Читать книгу: «St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition», страница 4

ii

Predestination

St. Paul's mind is full of the idea of predestination. He delights to contemplate the eternal purpose of God as lying behind what seems to us the painfully slow method by which divine results are actually won. What age-long processes have been necessary both among the Jews and among the Gentiles before this young church, this divine society of man with God has become possible! What slow working through 'times of ignorance,' what infinite delay in the divine forbearance – as we should now say, what age-long processes of developement! But St. Paul is quite certain that the result is no afterthought, no accident of the moment; but that from end to end of the universe there reaches a method of the divine wisdom, and that here in the catholic church it has arrived at an issue. 'God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish (as spotless victims) before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself.' 'Fore-ordained to be a heritage according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will.' So he asseverates and repeats and insists. There are, we may say, two ideas commonly associated with predestination which St. Paul gives us no warrant for asserting. The one is the predestination of individuals to eternal loss or destruction. That God should create any single individual with the intention of eternally destroying or punishing him is a horrible idea, and, without prying into mysteries, we may say boldly that there is no warrant for it in the Old or New Testaments. God is indeed represented as predestinating men, like Jacob and Esau, to a higher or lower place in the order of the world or the church. There are 'vessels' made by the divine potter to purposes of 'honour,' and 'vessels' made to purposes (comparatively) of 'dishonour[⁷¹]': there are more honourable and less honourable limbs of the body[⁷²]. But this does not prejudice the eternal prospects of those who in this world hold the less advantageous posts. With God is no respect of persons. Again God is represented as predestinating men to moral hardness of heart where such hardness is a judgement on previous wilfulness. Thus men may be predestined to temporary rejection of God, as in St. Paul's mind the majority of the contemporary Jews were. That was their judgement, and their punishment[⁷³]. It was however not God's first intention for them nor His last. Those chapters of St. Paul[⁷⁴] which contain the most terrible things about the present reprobation of the Jews contain also the most emphatic repudiation of the idea that moral reprobation was God's first idea for them, or His last. 'The gifts and calling of God,' that is, His good gifts and calling, says St. Paul, speaking of the now 'reprobate' Jews, are 'without repentance[⁷⁵].' God's present reprobation of them is only a process towards a fresh opportunity. 'God hath shut up all into disobedience that he might have mercy upon all[⁷⁶].' Men may baffle the original divine purpose, and that, so far as their own blessedness is concerned, even finally: they may become finally 'reprobate': but the divine purpose for them at its root remains a purpose for good. 'God will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth[⁷⁷].'

And once again, the idea of a predestination for good, taking effect necessarily and irrespective of men's co-operation, is an idea which has been intruded unjustifiably into St. Paul's thought. It exalts his whole being to consider that he is co-operating with God, and that the conditions under which he lives represent a divine purpose with which he is called to work. It is this which makes him feel it is worth while working: it is this which nerves and sustains him in all sufferings, and enlarges his horizon in all restraints: but he never suggests that it does not lie within the mysterious power of his own will to withdraw himself from co-operation with God. It is at least conceivable to him that he should himself be rejected[⁷⁸]. In that famous list of external forces which he feels are unable to tear him from the grasp of the divine love, his own will is not included[⁷⁹], nor could be included without gross inconsistency.

Beyond all question there is here one problem which remains for all time unsolved and insoluble – the relation of divine fore-knowledge[⁸⁰] to human freedom. If we men are free to choose, how can it be, or can it really be the case at all, that God knows beforehand actually how each individual will behave in each particular case? This is a problem which we cannot fathom any more than we can fathom any of the problems which require for their solution an experience of what an absolute and eternal consciousness can mean. But the problem belongs to metaphysics. It inheres in the idea of eternity and God. The Bible neither creates it nor solves it. We may say it does not touch it.

Certainly when St. Paul dwells upon the thought of divine predestination he dwells upon it in order to emphasize that, through all the vicissitudes of the world's history, a divine purpose runs; and especially that God works out His universal purposes through specially selected agents 'his elect,' on whom His choice rests for special ends in accordance with an eternal design and intention. And the sense of co-operating with an eternal purpose of God inspires and strengthens him. For God will not drop His work by the way. Whom He did foreknow or mark out beforehand for His divine purposes, them He also foreordained or predestinated to sonship, and in due time called into the number of His elect, and justified them, that is, pardoned their sins and gave them a new standing-ground in Christ, and glorified or will glorify them by the gradual operation of His grace[⁸¹]. The steps or moments of the divine action recognized in the Epistle to the Romans are practically the same as those alluded to in the Epistle to the Ephesians. There also is the eternal choice, and the predestination to sonship, and at a particular time the call into the Church, and the justification or remission of sins through the blood of Christ, and the gradual promotion through sanctification to glory. And the moral fruit of contemplating God's eternal purpose for His elect, and the stages of His work upon them, is to be cheerful confidence of a right sort. God will not drop them by the way, nor the work which they are 'called' to accomplish. 'God who hath begun a good work will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ[⁸²].' Wherever St. Paul recognizes a movement towards good in the single soul or in the world, he knows that it is no accidental or passing phase: it has its roots in the eternal will, and unless we resist it in wilful obstinacy, the eternal will shall at last carry it on to perfection. 'There shall never be one lost good.'

It is not out of place to notice in this connexion how closely akin is St. Paul's thought to the modern philosophy of evolution. Only to St. Paul the slow process of cosmic or human evolution is in no kind of opposition to the idea of divine design.

iii

The elect

This predestinated body, the Church, is what in another word St. Paul calls the 'elect' or 'chosen.' The idea of election has had a very false turn given to it, partly through mistakes which have been already alluded to, partly because the idea of election has been separated from another idea with which in the Bible it is most closely associated, the idea of a universal purpose to which the elect minister. No thought can be more prominent in the Old Testament than the thought that some men out of multitudes have been chosen by God to be in a special relation of intimacy with Him. 'You only have I known, O Israel, of all the families of the earth.' But this election to special knowledge of God, and special spiritual opportunity, carries with it a corresponding responsibility. It is no piece of favouritism on God's part. The greater our opportunity the more is required of us. 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities[⁸³].' The fact is that the principle of inequality in capacity and opportunity runs through the whole world both in individuals and in societies. A great genius or a great nation has special privileges and opportunities, but also, in the sight of God who judges men according to their opportunities, special responsibilities. But also (and this is by far the most important point) the special vocation of every elect individual or body is for the sake of others[⁸⁴]. It is God's method to work through the few upon the many. That is the law of ministry which binds all the world of strong and weak, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, into one. Thus Abraham had been chosen alone, but it was that, through his seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Israel was exclusively the people of God, but it was in order that all nations should learn from them at last the word of God. The apostles were the first 'elect' in Christ with a little Jewish company. 'We' – so St. Paul speaks of the Jewish Christians – 'we who had before hoped in Christ.' But it was to show the way to all the Gentiles ('ye also, who have heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,') who were also to constitute 'God's own possession' and His 'heritage.' The purpose to be realized is a universal one: it is the re-union of man with man, as such, by being all together reunited to God in one body. And this idea is to have application even beyond the bounds of humanity. Unity is the principle of all things as God created the world. 'In Christ,' St. Paul writes to the Colossians, 'all things consist' or 'hold together in one system[⁸⁵].' It is only sin, whether in man or in the dimly-known spiritual world which lies beyond, which has spoiled this unity, and in separating the creatures from God has separated them from one another. And the Church of the reconciliation is God's elect body to represent a divine purpose of restoration far wider than itself – extending in fact to all creation. It is the divine purpose, with a view to 'a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up' or 'bring together again in unity' all things in Christ; the things in the heaven, the dim spiritual forces of which we have only glimpses, and the things upon the earth which we know so much better.

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

iv

The divine secret disclosed

This universal reconciliation through a catholic church was God's eternal purpose, but it was kept secret from the ages and the generations, only at last to be disclosed to His apostles and prophets. The word 'mystery' in the New Testament means mostly a divine secret which has now been disclosed. Just as the secret of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, i.e. the purpose of God in the then order of the world, was imparted to Daniel, so now the great disclosure of the divine mystery or secret has been made, primarily indeed to apostles and prophets, but through them to the whole body of the faithful. The faithful must of course begin by receiving that simplest spiritual nourishment which is milk for babes. They are to welcome the divine forgiveness of their sins in Christ, and the gift of new life through Him in their baptism and the laying-on of hands. They are to be taught the rudimentary truths and moral lessons which are the first principles of the oracles of Christ. But they are not to stop with this. They are, and they are all of them without exception[⁸⁶], intended to grow up to the full apprehension of the wisdom of the 'perfect' or perfectly initiated. They are to dwell upon the divine secret, now revealed, of God's purpose for the universe through the church till their whole heart and intellect and imagination is enlightened and enriched by it.

v

It is all of grace

And is the greatness of this exaltation and knowledge vouchsafed to the Church to be a renewed occasion of pride – that spiritual pride, the fatal results of which had already become apparent through the rejection of the Jews? No: unless through a complete mistake, the very opposite must be the result. The strength of human pride, as St. Paul had seen long ago, lay in the idea that man could have merit of his own, face to face with God: could have good works which were his own and not God's, and which gave him a claim upon God. That Jewish doctrine of merit[⁸⁷] had been convicted of utter falsity in St. Paul's own spiritual experience. He had found himself brought to acknowledge, like any sinner of the Gentiles, his simple dependence upon the divine compassion for forgiveness and acceptance. This spiritual experience of St. Paul was only the realizing through one channel of what is, in fact, an elementary truth about human nature. The idea of human independence is demonstrably a false idea. As a matter of fact, man draws his life, physical and spiritual, from sources beyond himself – from the one source, God. In constant dependence on God he lives necessarily from moment to moment, whether to breathe, or think, or will. The freedom of will which he has is not really originative or creative power, but a capacity of voluntary correspondence with what is given him from beyond himself. In that power of correspondence, or refusal to correspond, man's liberty begins and ends. He creates nothing. It is not that man does something and then God does the rest. The truth is that when we track man's good action to its root in his will, we find for certain that God has been beforehand with him. The good he does is in correspondence with moral and physical laws and forces of the universe, or, in other words, with divine powers and purposes lent and suggested to him. To attempt independence of God, to have schemes and plans absolutely one's own, is to work arbitrarily and ignorantly, and ultimately to fail and to know that one has failed. Thus men, when they realize the facts of their condition, must depend, and rejoice to depend, wholly upon God as for forgiveness where they have done wrong, so also for suggestion and power that they may do anything aright. There is then no room for human pride. It is a mistake. We come back to recognize, what St. Paul realized in his own deep spiritual experience and taught the Church at the beginning. Whatever is good in the world is all of divine initiation and of divine grace. It is all, not to our glory, but (as St. Paul three times repeats in the opening paragraphs of our epistle) 'to the praise of his glory,' or 'to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely bestows on us' out of His pure love and goodwill.

St. Paul's leading thoughts

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

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

DIVISION I. § 2. CHAPTER I. 15-23

St. Paul's Prayer

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

For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and which ye shew toward all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

There is very little further explanation needed for this passage. But three phrases may be noted: —

(1) St. Paul calls the Father 'the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,' as our Lord Himself calls Him 'my God' (John xx. 17) in His resurrection state. It is no doubt of Christ as man that the Father is God; but this relation of the Son as man to the Father depends upon an eternal subordination in which the Son, even as God, stands to the Father from whom He derives His divine life. The essential subordination of the Son (and Spirit) to the Father as the one fount of Godhead, is continually suggested in the New Testament; but it involves no inferiority in Godhead, or subsequence in time – 'nothing before or after, nothing greater or less,' as the Quicunque vult says. And it conveys to us the moral lesson that a subordinate position is not to be resented as if it were a dishonour.

(2) The spirit of 'wisdom and revelation' vouchsafed to us is to enable us to apprehend in a measure the divine 'wisdom and prudence[⁸⁸]' manifested in God's work of creation and redemption. The humility which is content to correspond patiently and teachably with the method of God is, as Francis Bacon was at pains to teach, of the essence of all fruitful human science.

(3) The expression 'the fulness' or 'the fulness of the Godhead[⁸⁹]' means the sum total of the divine attributes, which, instead of being spread over different angelic mediators, as the Colossians were disposed to imagine, are, by the divine will, all concentrated and combined in the glorified Christ. And here St. Paul teaches the Ephesian Christians that all that belongs to the glorified Christ is to belong also to the Church, which is His body. It is Christ who gives to all creatures whatever various gifts of life they have. He 'filleth all in all'; that is, 'He filleth the whole universe with all variety of gifts.' But something much more than various gifts – the sum total of all He is – He pours, or intends to pour, into the Church, so that the Church as well as the Christ shall embody, and thus be identified with, the fulness of the divine attributes. At present the Church is this only ideally, or in the divine intention: the actually existing Church has still much need of growth that her members 'may be filled (as they are not at present) up to the measure of the divine fulness'; or, in other words, up to 'the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ[⁹⁰].'

The fulness, according to St. Paul's doctrine, is to be sought first in the eternal God; then in the glorified Christ; then, through Him, in the fully developed Church; and, finally, through the Church, in a sense in the universe as a whole, when the work of redemption is done and God is at last 'all in all' throughout His creation.

It may be noticed that St. Paul, in this doctrine of 'the fulness,' is thinking rather of the divine attributes as manifested, than as they are in themselves: and of Christ, not as the eternal Son of God, but, more particularly, as incarnate and glorified. It was the 'good pleasure' of the Father to fill the exalted Christ, the first-begotten from the dead, with the fulness of divine glory and power as the reward of the humility and love which He showed when He 'emptied himself in taking the form of a servant[⁹¹].' This bestowal was no doubt a giving anew to Him, as man and as head of the Church, what was eternally His as Son of the Father.

There is another interpretation adopted by Chrysostom in ancient times, and by Dr. Hort among moderns, of the phrase 'the church which is his body, the fulness of him who filleth all in all.' According to them the Church is regarded as making the Christ complete. It is in this sense the 'fulfilment' of Christ, because without the Church He would be a head without its members: and then the rest of the sentence should be translated differently – 'the church which is his body, the fulfilment of him who is fulfilled in all ways with all things.' But this is decidedly less agreeable to the general use of the expression 'the fulness' in the epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians[⁹²].

Some practical lessons

We may also pause to recognize one or two ways in which St. Paul's view of the Christian religion, as exhibited in the opening of this epistle, suggests special deficiencies among ourselves.

(1) St. Paul's Christianity is a religion of thankfulness. This epistle is a burst of exuberant praise. Yet he was himself a prisoner, and the church of Ephesus, with the other Asiatic churches, was sorely threatened with moral and spiritual perils of all kinds. The secret of this thankfulness is that he looks straight away from himself and his surroundings up to God. He measures the value of human life and work not by what immediate experience suggests, but by what he knows of the purpose of God. In spite of all the obstacles opposed by human wilfulness and weakness and sin, he knows that His purpose will effect itself: therefore he 'rejoices in the Lord always,' and no discouraging circumstances can quench the springs of his rejoicing. Our Christianity is apt to be of a very 'dutiful' kind. We mean to do our duty, we attend church and go to our communions. But our hearts are full of the difficulties, the hardships, the obstacles which the situation presents, and we go on our way sadly, downhearted and despondent. We need to learn or learn anew from St. Paul that true Christianity is inseparable from deep joy; and the secret of that joy lies in a continual looking away from all else – away from sin and its ways, and from the manifold hindrances to the good we would do – up to God, His love, His purpose, His will. In proportion as we do look up to Him we shall rejoice, and in proportion as we rejoice in the Lord will our religion have tone and power and attractiveness.

(2) St. Paul appeals to the Asiatic Christians not to become something they are not, or to acquire some spiritual gift that they have not received, but simply to realize what they already are, and to claim the privileges of their baptized state. They are already 'adopted as sons[⁹³].' They have, like the Galatians, received 'the Spirit of adoption.' The point now is that they should realize and put into practice what already belongs to them. This mode of appeal is based on the doctrine – in spite of its many perversions the most valuable doctrine – of baptismal regeneration. The false method of appeal – as if careless Christians needed to become sons of God – which involves a false idea of 'regeneration,' has been so much identified with popular Protestantism, that I cannot do better than quote some very apposite remarks by the late Congregationalist teacher, Dr. Dale, of blessed memory, from his noble commentary on this very epistle to the Ephesians: —

'This adoption of which Paul speaks is something more than a mere legal and formal act, conveying certain high prerogatives. We are "called the sons of God" because we are really made His sons by a new and supernatural birth. Regeneration is sometimes described as though it were merely a change in a man's principles of conduct in his character, his tastes, his habits. The description is theologically false, and practically most pernicious and misleading. If regeneration were nothing more than this, we should have to speak of a man as being more or less regenerate, according to the extent of his moral reformation; but this would be contrary to the idiom of New Testament thought. That a great change in the moral region of a man's nature will certainly follow regeneration is true; this change, however, is not regeneration itself, but the effect of regeneration; and the moral change which regeneration produces varies in many ways in different men. In some the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete. In others it is extremely gradual, and may be for a long time hardly discernible. In some regenerate men grave sins remain for a time unforsaken, perhaps unrecognized. Look at these Ephesian Christians. The Apostle has to tell them that they must put away falsehood and speak the truth; that they must give up thieving, and foul talk, and covetousness, and gross sensual sin.

'He addresses them as "saints." He describes them as having been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and foreordained by God unto adoption as sons unto Himself; and yet he knows that they are in danger of committing these base and flagrant offences. It was hard for them to escape from the vices of heathenism. They were regenerate; but as yet, in some of them, the moral effects of regeneration were very incomplete, the change which regeneration was ultimately certain to produce in their moral life had only begun, and it was checked and hindered by a thousand hostile influences.

'The simplest and most obvious account of regeneration is the truest. When a man is regenerated he receives a new life and receives it from God. In itself regeneration is not a change in his old life, but the beginning of a new life which is conferred by the immediate and supernatural act of the Holy Spirit. The man is really "born again." A higher nature comes to him than that which he inherited from his human parents; he is "begotten of God," "born of the Spirit."'

This passage, especially as coming from Dr. Dale, supplies a very valuable corrective to still current religious mistakes. But surely we have no ground for saying that the moral effects 'certainly' follow regeneration, or follow it in all cases. It is not 'ultimately certain to produce' them in all persons, but only in those who exhibit, sooner or later, the moral correspondence of a converted will.

(3) Most Christians who have reacted from Calvinism and its false doctrine of predestination have ceased to think about the truth which it represents. But we need to make a right instead of a wrong use of these great ideas of predestination and election, and thus to get rid of all the miserable narrowness and hopelessness which settles down upon us when we allow ourselves to think of religion as mainly a process of saving our own souls, and when we live only in our present feelings.

What can be more inspiring and strengthening than to believe that there is an eternal purpose of God working itself out in the universe through all its stages and parts; that this eternal purpose includes us, and has fastened upon us individually and brought us into Christ and His Church, to make true men of us; and that it has done all this not for our own sakes only, but to disclose something more of God's glory and for the fulfilment of great and universal purposes, which are to radiate out even from us? Wherever St. Paul sees the hand of God in present experience, at once his mind works back to an eternal will and therefore also forward to an eternal and adequate result. And this backward and forward look transfigures the present with a new glory and a fresh hope. So will it be with us if this same characteristically Christian way of looking at any apparent movement of God in the present, in our own souls or in the world outside us, becomes habitually and instinctively ours. God never acts on a sudden impulse or without purpose of continuance. Certainly He can be trusted not to stop and leave things unfinished. When He hath begun any good work He will assuredly perfect it, if we will let Him.