judge one another any more.” But let every man see to it that his part in the building of God’s temple is well and faithfully done. Soon the fire will try every man’s work, of what sort it is.

FOOTNOTES:[99]Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10–14 with xi. 13–16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24; also vi. 12.[100]The words of David in Browning’sSaul, turned from the future tense into the present.[101]2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.[102]2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26–40, xxi. 8.[103]In Acts xiv. 4, 14,Barnabas and Paulare “apostles”; 1 Thess. ii. 6,Paul and Silas and Timothy. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23, xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.[104]Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association ofprophetswithapostles.

[99]Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10–14 with xi. 13–16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24; also vi. 12.

[100]The words of David in Browning’sSaul, turned from the future tense into the present.

[101]2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.

[102]2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26–40, xxi. 8.

[103]In Acts xiv. 4, 14,Barnabas and Paulare “apostles”; 1 Thess. ii. 6,Paul and Silas and Timothy. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23, xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.

[104]Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association ofprophetswithapostles.

“Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine in the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of error; but dealing truly, in love may grow up in all things into Him, which is the head,evenChrist; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together, through that which every juncture supplieth, according to the working induemeasure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.”—Eph.iv. 13–16.

We must spend a few moments in unravelling this knotty paragraph and determining the relation of its involved clauses to each other, before we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove St Paul’s hand in the letter. No writer of equal power was ever so little of a literary craftsman. His epistles read, as M. Renan says, like “a rapid conversation stenographed.” Sometimes, as in several places in Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed clauses, hardly more continuous than shorthand notes; often, as in this epistle, they pour in a full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and phrase heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that bewilders us. In his spoken address the interpretationof tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul’s written composition.

The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church were bestowed to promote its corporate efficiency and to further its general growth (vv. 11, 12). Now, the purpose of these endowments sets alimitto their use. “Christ gave apostles, prophets,” and the rest—“till we all arriveat our perfect manhood and reach the stature of His fulness.” Such is the connexion of verse 13 with the foregoing context. The aim of the Christian ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings, apostolates and pastorates, the missions of the evangelist and the schools of the teacher will one day cease; their work will be done, their end gained, when all believers are brought “to the unity of faith, to the full knowledge of the Son of God.” The work of Christ’s servants can have no grander aim, no further goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not disclose an ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed in the previous sentence; it restates the same purpose. To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent our being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for which apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers are called to office. The goal marked out for all believers in the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ (ver. 13), is set up that it may direct the Church’s course through dangers shunned and enemies vanquished (ver. 14) to the attainment of her corporate perfection (vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section turns upon the idea of “the perfecting of the saints” in verse 12. Verse 16 looks backward to this; verse 7 looked forward to it.

So much for the general construction of the period. As to its particular words and phrases, we must observe:—

(1) The “perfect [full-grown] man” of verse 13 is theindividual, not the generic man, not “the one [collective] new man” of chapter ii. 15. The Greek words formanin these two places differ.[105]The apostle proposes to the Christian ministry the end that he was himself pursuing, viz., to “presentevery manperfect in Christ.”[106]

(2) “Sleightof men” (A.V. and R.V.) does not seem to us to express the precise meaning of the word so translated in verse 14.Kubeia(fromkubos, a cube, or die) occurs only here in the New Testament; in classical Greek it appears in its literal sense ofdice-play,gambling. The interpreters have drawn from this the idea oftrickery,cheating—the common accompaniment of gambling. But the kindred verb (to play dice,to gamble) has another well-established use in Greek, namely,to hazard: this supplies for St Paul’s noun the signification ofsportorhazarding, preferred by Beza among the older expositors and by von Soden amongst the newest.In the sport of men, says von Soden: “conduct wanting in every kind of earnestness and clear purpose. These menplaywith religion, and with the welfare of Christian souls.” This metaphor accords admirably with that of therestless waves and uncertain winds[107]just preceding it; while it leads fittingly to the further qualification “in craftiness,” which is almost an idle synonym after “sleight.”

(3) Another rare word is found in this verse, not very precisely rendered as “wiles”—a translation suiting it better in chapter vi. 11. Here the noun is singular in number:methodeia. It signifiesmethodizing,reducing to a plan; and then, in a bad sense,scheming,plotting. “Error” is thus personified: it “schemes,” just as in 2 Thessalonians ii. 7 it “works.” Amid the restless speculations and the unscrupulous perversions of the gospel now disturbing the infant faith of the Asian Churches, the apostle saw the outline of a great system of error shaping itself. There was a method in this madness.Unto the scheme of error—into the meshes of its net—those were being driven who yielded to the prevailing tendencies of speculative thought. With all its cross currents and capricious movements, it was bearing steadily in one direction. Reckless pilots steered ignorant souls this way and that over the wind-swept seas of religious doubt; but they brought them at last to the same rocks and quicksands.

(4) As the contrast between manhood and childhood links verses 13 and 14, so it is by the contrast of error and craftiness withtruththat we pass from verse 14 to verse 15. “Speakingtruth” insufficiently renders the opening word of the latter verse. The “dealingtruly”of the Revised margin is preferable. In Galatians iv. 16 the apostle employs the same verb, signifying not truth of speech alone, but of deed and life (comp. Eph. v. 9). The expression resembles that of 1 John iii. 19: “We areof the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him,” where truth and love are found in the like union.

(5) The last difficulty of this kind we have to deal with, lies in the connexion of the clauses of verse 16. “Through every joint of supply” is an incongruous adjunct to the previous clause, “fitly framed and knit together,” although the rendering “joint” gives this connexion a superficial aptness. The apostle’s word meansjuncturerather thanjoint.[108]Thepoints of contactbetween the members of Christ’s body form the channels of supply through which the entire frame receives nourishment. The clause “through every juncture of the supply”—an expression somewhat obscure at the best—points forwards, not backwards. It describes the means by which the Church of Christ, compacted in its general framework by those larger ligatures which its ministry furnishes (vv. 11, 12), builds up its inward life,—through a communion wherein “each single part” of the body shares, and every tie that binds one Christian soul to another serves to nourish the common life of grace. We may paraphrase the sentence thus: “Drawing its life from Christ, theentire body knit together in a well-compacted frame, makes use of every link that unites its members and of each particular member in his place to contribute to its sustenance, thus building itself up in love evermore.”

These difficult verses unfold to us three main conceptions:The goal of the Church’s life(ver. 13),the malady which arrests its development(ver. 14), andthe means and conditions of its growth(vv. 15, 16).

I. The mark at which the Church has to arrive is set forth, in harmony with the tenor of the epistle, in a twofold way,—in itscollectiveand itsindividualaspects. We must all “unitedly attain the oneness of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God”; and we must attain, each of us, “a perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

The “one faith” of the Church’s foundation (ver. 5) is, at the same time, its end and goal. The final unity will be the unfolding of the primal unity; the implicit will become explicit; the germ will be reproduced in the developed organism. “The faith” is still, in St Paul, thefides qua credimus, notquam credimus; it is the living faith of all hearts in the same Christ and gospel.[109]When “we all” believe heartily and understandingly in “the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation,” the goal will be in sight. All our defects are, at the bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the fulness of God in Christ. Faith is the essence of the heart’s life: it forms the common consciousness of the body of Christ.

While faith is the central organ of the Church’s life,the Son of Godis its central object. The dangers assailing the Church and the divisions threatening itsunity, touched His Person; and whatever touches the Head, vitally affects the health of the body and the well-being of every member in it. Many had believed in Jesus as the Christ and received blessing from Him, whose knowledge of Him as the Son of God was defective. This ignorance exposed their faith to perversion by the plausible errors circulating in the Churches of Asia Minor.[110]The haze of speculation dimmed His glory and distorted His image. Dazzled by the “philosophy and empty deceit” of specious talkers, these half-instructed believers formed erroneous or uncertain views of Christ. And a divided Christ makes a divided Church. We may hold divergent opinions upon many points of doctrine—in regard to Church order and the Sacraments, in regard to the nature of the future judgement, in regard to the mode and limits of inspiration, in regard to the dialect and expression of our spiritual life—and yet retain, notwithstanding, a large measure of cordial unity and find ourselves able to co-operate with each other for many Christian purposes. But when our difference concerns the Person of Christ, it is felt at once to be fundamental. There is a gulf between those who worship and those who do not worship the Son of God.

“Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him and he in God” (1 John iv. 15). This is the touchstone of catholic truth that the apostles have laid down; and by this we must hold fast. The kingship of the Lord Jesus is the rallying-point of Christendom. In His name we set up our banners. There are a thousand differences we can afford to sink and quarrels we may well forget, if our hearts are onetowards Him. Let me meet a man of any sect or country, who loves and worships my Lord Christ with all his mind and strength, he is my brother; and who shall forbid us “with one mind and one mouth to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”? It is nothing but our ignorance of Him, and of each other, that prevents us doing this already. Let us set ourselves again to the study of Christ. Let us strive “all of us” to “attain to the full knowledge of the Son of God”; it is the way to reunion. As we approach the central revelation, and the glory of Christ who is the image of God shines in its original brightness upon our hearts, prejudices will melt away; the opinions and interests and sentiments that divide us will be lost in the transcendent and absorbing vision of the one Lord Jesus Christ.

“Names and sects and parties fall:Thou, O Christ, art all in all!”

The second and thirduntoof verse 13 are parallel with the first, and with each other. A truer faith and better knowledge of Christ uniting believers to each other, at the same time develope in each of them a riper character. Jesus Christ was the “perfect man.” In Him our nature attained, without the least flaw or failure, its true end,—which is to glorify God. In His fulness the plenitude of God is embodied; it is made human, and attainable to faith. In Jesus Christ humanity rose to its ideal stature; and we see what is the proper level of our nature, the dignity and worth to which we have to rise. We are “predestinated to be conformed to the image of God’s Son.” All the many brethren of Jesus measure themselves against the stature of the Firstborn;and they will have to say to the end with St Paul: “Not as though I had attained, either were already perfect. I follow after; I press towards the mark.” A true heart that has seen perfection, will never rest short of it.

“Till we arrive—till weallarrive” at this, the work of the Christian ministry is incomplete. Teachers must still school us, pastors shepherd us, evangelists mission us. There is work enough and to spare for them all—and will be, to all appearance, for many a generation to come. The goal of the regenerate life is never absolutely won; it is hid with Christ in God. But there is to be a constant approximation to it, both in the individual believer and in the body of Christ’s people. And a time is coming when that goal will be practically attained, so far as earthly conditions allow. The Church after long strife will be reunited, after long trial will be perfected; and Christ will “present her to Himself” a bride worthy of her Lord, “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” Then this world will have had its use, and will give place to the new heavens and earth.

II. The goal that the apostle marked out, did not appear to him to be in immediate prospect. The childishness of so many Christian believers stood in the way of its attainment. In this condition they were exposed to the seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by the evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will remain subject to strife and corruption. When he says in verse 14, “that we may beno longer childrentossed to and fro,” etc., this implies that many Christian believers at that time were of this childishsort, and were being so distracted and misled. The apostle writes on purpose to instruct these “babes” and to raise them to a more manly style of Christian thought and life.[111]

It is a grievous thing to a minister of Christ to see those who for the time ought to be teachers, fit for the Church’s strong meat and the harder tasks of her service, remaining still infantile in their condition, needing to be nursed and humoured, narrow in their views of truth, petty and personal in their aims, wanting in all generous feeling and exalted thought. Some men, like St Paul himself, advance from the beginning to a settled faith, to a large intelligence and a full and manly consecration to God. Others remain “babes in Christ” to the end. Their souls live, but never thrive. They suffer from every change in the moral atmosphere, from every new wind of doctrine. These invalids are objects full of interest to the moral pathologist; they are marked not unfrequently by fine and delicate qualities. But they are a constant anxiety to the Church. Till they grow into something more robust they must remain to crowd the Church’s nursery, instead of taking part in her battle like brave and strenuous men.

The appearance of false doctrine in the Asian Churches made their undeveloped condition a matter for peculiar apprehension to the apostle. The Colossian heresy, for example, with which he is dealing at this present moment, would have no attraction for ripe and settled Christians. But such a “scheme of error” was exactly suited to catch men with a certain tincture of philosophy and in general sympathy with currentthought, who had embraced Christianity under some vague sense of its satisfaction for their spiritual needs, but without an intelligent grasp of its principles or a thorough experience of its power.

St Paul speaks of “every wind ofthedoctrine,” having in his mind a more or less definite form of erroneous teaching, a certain “plan of error.” Reading this verse in the light of the companion letter to Colossæ and the letters addressed to Timothy when at Ephesus a few years later, we can understand its significance. We can watch the storm that was rising in the Græco-Asiatic Churches. The characteristics of early Gnosticism are well defined in the miniature picture of verse 14. We note, in the first place, its protean and capricious form, half Judaistic, half philosophical—ascetic in one direction, libertine in another: “tossed by the waves, and carried about with every wind.” In the next place, its intellectual spirit,—that of a loose and reckless speculation: “in the hazarding of men,”—not in the abiding truth of God. Morally, it was vitiated by “craftiness.” And in its issue and result, this new teaching was leading “to the scheme of error” which the apostle four years ago had sorrowfully predicted, in bidding farewell to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx.). This scheme was no other than the gigantic Gnostic system, which devastated the Eastern Churches and inflicted deep and lasting wounds upon them.

The struggle with legalism was now over and past, at least in its critical phase. The apostle of the Gentiles had won the battle with Judaism and saved the Church in its first great conflict. But another strife is impending (comp. vi. 10); a most pernicious error has made its appearance within the Churchitself. St Paul was not to see more than the commencement of the new movement, which took two generations to gather its full force; but he had a true prophetic insight, and he saw that the strength of the Church in the coming day of trial lay in the depth and reality of her knowledge of the Son of God.

At every crisis in human thought there emerges some prevailing method of truth, or of error, the resultant of current tendencies, which unites the suffrages of a large body of thinkers and claims to embody the spirit of the age. Such a method of error our own age has produced as the outcome of the anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or Agnosticism. While the Gnosticism of the early ages asserted the infinite distance of God from the world and the intrinsic evil of matter, modern Agnosticism removes God still further from us, beyond the reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature as the one positive and accessible reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and knowledge of the Son of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. The supernatural, it tells us, is an illusion; and we must resign ourselves to be once more without God in the world and without hope beyond death.

This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the century. It is the living antagonist of Divine revelation. It supplies the appointed trial of faith for educated men of our generation, and the test of the intellectual vigour and manhood of the Church.

III. In the midst of the changing perils and long delays of her history, the Church is called evermore to press towards the mark of her calling. The conditionson which her progress depends are summed up in verses 15 and 16.

To the craft of false teachers St Paul would have his Churches oppose the weapons only oftruth and love. “Holding the truth in love,” they will “grow up in all things into Christ.” Sincere believers, heartily devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life instinctively repels disease. They “have an anointing from the Holy One” which is their protection (1 John ii. 20–29). In all that belongs to godliness and a noble manhood, such natures will expand; temptation and the assaults of error stimulate rather than arrest their growth. And with the growth and ripening in her fellowship of such men of God, the whole Church grows.

Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of advancement,—viz., the full recognition ofthe supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. Christ assumes here two opposite relations to the members of His body. He is the Headinto(orunto) which we grow in all things; but at the same time,fromwhom all the body derives its increase (ver. 16). He is the perfect ideal for us each; He is the common source of life and progress for us all. In our individual efforts after holiness and knowledge, in our personal aspirations and struggles, Jesus Christ is our model, our constant aim: we “grow into Him” (ver. 15). But as we learn to live for others, as we merge our own aims in the life of the Church and of humanity we feel, even more deeply than our personal needs had made us do, our dependence upon Him. We see that the forces which are at work to raise mankind, to stay the strifes and heal the wounds of humanity, emanate from the living Christ (ver. 16). He is the head of the Church and the heart of the world.

The third, practical condition of Church growth is brought out by the closing words of the paragraph. It isorganization: “all the body fitly framed [comp. ii. 21] and knit together.” Each localecclesia, or assembly of saints, will have its stated officers, its regulated and seemly order in worship and in work. And within this fit frame, there must be the warm union of hearts, the frank exchange of thought and feeling, the brotherly counsel in all things touching the kingdom of God, by which Christian men in each place of their assembling are “knit together.” From these local and congregational centres, the Christian fellowship spreads out its arms to embrace all that love our Lord Jesus Christ.

A building or a machine isfittedtogether by the adjustment of its parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive life, a sympathetic forceknittingit together: “knit together in love,” the apostle says in Colossians ii. 2; and so it is “in love” that this “body builds up itself.” The tense of the participles in the first part of verse 16 is present (continuous); we see a body in process of incorporation, whose several organs, imperfectly developed and imperfectly co-operant, are increasingly drawn to each other and bound more firmly in one as each becomes more complete in itself. The perfect Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them requires the other for its due realization.

The rest of the sentence, following the comma that we place at “knit together,” has its parallel in Colossians ii. 19: “All the body, through its junctures and bands being supplied and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.” According to St Paul’s physiology, the “bands” knit the body together, but the “junctures” are its means of supply. Each point ofcontact is a means of nourishment to the frame. In touch with each other, Christians communicate the life flowing from the common Head. The apostle would makeChristian intercourse a universal means of grace. No two Christian men should meet anywhere, upon any business, without themselves and the whole Church being the better for it.

“Wherever two or three are met together in my name,” said Jesus, “there am I in the midst.” In the multitude of these obscure and humble meetings of brethren who love each other for Christ’s sake, is the grace supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the Church lives and thrives. The vitality of the Church of Christ does not depend so much upon the large and visible features of its construction—upon Synods and Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the like, influential and venerable as these authorities may be; but upon the spiritual intercourse that goes on amongst the body of its people. “Each several part” of Christ’s great body, “according to the measure” of its capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the common grace.

However defective in other points of organization, the society in which this takes place fulfils the office of an ecclesiastical body. It will grow into the fulness of Christ; it “builds up itself in love.” The primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through the tissues and substance of the entire frame.

FOOTNOTES:[105]Εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον(homo), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv. 22, 24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Hereεἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον(vir); comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Churchἀνήρwould be highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor. xi. 2.[106]Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.[107]For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare:Julius Cæsar, Act V., Scene 1:—“Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!”[108]Vulgate:per omnem juncturam ministrationis. St Paul’s word here isδιὰ πάσης ἁφῆς,through every touching. See Lightfoot’s valuable note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek authors, in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).[109]Comp. ch. i. 13: “in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews] found hope”; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, “my true child according toa common faith.”[110]See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8–10, 18, 19.[111]Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1–3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19; Heb. v. 11–14.

[105]Εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον(homo), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv. 22, 24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Hereεἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον(vir); comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Churchἀνήρwould be highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor. xi. 2.

[106]Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.

[107]For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare:Julius Cæsar, Act V., Scene 1:—“Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!”

[107]For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare:Julius Cæsar, Act V., Scene 1:—

“Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!”

[108]Vulgate:per omnem juncturam ministrationis. St Paul’s word here isδιὰ πάσης ἁφῆς,through every touching. See Lightfoot’s valuable note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek authors, in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).

[109]Comp. ch. i. 13: “in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews] found hope”; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, “my true child according toa common faith.”

[110]See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8–10, 18, 19.

[111]Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1–3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19; Heb. v. 11–14.

Ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν.—Rom.vi. 4.

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”—Eph.iv. 17–19.

Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have therefore to walk in quite another way—“no longer as the Gentiles.” St Paul does not say “as the other Gentiles” (A.V.); for his readers, though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and the city of God. They hold the franchise of the “commonwealth of Israel.” As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of “the Jews” as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from “the Gentiles” who were their natural kindred.

When he “testifies,” with a pointed emphasis, “thatyouno longer walk as do indeed the Gentiles,” and when in verse 20 he exclaims, “Butyoudid not thuslearn the Christ,” it appears that there were those bearing Christ’s name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians (ch. iii. 18, 19): “Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now tell you even weeping,—the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things.” We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor, tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples, and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of life.[112]

The connexion between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old world of Gentile society had formed the “old man” as he then existed, the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world is abolished, and a “new man” is born. The world in which the Asian Christians once lived as “Gentiles in the flesh,” is dead to them.[113]They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the following paragraphs. His ideal “new man” is no mere ego, devoted to hispersonal perfection; he is part and parcel of the redeemed society of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and commonwealth.

The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid picture of Romans i. 18–32. While this delineation is comparatively brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the description, as they bring into view in turn themental,spiritual, andmoralcharacteristics of the existing Paganism. Man’s intellect was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and shameless.

I. “The Gentiles walk,” the apostle says, “invanity of their mind”—with reason frustrate and impotent; “beingdarkened in their understanding”—with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of life. Similarly, he wrote in Romans i. 21: “They were frustrated in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened.” But here he seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the “reasonings” to the “reason” (nous) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable and ruinous.

The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from popular beliefs, for the most part confessed that their philosophies were speculative and futile, that certainty in the greatest and most serious matters was unattainable. Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”—no jestingquestion surely—passed from lip to lip and from one school of thought to another, without an answer. Five centuries before this time the human intellect had a marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of Greece sprang into their glorious life, like Athené born from the head of Zeus, full-grown and in shining armour. With such leaders as Pericles and Phidias, as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing was impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius of our race had blossomed; rich and golden fruit would surely follow, to be gathered from the tree of life. But the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as rottenness. Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry was little more than a trick of words; philosophy, a wrangling of the schools. Rome towered in the majesty of her arms and laws above the faded glory of Greece. She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a rule of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty. But this dream vanished, like the other. The age of the Cæsars was an age of disillusion. Scepticism and cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of the future possessed men’s minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old and new Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans disputed the palm of wisdom in mere strife of words. Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their own systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned was “to hear some new thing,” for of the old things all thinking men were weary. Only rhetoric and scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again. “On the whole, this last period of Greek philosophy, extending into the Christian era, bore the marks of intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of despair in the solution of its high problem” (Döllinger).The world itself admitted the apostle’s reproach that “by wisdom it knew not God.” It knew nothing, therefore, to sure purpose, nothing that availed to satisfy or save it.

Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic method unknown to the ancient world. The old metaphysical systems failed; but we have relaid the foundations of life and thought upon the solid ground of nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis of positive and demonstrated knowledge, whose value is independent of religious belief. Scientific discovery has put us in command of material forces that secure the race against any such relapse as that which took place in the overthrow of the Græco-Roman civilization.Pessimismanswers these pretensions made for physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the nemesis of irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow palsy over the highest and ablest minds that reject the Christian hope. What avails it to yoke steam to our chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to wing our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts are no happier or worthier than before?

“Civilization contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude. Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave” (F. W. Robertson). Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of lavish wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what science grimly calls theproletariate, a barbarism more vicious and dangerous than the old, that is generated by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing regime of industrial science.

Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity for evil or good; culture makes him more sensitive; refinement more delicate in his virtues or his vices.But there is no tendency in these forces as we see them now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline, to make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge supplies nothing to bind society together, no force to tame the selfish passions, to guard the moral interests of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to the forces acting on civilized men; it cannot change or elevate their character. It puts new and potent instruments into our hands; but whether those instruments shall be tools to build the city of God or weapons for its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the wielders. In the midst of his splendid machinery, master of the planet’s wealth and lord of nature’s forces, the civilized man at the end of this boastful century stands with a dull and empty heart—without God. Poor creature, he wants to know whether “life is worth living”! He has gained the world, but lost his soul.

In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men stumble onwards to the end of life, to the end of time. The world’s wisdom and the lessons of its history give no hope of any real advance from darkness to light until, as Plato said, “We are able more safely and securely to make our journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine word.”[114]Such a vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching. The moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its guidance. And that moral progress has created the conditions and given the stimulus to which our material and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives permanence and value to all man’s acquisitions. Both of this world and of that to come “godliness holds thepromise.” We are only beginning to learn how much was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as “the light of the world.” He brought into the world a light which was to shine through all the realms of human life.

II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked, resulted in a settled state ofestrangement from God. They were “alienated from the life of God.”

“Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” St Paul said in chapter ii. 12,[115]using, as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which denotes an abiding fact. These two alienations generally coincide. Outside the religious community, we are outside the religious life. This expression gathers to a point what was said in verses 11, 12 of chapter ii., and further back in verses 1–3; it discloses the spring of the soul’s malady and decay in its separation from the living God. When shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may exist without God, as a tree cast out in the desert, or a body wasting in the grave; but that is notlife.

Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who seemed to him dead—joyless, empty-hearted, weary of an idle learning or lost in sullen ignorance, caring only to eat and drink till they should die like the beasts. Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in which the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to believe. The ancient natural pieties—not wholly untouched by the Spirit of God, despite their idolatry—that peopled with fair fancies the Grecian shores and skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his manfulness and hallowed his love of home and city, were all but extinguished. Death was at the heart of Pagan religion;corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power behind the veil of sense. The Roman augurs laughed at their own auspices; the priests made a traffic of their temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was rife, as rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the day were the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported from Egypt and Syria. A hundred years before, the Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his burning indignation, the disposition of earnest and high-minded men towards the creeds of the later classic times:—

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