I. Paul's description of himself: "an Apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." He was not appointed to his office through the intervention of the Church or of those who had been Apostles before him; his call came direct from heaven. Much less had he dared to undertake his great work at the impulse of his own zeal for the honour of Christ and the redemption of men. He was an Apostle "through the will of God." The expression is characteristic of the Pauline theology; Paul believed that the Divine will is the root and origin of all Christian righteousness and blessedness. And this is the secret of a strong, and calm, and effective Christian life. Our spiritual activity reaches its greatest intensity when we are so filled with the glory of the Divine righteousness, the Divine love, and the Divine power that we are conscious only of God, and all thought of ourselves is lost in Him.
II. Having described himself, Paul goes on to describe those to whom the Epistle is written. They are "the saints which are at Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus." In the early days all Christians were saints. This title did not attribute any personal merit to them; it simply recalled their prerogatives and their obligations. Whenever they were so called they were reminded that God had made them His own. They were holy because they belonged to Him. According to Paul's conception, every Christian man was a temple, a sacrifice, a priest; his whole life was a Sabbath; he belonged to an elect race; he was the subject of an invisible and Divine kingdom; he was a saint. The title implies no personal merit; it is the record of a great manifestation of God's condescension and love.
III. The closing words of the second verse, "Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ," belong to too lofty a region to be regarded as merely an expression of courtesy and goodwill. I think that we must call them a benediction. If the true ideal of the Christian life were fulfilled, men would be conscious that whenever we came near to them Christ came near; when we invoked on men the Divine favour and the Divine peace, the invocation would be His rather than ours: it would be spoken in His name, not in our own, and what we spoke on earth would be confirmed and made good in heaven. We have ceased to bless each other because our consciousness of union with Him who alone can make the blessing effective has become faint and dim.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 11.
Reference: Eph 1:1 , Eph 1:2 .-Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., p. 213; Preacher's Monthly, vol. viii., p. 59.
Eph 1:3 Of the spiritual blessings which we have in Christ we notice-
I. Election. God has chosen us not only that we may be saved from eternal destruction, not only that we may be happy for ever in heaven, but He has chosen us for this special purpose: that we should be holy and without blame before Him. We cannot have before us a nobler, grander object to contemplate than that it is God's purpose to make us holy and without blame before Him, to conform us in spirit and in life to the image of His dear Son.
II. Predestination and adoption. Whatever may be said about all human beings being the children of God, I am inclined to think that there is more of sentiment than of sound Scriptural truth in that notion, for I find it continually set forth in the New Testament that there is a connection between faith in Christ and our becoming children of God. "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus," says the Apostle Paul, and thus it is that we are adopted and received into the adoption of sons.
III. Redemption. Much as this doctrine is derided at the present time, the fact that He bought us at such a price as His own precious life makes our redemption and eternal life so absolutely secure.
IV. Forgiveness of sins. Christ has not redeemed us from the curse of the law that He might afterwards reproach us for our sins. There comes with the redemption the forgiveness. There comes with the act of love that saved us from the curse of the law the act of oblivion, in which all sin is forgiven and forgotten.
H. Stowell Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 344.
I. In the heavenlies we have (1) a blessed home. (2) We are quickened together and raised up with Christ. As a result of His thus quickening us together with Christ and raising us up together, God makes us sit together at His own right hand. This involves elevation over all created powers and a share in His absolute sovereignty.
II. The situation of believers in the heavenlies, thus blessed and thus exalted, naturally draws upon them the notice of other beings, of other intelligences, good or evil, who may be capable of understanding what is going on in the heavenlies. The heavenlies now put on the aspect of a theatre or place of exhibition in the view of holy angels, the unfallen inhabitants of heaven. By the Church they have made known to them the manifold wisdom of God.
III. In chap. Eph 6:12 another change or metamorphosis befalls the heavenlies. Instead of a spectacle, there is a strife; instead of an exhibition, a fight. The heavenlies now appear as a field of battle. The heavenlies are not now, any more than the heavenlies before the Fall, secure from the invasion of the spoiler and the foe. Our enemies are the world rulers of the dark and disordered system of things that now prevails among men. They follow us into our retreat. Resenting our escape from their dominion, bitterly grudging our being blessed by God and exalted in Christ, in the heavenlies, they would fain scale the mountain of our hope and joy in the Lord. Their temptations and assaults now are not carnal, but spiritual. Be not unduly afraid of them. Be not ignorant of their devices. Beware of meeting them in their own domain, in the world of whose darkness they are rulers.
R. S. Candlish, Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 1.
Eph 1:3 .
I. Men, in the midst of the many conflicting manifestations of God, are trying to find the supreme revelation which will harmonise all the crossing rays in its own serene and fadeless light. This supreme revelation we find in Christ. The God whom Jesus obeyed, the Father whom Jesus loved, is the God and Father we today are striving to find that we may love Him too. Every Godlike man gives a new revelation of God to man. "The God of Abraham" was a new conception of God that made primitive religion richer and better. The personal appropriation of God, so common in Hebrew piety, does not make the world at large poorer, but richer, by enlarging human faith and by sanctifying human experience. Every flower that blows, every bird that sings in summer, may claim the sunshine as its own. The violet can say, "My sun," without trespassing on the rights of the daisy; the butterfly can say, "My sun," without taking anything away from the lark. Each leaf and plant, each fern and flower, is a fresh revelation of the same sun-a new incarnation of the one great mind in nature. So is every Godlike man showing a new phase of the Divine character.
II. The God of Jesus Christ can do no wrong. The eternity after time is done with will be as stainless as the eternity before time was. Time and sin are discords leading into deeper and sweeter symphonies. Christ saw hell and loved God; He knew that hell was not a land lying outside the boundaries of the kingdom of righteousness. Christ did not explain evil; He simply left it beneath His feet and went home. The explanation of sin comes only to those who have conquered sin.
H. Elvet Lewis, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 390.
References: Eph 1:3 .-Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 130: J. Stalker, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 127.
Eph 1:3-4 I. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." These words recall the joy and triumph of the ancient Psalms. They read as if Paul was intending to write a song of happy thanksgiving. He attributes to Christ the whole development of his spiritual life. The larger knowledge of God and of the ways of God, which came to him from year to year, had come from Christ; and he felt sure that whatever fresh discoveries of God might come to him would come from Christ. Faith, hope, joy, peace, patience, courage, zeal, love for God, love for man-he had found them all in Christ. It was on the ground of his own personal experience that he was able to tell men that the riches of Christ are unsearchable.
II. I need hardly remind you that Calvinism has derived its strongest Scriptural support from the interpretation which has been placed upon certain passages in the writings of the Apostle Paul. On the first few verses of this Epistle the Calvinistic theory of election and predestination has been supposed to rest as on foundations of eternal granite. It is true that the technical terms of the Calvinistic theology are to be found in the Epistles of Paul, but they do not stand for the Calvinistic ideas. When Paul speaks of God electing men, choosing them, foreordaining them, predestinating them, He means something very different from what Calvinism means when it uses the same words. Calvinism teaches that by the decree of God some men are foreordained to everlasting death; Paul teaches that "it is the will of God that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." Calvinism teaches that "neither are any other redeemed by Christ but the elect only"; Paul teaches that Christ gave Himself a ransom for all. According to the Calvinistic conception, some men who are still children of wrath, even as the rest, are among the elect, and will therefore some day become children of God. That is a mode of speech foreign to Paul's thought; according to Paul, no man is elect except he is in Christ. We are all among the non-elect until we are in Him. But once in Christ, we are caught in the current of the eternal purposes of the Divine love; we belong to the elect race: all things are ours; we are the children of God and heirs of His glory.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on Ephesians, p. 25.
References: Eph 1:3 , Eph 1:4 .-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1738. Eph 1:3-6 .-Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., p. 272. Eph 1:4 , Eph 1:5 .-Ibid., 3rd series, vol. viii., p. 202. Eph 1:5 .-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 360; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 102; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. v., p. 373.
Eph 1:5-6 Regeneration and Sonship in Christ.
We have now to consider that original and central Divine purpose which explains and includes all that the infinite love of God has done for our race already, all that the infinite love of God will do for us through the endless ages beyond death. God "foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself."
I. "Through Jesus Christ." Our Lord is always represented as being, in the highest sense and in a unique sense, the Son of God. He is a Servant and something more. There is an ease, a freedom, a grace, about His doing of the will of God, which can belong only to a son. There is nothing constrained in His moral and spiritual perfection; it is not the result of art and painstaking. He was born to it, as we say; He does the will of God as a child does the will of his father: naturally, as a matter of course, almost without thought. The character of His communion with His Father confirms this impression. There is no irreverent familiarity, but there is no trace of fear or even of wonder. It is plain that He lived in the very light of God, saw God as no saint had ever seen Him; but He was not subdued or overawed by the vision. Prophets had fallen to the ground when the Divine glory was revealed to them; but Christ stands calm and erect. A subject may lose self-possession in the presence of his prince, but not a son.
II. 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. In some the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete; in others it is extremely gradual, and may for a long time be hardly discernible. 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. They were regenerate, but 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.
III. What God has done for us is "to the praise of the glory of His grace"; and the Apostle adds, "which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." With the infinite suggestiveness of the last word Paul seems to have been content. Christ dwells for ever in the infinite love of God, and as we are in Christ, the love of God for Christ is in a wonderful manner ours.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 40.
Eph 1:5-10 The Final Restoration of all Things.
There are several passages in the New Testament-and this is one of them-which make it clear that the Divine mercy is ultimately to achieve a complete triumph over misery and moral evil; and these passages, if they stand alone, might give us the impression that all who in any age, in any land, in any world, have erred and strayed from God are to be brought back by the Good Shepherd to the flock and to the fold.
I. But this Epistle, like the other documents contained in the New Testament, was not written for persons who were uninstructed in the Christian faith. If anything is clear about the teaching of Christ and His Apostles it is that they warned men not to reject the Divine mercy and so become irrevocable exiles from God's presence and joy. They assumed that some would be guilty of this supreme crime and would be doomed to this supreme woe. Some men will inherit eternal life; some men will be punished with the second death. When therefore Paul spoke of God's purpose to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, the Ephesian Christians would not misunderstand his meaning. It would be understood that while those who had incurred irrevocable exclusion from the life of God were to receive the just punishment of their sin and to perish, the rest of the moral universe was to be organised into a perfect unity for eternal ages of righteousness and glory.
II. The universe was created to reach its perfection in Christ, and the eternal thought of God has been moving through countless ages of imperfection, development, pain, and conflict towards this great end. Crossed, resisted, defied, apparently thwarted, by moral evil, the Divine purpose has remained steadfast, has never been surrendered. Its energy has been wonderfully revealed in the incarnation and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its final triumph is secure. God will "sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth." In Him the discords of the universe will be resolved into an eternal harmony; its conflicts will end in golden ages of untroubled peace; it will find God, and in finding God will find eternal unity and blessedness. What we hope for in the endless future is a still more complete participation in whatever knowledge and love of God, whatever righteousness, whatever joy, may exist in any province of the created universe. Race is no longer to be isolated from race, or world from world. A power, a wisdom, a holiness, a rapture, of which a solitary soul, a solitary world, would be incapable, are to be ours through the gathering together in one of all things in Christ.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 90.
Reference: Eph 1:6 .-Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 267; Ibid., Sermons, vol. viii., No. 471; vol. xvi., No. 958; vol. xxix., No. 1731; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 95. Eph 1:6 , Eph 1:7 .-Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 93.
Eph 1:7 The Forgiveness of Sins.
I. The Apostolic doctrine of the Atonement rests on Christ's own teaching. To understand this doctrine it is necessary to have a clear conception of what is meant by the forgiveness of sins. (1) It is not a change in our minds towards God, but a change in God's mind towards us. (2) It must not be confounded with peace of conscience. It is clearly one thing for God to be at peace with us and quite a different thing for us to be at peace with ourselves. (3) There is another possible error. We must not suppose that as soon as God forgives us we escape at once from the painful and just consequences of our sins. The sins may be forgiven, and yet many of the penalties which they have brought upon us may remain.
II. What is it then for God to forgive sins? (1) When God forgives men, His resentment ceases. He actually remits our sin. Our responsibility for it ceases. The guilt of it is no longer ours. That He should be able to give us this release is infinitely more wonderful than that He should be able to kindle the fires of the sun and to control through age after age the courses of the stars. (2) He can forgive sin because He is God. Sin is a violation of the eternal law of righteousness, and that law is neither above God nor below God. The eternal law of righteousness is one with the eternal life and will of God. When His resentment against us ceases, the eternal law of righteousness ceases to be hostile to us. The shadow which our sins have projected across our life, and which lengthens with lengthening years, passes away. We look back upon the sins which God has forgiven, and we condemn them still, but the condemnation does not fall upon ourselves, for God, who is the living law of righteousness, condemns us no longer.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 52.
The Riches of God's Grace.
It is quite clear from the whole teaching of the New Testament that faith-faith in the Lord Jesus Christ-is the critical act which determines the eternal destiny of all to whom the everlasting God in Christ is made known. Penitence for sin may be most bitter, and yet sin may remain unforgiven. Prayer may be most passionate, and yet the soul may find no rest. The endeavour to break away from old courses of evil may be sincere and earnest, and yet be altogether unavailing. Forgiveness is not granted to us, nor the gift of eternal life, until we trust in God to save us through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I. The riches of God's grace are illustrated by the nature and cause of those evils from which God is willing to redeem us. All the evils of our condition, from which God is eager to save us, are the result of our own fault. We have sinned, and the sin is regarded by God with deep and intense abhorrence. It is to the guilty, and not merely to the unfortunate, that God offers redemption. It is to the guiltiest as well as to those whose sins have been less flagrant, and thus He shows the riches of His grace.
II. Again, the riches of His grace are illustrated in what He has done to effect our redemption. "We have redemption through the blood of Christ." If Christ had descended and declared that God was ready to be at peace with us we should have had infinite reason to speak of the riches of God's grace; but He came unasked. The price of our redemption has already been paid. We have not to entreat God to redeem us; He has provided for our redemption, and thus He has illustrated the riches of His grace.
III. Again, the condition on which God offers salvation illustrates the riches of His grace. If I were to speak with strict accuracy, I might speak of the absence of all conditions, for it is a free gift, and the only condition is that we should receive it. As Peter rose at the touch of the angel and found that his fetters were gone, and that the prison doors were open, we have only to rise up free.
R. W. Dale, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 691.
The Forgiveness of Sins and the Death of Christ.
The two truths which Paul affirms in the text are in a sense equally mysterious; but the first may be more accessible than the second. He says, first, that we have forgiveness of our trespasses in Christ, and, secondly, that we have the forgiveness of our trespasses in Christ through His blood.
I. We are assisted to approach the first truth by what he has said in the earlier verses of this chapter. The eternal springs of the Divine life of the human race are in Christ. Whatever strength, and wisdom, and blessedness, and glory are possible to us are possible through Him and through our union with Him. Christ's eternal righteousness, His eternal relationship to the Father, the Father's delight in Him, are the origin of all the greatness for which the human race was created. It was from Christ, according to the Divine idea of the race, that we were to receive all things. Every spiritual blessing was conferred upon the race in Him.
II. But what special relation can be discovered between the death of Christ and the remission of sins? (1) In Christ we have found the ideal righteousness of the race. Shall we be surprised if we also find in Christ the ideal submission of the race to the justice of the Divine resentment against sin? His eternal righteousness made it possible for us to be righteous, for we were created to live in His life: His voluntary endurance of agony, spiritual desertion, and death made it possible for us to consent from our very heart to the justice of God's condemnation of our sin. In another sense than that in which the words are used by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "He was made perfect through suffering." (2) The death of Christ has another effect which constitutes it the reason and ground of our forgiveness. His death is the death of sin in all who are one with Him. (3) The death of Christ was an act in which there was a revelation of the righteousness of God which must otherwise have been revealed in the infliction of the penalty of sin on the human race.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 68.
In Paul's idea the redemption in Christ stands out as something altogether unique, enshrined in distinctive grandeur. The definite article is used-"in whom," he says, "we have the redemption"-the one great deliverance of sinful men. That redemption is procured for us through "His blood," and it consists in "the forgiveness of sins."
I. The New Testament nowhere represents God as a Father only. A Father of infinite love and tenderness He is; it is our Lord's supreme revelation of Him; but is He not Sovereign and Magistrate as well? If His words are words of infinite love, are they not also words of inflexible holiness? The word "redemption" is strictly a legal word. It refers to penalty, not to mere moral influence. It is an act of grace on the part of Him against whom we have sinned, but founded on principles of righteousness.
II. It is clear that Christ did not suffer to appease any implacable feeling in God, to incline God to save. Every representation of Scripture is of God's yearning pity and love. Christ, a holy and loving Man, realised what the sin of His brother-man was-sin against the loving Father, sin that filled the soul with evil; and the realisation agonised Him, the pure, the holy, Man and Brother. Was not this bearing human sin? Feeling all this anguish for others' sin, the anguish that they should have felt, that was the natural consequence of sin. And was not this a sacrifice for sin, a homage to righteousness, a manifestation of the inviolability of holiness, of the inevitable misery of sin, the satisfaction of a great principle, "magnifying the law and making it honourable"? "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Have we not here the key to the holiness, the love, and the profound moral philosophy of Christ's propitiatory sacrifice?
H. Allon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxiii., p. 104.
Eph 1:7 (with Col 1:14 )
What we have in Christ Jesus is here indicated by two phrases or forms of expression, which explain and define one another. The redemption through His blood is the forgiveness of sins; the forgiveness of sins is the redemption through His blood.
I. This limits the meaning of the term "redemption." It is restricted by the qualifying clause, "through His blood," and it is restricted also by the explanatory addition, "the forgiveness of sins." The transaction is wholly and exclusively an act and exercise of the Divine sovereignty.
II. The forgiveness of sins is the redemption through Christ's blood. The statement or definition thus reversed is significant and important. It is not the simple utterance of a sentence, frankly forgiving. It is that, no doubt; but it is something more. There is the offended Father Himself providing that the irreversible sentence of law and justice lying upon His rebellious children shall have fitting and sufficient execution upon the head of His own well-beloved Son, who is willing to take their place; so that they may come forth free, no longer under condemnation, but righteous in His righteousness and sons in His sonship. This is the redemption through the blood of Christ. And this is what we have when we have the forgiveness of sins, this and nothing short of this. It is something more than impunity, something more than indulgence, something very different from either impunity or indulgence, and indeed the opposite of both.
III. We have this great benefit in Christ. The gift of God held out freely to the acceptance of all the guilty alike, the gift of God, His free gift, is Christ, and not Christ as the medium or channel through which the redemption or forgiveness reaches us, but Christ having in Himself the redemption and the forgiveness.
R. S. Candlish, Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 18.
References: Eph 1:7 .-Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 334; Ibid., Sermons, vol. vi., No. 295; vol. xxvi., No. 1555. Eph 1:7-14 -Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., p. 337. Eph 1:9 , Eph 1:10 .-F. H. Williams, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 262; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., pp. 85, 225.
Eph 1:9-11 Christ the Justification of a Suffering World.
Such words as these of St. Paul spring out of that first bewilderment of joy which belongs to the sense of discovery. Christ is still a newly discovered wonder, and the wonder of the newness still fascinates, still overwhelms. What, then, is the mystery of God's will in gathering together all in one in Christ? Why was the Incarnation the true and only secret, the fit and only instrument? What did it actually do? Why was it such an immense relief to St. Paul?
I. Let me take it very broadly. What is the primary plan of God as we see it in nature? For this is the plan that Christ came to fulfil. We gaze and wonder at the terrific process of creation; and if we ask in awe and amazement, What is the end of all this? What is the purpose to be achieved? we are told, "Man." Man is the final achievement in which all this preparation issues; man is worth all this infinite toil, this agelong effort, this endless struggle, this thousandfold death. He is the justification; it is all very good since it all rises up into his crowning endowment. We turn to look at man, then, man as this world's fulfilment. What has he done to be worth it all?
II. The one nation in all the world which discovered the permanent purpose of God in history; the one nation which succeeded in finding a path through its own disasters, so that its own ruin only threw into clearer light the principles of God's ordained fulfilment-this unique nation pronounced that the fulfilment, the justifying purpose, was to be found in holiness of spirit, the union of man with God, whose image he is. Accept this as man's end, and no destruction appals, no despair overwhelms, for this is the higher life, which is worth all the deaths that the lower can die; this is the new birth, which would make all the anguish of the travailing be remembered no more. But to know the secret was one thing; to achieve its fulfilment was another. The one possible end- the achievement of holiness-was itself impossible to the only people who recognised it as their end.
III. The holiness of God incarnate in the flesh of this labouring humanity, the holy image of God's perfect righteousness taking upon Himself the whole agony of man, dying the death which justifies all death-but it turns death itself, by the honourable way of sacrifice, into the instrument of the higher inheritance, into the sacrament of righteousness, into the mystery of holiness, into the pledge of perfect peace-this, and this only, makes a consummation by which the effort of God's creation achieves an end; this and this only, is a secret and a victory worthy of the merciful God in whom we trust. I need not spend many words on the practical application of this. It is practical enough sometimes just to draw out and study God's truth; and if we meditate on it, it will enforce on us its own applications. Only let us seek to realise that we are saved only by being well-pleasing to God; and we are well-pleasing only if He can recognise in us the fruit and crown of all this long travailing, the satisfaction of all this immense effort of creation; it is the holiness of Christ.
H. Scott Holland, Logic and Life, p. 81.
References: Eph 1:10 .-Homilist, 3rd series, vol. x., p. 121. Eph 1:11 .-R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 86; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 215; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 30. Eph 1:11-14 .-Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 456.
Eph 1:11-15 The Holy Spirit the Seal of God's Heritage and the Earnest of our Inheritance.
I. In the early Church the access of the Spirit of God to a man was commonly associated with the mysterious gift of tongues, with the power of prophecy, or with other manifestations of a miraculous kind. It seems to be a law of the Divine action that the beginning of a new movement in the religious history of mankind should be signalised by supernatural wonders which bear emphatic testimony to the new forces that are revealing themselves in the spiritual order and illustrate their nature. These wonders gradually cease, but the loftier powers of which they are only the visible symbols remain. The miraculous manifestations of the Divine Spirit have passed away, but it was the promise of Christ that the Spirit should remain with us for ever.
II. That for the most part we are so indifferent to the presence of the Spirit of God is infinitely surprising. We repeat in another form the sin of insensibility of which the Jewish people were guilty when our Lord was visibly among them. The past was sacred to them, but they were so completely under its control that they failed to recognise the nobler disclosures of the righteousness and power and love of God to themselves. And is it not the same with us? We look back upon the days when the Son of God was teaching in the Temple and in the cornfields and on the hills of Galilee; and we feel in our hearts that those were the days in which heaven and earth met, and in which God was near to man. The presence of the Spirit, which Christ Himself declared was to be something greater than His own presence, was to bring clearer light and firmer strength and completer access into the kingdom of God, does not fill us with wonder, with hope, with exulting thankfulness.
III. Paul has spoken of us in ver. 11 as being God's heritage; in ver. 14 we are described as anticipating an inheritance for ourselves. Our hopes are infinite. If by His Spirit God dwells in us now, we shall dwell in God for ever; and His Spirit dwells in us that He may redeem us completely from all sin and infirmity and raise us to the power and perfection and blessedness of the Divine kingdom.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 109.
References: Eph 1:13 .-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 592; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 4; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 61.
Eph 1:13-14 I. The character of the inheritance. The teaching of the passage is that heaven is likest the selectest moments of devotion that a Christian has on earth. If you want to know most really and most truly what that "rest which remaineth for the people of God" is, think of what the fruits of God's working in your hearts have already been, and expand and glorify these into "an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection." Heaven is the perfecting of the life of the Spirit begun here, and the loftiest attainments of that life here are but the beginnings and infantile movements of immature beings.
II. We gather from the passage some thoughts with regard to the true grounds of certainty that we shall ultimately possess the fulness of the inheritance. The true ground for certainly lies in this: that you have the Spirit in your heart, operating its own likeness and moulding you, sealing you after its own stamp and image. This idea is a very grand and fruitful one. There are many grounds on which, as I think, this principle rests: that the present possession of this Holy Spirit is the true certainty of the full possession hereafter. (1) The very fact of such a relation between man and God is itself the great assurance of immortality and everlasting life. (2) The characteristics that are produced by this Holy Spirit's indwelling, both in their perfectness and their imperfection, are the great guarantee of the inheritance being ours. (3) The Holy Spirit in a man's heart makes him desire and believe in the inheritance.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, p. 42.
References: Eph 1:13 , Eph 1:14 .-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 358; vol. xxii., No. 1284; E. C. Hall, Sermons, 1st series, p. 238; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. i., p. 315; Ibid., vol. vii., p. 163; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 225; A. Maclaren, Sermons in Union Chapel, Manchester, p. 47. Eph 1:14 .-Ibid., A Year's Ministry, p. 233; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 202. Eph 1:15 .-H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 275.
Eph 1:15-17 The Illumination of the Spirit.
I. The Apostle's prayer raises the whole group of questions which are connected with the two great words "inspiration" and "revelation." These words represent two very different things. Revelations may come to men who are not inspired; and men may be inspired who are not entrusted with any new revelations of the Divine thought and will. The whole life of Christ was a revelation. His miracles were revelations of the power and pity of God. But all the men that saw Christ's miracles were not inspired, nor all the men who were touched by His goodness, or who trembled while listening to His menaces.
II. To the Apostles inspiration was given in a very remarkable measure. They were appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ to lay the foundations of the Christian Church; they had authority to teach all nations in His name; later ages were to learn His mind from their lips. Theirs was a position of unique responsibility, and their qualifications were unique, for in the Divine order the measures of human duty and the measures of strength conferred for the discharge of it are always equal. But in kind the inspiration of the Apostles was the same as that which Paul prayed might be granted to the Christians at Ephesus, the same as that which we ourselves may hope to receive from God. We should never be afraid to accept the infinite grace of God. In Luther's time men were afraid that the doctrine of justification by faith would corrupt the morals of the Church by relaxing the motives to righteousness. Luther preached the doctrine which many sagacious theologians regarded with dismay, and it ennobled and invigorated the morals of half Europe. A similar courage in accepting and asserting the inspiration possible to all Christians would not lessen, but confirm, the authority of prophets and psalmists, Evangelists and Apostles. When the spirit of wisdom and revelation is granted to us, the eyes of our heart, to use Paul's phrase in the next verse, are enlightened, our own eyes, and we see the glory of God. Apart from this illumination no true knowledge of God is possible to man.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on Ephesians, p. 128.
References: Eph 1:15-22 .-H.P.Hughes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 248. Eph 1:17 .-Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 331. Eph 1:17 , Eph 1:18 .-A. J. Parry, Phases of Truth, p. 58.
Eph 1:18 God's Hope in His Children.
The Apostle speaks of the hope of God in His children as of the hope of a Father; and what such a hope may include let us now proceed to inquire.
I. Foremost of all is the hope that the children will walk in fellowship with Himself, reciprocating His love, receiving and retaining His teaching, and drinking in His spirit. He hopes that we will never leave Him again, that we will always wait upon Him, that we will always respond to His will, and that we will always be aiming to be perfect as He is perfect.
II. Very closely connected with such feelings is the hope that the child will grow in every grace and in every power for good. He would not have us continue to be babes. He sets before us the example of the First-begotten, who grew in wisdom, and in stature, and in favour with God and man.
III. Once more, is it not a father's hope that his child may be in the family a brother to the rest, and in the world a man of usefulness? And so is the Divine hope in our calling. We are adopted as sons, that together we may form one large, loving, and united family, to bear each other's burdens and help each other to conquer the world and win eternal life.
IV. God's hope in calling us to be sons is that we should be witnesses for the truth, teachers of others, soldiers of Jesus Christ, followers of the Lamb through evil report and good report.
V. God hopes to have His children in His house with Him for ever. Two thoughts arise here: (1) the better we know God as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of glory, the better shall we understand His hope in making us sons and heirs; and (2) we shall always try to fulfil the hope He has in us.
J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 138.
God's Inheritance in the Saints.
I. God's inheritance in the saints is possession of the highest kind. Beings are better than things.
II. God's inheritance in the saints is His own original possession.
III. God has a second or double title to the possession of His inheritance. He has purchased it.
IV. Considered from the human and earthly side, the possession is very poor. God estimates His inheritance by His own standard. If God has a rich and glorious inheritance in the saints, then (1) He will claim it; (2) He will take care of it; (3) He will make use of it; (4) He must take pleasure in it; (5) He will not forsake it.
S. Martin, Rain upon the Mown Grass, p. 109.
Eph 1:18-19 Spiritual Enlightenment.
I. "What is the hope of His calling." This phrase should surely be taken in its simplest sense: "That ye may know the hopefulness of God's calling; what hope there is in it; how full of hope it is." (1) Consider who it is that calls. It is God, and God in the character of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, the God who gives grace and glory. (2) Consider who are called. All men such as they are. (3) The calling of God is hopeful (a) because it is on the one hand absolutely free, and on the other hand peremptorily sovereign and commanding; (b) because it is on the one hand earnest in the way of persuasion, and on the other hand effectual, as implying a Divine work of renewal in the will within; (c) because it is on the one hand righteous, and on the other holy; (d) because it is sure on His part and capable of being made sure on our part.
II. "What the riches of His glory and His inheritance in the saints:" its rich glory; its glorious richness. This expression "His inheritance in the saints" is remarkable. It is not the inheritance which they receive from Him; it is not the inheritance which they have in Him; it is the inheritance which He has in them.
III. "And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe." That is the third thing to be known. (1) The knowledge which Paul prays for is altogether Divine, coming from a Divine source, through a Divine agency, for a Divine end. (2) The highest point in this threefold knowledge of God is the centre, and that implies your being His saints, His holy ones. (3) The exceeding greatness of God's power is put forth in our exercising faith: it is to usward who believe. (4) The hopeful calling of God is to sinners without reserve.
Eph 1:18 ; Eph 2:7 Christ's Resurrection and Glory in Relation to the Hope of the Church.
I. The descent of the Son of God from His eternal majesty to the infirmities and sorrows and temptations of this mortal condition is so transcendent a revelation both of the love of God and the possible greatness and blessedness of man that we need not be surprised that to many profound Christian thinkers the Incarnation has seemed to constitute the whole of the Christian Gospel, but even the Atonement did not end the succession of wonders which began with the Incarnation. The Incarnation was wonderful; that it should have been possible for the Eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, to descend from the eternal splendours of Divine supremacy and to become man, is an infinite mystery. But that, having become man and retaining His humanity, it should have been possible for Him to reascend to those heights of authority and glory, is also an infinite mystery. This is the explanation of the emphasis and energy with which Paul dwells on the greatness of the Divine power as illustrated in the resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Christ. During His earthly life He was unequal to the great tasks of supreme authority, just as He was unequal during His childhood to the tasks of His public ministry. In His resurrection and ascension into heaven there came an extension, an expansion, an exaltation, of the powers of Christ's human nature, which corresponded with His transition from humiliation to the glory of the Father. "The working of the strength of" (God's) "might" rendered Him capable of a knowledge so immense, enriched Him with a wisdom so Divine, inspired Him with a force so wonderful, that Christ, the very Christ that was born at Bethlehem and was crucified on Calvary, became the real and effective Ruler of heaven and earth.
II. God will confer on us a greatness and a blessedness corresponding to the greatness and blessedness which He has conferred on Christ. No promises of glory, honour, and immortality can adequately represent the wonderful future of those who are to dwell for ever with God; but in the ascent of Christ from His earthly humiliation to supreme sovereignty, in the corresponding development of the intellectual and moral energies of His human nature, we see how immense is the augmentation of power and of joy to which we are destined.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 144.
Reference: Eph 1:19 , Eph 1:20 .-Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 254.
Eph 1:19-23 I. The Apostle desires that the Ephesian Christians may know what is "the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe." I can easily imagine that a person who has been wont to speak of the privileges of believers till he has brought himself to think of them as separated by their belief from the rest of human beings-I can easily imagine that such a person will exclaim triumphantly, "See, then, the clause determines the meaning of all that follows. Whatever glory the Apostle, or rather the Spirit of God, may unfold, these are the persons to whom He will unfold it." Even so. I rejoice to think it. And therefore let us consider who these persons were. They were a very small society, aliens from the synagogue, aliens from the Gentile temple, regarded with scorn by those whom they met in the market-place. They were obliged to live much within their own circle. It is to these persons that St. Paul speaks of a fellowship that was quite illimitable. The reward of their faith was that they could not separate themselves from any creature bearing the form of a man. To do so was not to believe in Christ. To believe in Him was to acknowledge One who represented mankind at the right hand of the Father.
II. Such a faith as this, carrying them so far above all appearances, contradicting the conclusions of their natural understandings, overcoming the temptations that most beset them, could not be attributed to anything less than a Divine operation on their spirits. The power which raises any man into the largeness and freedom of fellowship with God and with the universe is the power which exalted Christ to the right hand of the majesty on high.
III. The Resurrection and Ascension are held forth to us as the object of faith. He who wore a crown of thorns was proved to be the Prince of all the kings of the earth. He who had gone down into hell had triumphed over the principalities of hell, making a show of them openly. This St. Paul held to be the true faith of a Christian; hereby it was marked out as different from the faiths that had gone before it or that still struggled with it in the world.
IV. St. Paul, who had thrice suffered stripes; St. Paul, who had hardly escaped from the mob at Ephesus; St. Paul, who was in Nero's hands at Rome-St. Paul dares to tell these disciples of his that the powers of the world are put under Christ. The confidence with which the Apostles believed that the kingdoms of the world had in very deed been proved to be the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ explains the longing with which they looked forward to the final unveiling of Christ, their zeal to keep the longing alive in their disciples. They could not define the limits of His conquests, who had ascended on high that He might fill everything.
V. But what is the witness of our constitution in Christ? What is it that lives to prophesy of this ultimate victory? "He has given Him to be Head over all things to His Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." All the blessings which individual men have ever received from the Gospel of Jesus Christ can be traced directly to the belief, which our Communion Service expresses, that we dwell in Christ, and that Christ dwells in us; that we are very members incorporate in the body of Him that filleth all in all. Take away that faith, and you do not take away some grand mystical conception of Christianity: you take away all that has made it practical, all that has made it dear to the hearts of sinners and sufferers, all that binds together men of different races, classes, countries, ages.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 85.
References: Eph 1:19-23 .-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 534. Eph 1:20 , Eph 1:21 .-Homilist, 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 97. Eph 1:22 .-W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 237; S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Sermons, vol. iii., p. 237; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 89. Eph 1:22 , Eph 1:23 .-A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country, p. 32; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 15th series, p. 229. Eph 1:23 .-J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 317; L. Davies, Ibid., vol. xxxv., p. 353; Congregationalist, 1872, p. 454. Eph 2:1 .-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 127; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 65. Eph 2:1-3 .-R. Elder, Family Treasury, Jan., 1878. Eph 2:2 .-E. Paxton Hood, Preacher's Lantern, vol. ii., p. 435. Eph 2:3 .-J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 120; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 20. Eph 2:3-5 .-F. W. Robertson, The Human Race, p. 163. Eph 2:4 .-J. B. Brown, Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 392. Eph 2:4 , Eph 2:5 .-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 808.
1. Paul, an apostle. As the same form of salutation, or at least very little varied, is found in all the Epistles, it would be superfluous to repeat here the observations which we have formerly made. He calls himself “an apostle of Jesus Christ;” for all to whom has been given the ministry of reconciliation are his ambassadors. The word Apostle, indeed, carries something more; for it is not every minister of the gospel, as we shall afterwards see, (Eph 4:11,) that can be called an apostle. But this subject has been explained more fully in my remarks on the Epistle to the Galatians. (See Calvin on “Gal 1:1 ”)
He adds, by the will of God; for “no man ought to take this honor unto himself,” (Heb 5:4,) but every man ought to wait for the calling of God, which alone makes lawful ministers. He thus meets the jeers of wicked men by holding out the authority of God, and removes every occasion of inconsiderate strife.
To all the saints. He gives the name of saints to those whom he afterwards denominates faithful in Christ Jesus. No man, therefore, is a believer who is not also a saint; and, on the other hand, no man is a saint who is not a believer. Most of the Greek copies want the word all; but I was unwilling to strike it out, because it must, at all events, be understood.
3. Blessed (108) be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The lofty terms in which he extolls the grace of God toward the Ephesians, are intended to rouse their hearts to gratitude, to set them all on flame, to fill them even to overflowing with this thought. They who perceive in themselves discoveries of the Divine goodness, so full and absolutely perfect, and who make them the subject of earnest meditation, will never embrace new doctrines, by which the very grace which they feel so powerfully in themselves is thrown into the shade. The design of the apostle, therefore, in asserting the riches of divine grace toward the Ephesians, was to protect them against having their faith shaken by the false apostles, as if their calling were doubtful, or salvation were to be sought in some other way. He shews, at the same time, that the full certainty of future happiness rests on the revelation of his love to us in Christ, which God makes in the gospel. But to confirm the matter more fully, he rises to the first cause, to the fountain, — the eternal election of God, by which, ere we are born, (Rom 9:11,) we are adopted as sons. This makes it evident that their salvation was accomplished, not by any accidental or unlooked-for occurrence, but by the eternal and unchangeable decree of God.
The word bless is here used in more than one sense, as referring to God, and as referring to men. I find in Scripture four different significations of this word.1. We are said to bless God when we offer praise to him for his goodness.2. God is said to bless us, when he crowns our undertakings with success, and, in the exercise of his goodness, bestows upon us happiness and prosperity; and the reason is, that our enjoyments depend entirely upon his pleasure. Our attention is here called to the singular efficacy which dwells in the very word of God, and which Paul expresses in beautiful language.3. Men bless each other by prayer.4. The priest’s blessing is not simply a prayer, but is likewise a testimony and pledge of the Divine blessing; for the priests received a commission to bless in the name of the Lord. Paul therefore blesses God, because he hath blessed us, that is, hath enriched us with all blessing and grace.
With all spiritual blessings. I have no objection to Chrysostom’s remark, that the word spiritual conveys an implied contrast between the blessing of Moses and of Christ. The law had its blessings; but in Christ only is perfection found, because he gives us a perfect revelation of the kingdom of God, which leads us directly to heaven. When the body itself is presented to us, figures are no longer needed.
In heavenly. Whether we understand the meaning to be, in heavenly Places, or in heavenly Benefits, is of little consequence. All that was intended to be expressed is the superiority of that grace which we receive through Christ. The happiness which it bestows is not in this world, but in heaven and everlasting life. In the Christian religion, indeed, as we are elsewhere taught, (1. i 4:8,) is contained the “promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come;” but its aim is spiritual happiness, for the kingdom of Christ is spiritual. A contrast is drawn between Christ and all the Jewish emblems, by which the blessing under the law was conveyed; for where Christ is, all those things are superfluous.
(108) “As to the accumulation of cognate terms in εὐλογητὸς εὐλογήσας and εὐλογία, it may be observed, that in composition such was by the ancients, especially the early writers, rather sought after as a beauty than avoided as a blemish.” — Bloomfield.
4. According as he hath chosen us. The foundation and first cause, both of our calling and of all the benefits which we receive from God, is here declared to be his eternal election. If the reason is asked, why God has called us to enjoy the gospel, why he daily bestows upon us so many blessings, why he opens to us the gate of heaven, — the answer will be constantly found in this principle, that he hath chosen us before the foundation of the world. The very time when the election took place proves it to be free; for what could we have deserved, or what merit did we possess, before the world was made? How childish is the attempt to meet this argument by the following sophism! “We were chosen because we were worthy, and because God foresaw that we would be worthy.” We were all lost in Adam; and therefore, had not God, through his own election, rescued us from perishing, there was nothing to be foreseen. The same argument is used in the Epistle to the Romans, where, speaking of Jacob and Esau, he says,
“For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.” (Rom 9:11.)
But though they had not yet acted, might a sophist of the Sorbonne reply, God foresaw that they would act. This objection has no force when applied to the depraved natures of men, in whom nothing can be seen but materials for destruction.
In Christ. This is the second proof that the election is free; for if we are chosen in Christ, it is not of ourselves. It is not from a perception of anything that we deserve, but because our heavenly Father has introduced us, through the privilege of adoption, into the body of Christ. In short, the name of Christ excludes all merit, and everything which men have of their own; for when he says that we arechosen in Christ, it follows that in ourselves we are unworthy.
That we should be holy. This is the immediate, but not the chief design; for there is no absurdity in supposing that the same thing may gain two objects. The design of building is, that there should be a house. This is the immediate design, but the convenience of dwelling in it is the ultimate design. It was necessary to mention this in passing; for we shall immediately find that Paul mentions another design, the glory of God. But there is no contradiction here; for the glory of God is the highest end, to which our sanctification is subordinate.
This leads us to conclude, that holiness, purity, and every excellence that is found among men, are the fruit of election; so that once more Paul expressly puts aside every consideration of merit. If God had foreseen in us anything worthy of election, it would have been stated in language the very opposite of what is here employed, and which plainly means that all our holiness and purity of life flow from the election of God. How comes it then that some men are religious, and live in the fear of God, while others give themselves up without reserve to all manner of wickedness? If Paul may be believed, the only reason is, that the latter retain their natural disposition, and the former have been chosen to holiness. The cause, certainly, is not later than the effect. Election, therefore, does not depend on the righteousness of works, of which Paul here declares that it is the cause.
We learn also from these words, that election gives no occasion to licentiousness, or to the blasphemy of wicked men who say, “Let us live in any manner we please; for, if we have been elected, we cannot perish.” Paul tells them plainly, that they have no right to separate holiness of life from the grace of election; for
“whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified.” (Rom 8:30.)
The inference, too, which the Catharists, Celestines, and Donatists drew from these words, that we may attain perfection in this life, is without foundation. This is the goal to which the whole course of our life must be directed, and we shall not reach it till we have finished our course. Where are the men who dread and avoid the doctrine of predestination as an inextricable labyrinth, who believe it to be useless and almost dangerous? No doctrine is more useful, provided it be handled in the proper and cautious manner, of which Paul gives us an example, when he presents it as an illustration of the infinite goodness of God, and employs it as an excitement to gratitude. This is the true fountain from which we must draw our knowledge of the divine mercy. If men should evade every other argument, election shuts their mouth, so that they dare not and cannot claim anything for themselves. But let us remember the purpose for which Paul reasons about predestination, lest, by reasoning with any other view, we fall into dangerous errors.
Before him it love. Holiness before God (κατενώπιον αὐτοῦ) is that of a pure conscience; for God is not deceived, as men are, by outward pretense, but looks to faith, or, which means the same thing, the truth of the heart. If we view the word love as applied to God, the meaning will be, that the only reason why he chose us, was his love to men. But I prefer connecting it with the latter part of the verse, as denoting that the perfection of believers consists in love; not that God requires love alone, but that it is an evidence of the fear of God, and of obedience to the whole law.
5. Who hath predestinated us. What follows is intended still further to heighten the commendation of divine grace. The reason why Paul inculcated so earnestly on the Ephesians the doctrines of free adoption through Christ, and of the eternal election which preceded it, has been already considered. But as the mercy of God is nowhere acknowledged in more elevated language, this passage will deserve our careful attention. Three causes of our salvation are here mentioned, and a fourth is shortly afterwards added. The efficient cause is the good pleasure of the will of God, the material cause is, Jesus Christ, and the final cause is,the praise of the glory of his grace. Let us now see what he says respecting each.
To the first belongs the whole of the following statement God hath predestinated us in himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, unto the adoption of sons, and hath made us accepted by his grace. In the word predestinate we must again attend to the order. We were not then in existence, and therefore there was no merit of ours. The cause of our salvation did not proceed from us, but from God alone. Yet Paul, not satisfied with these statements, adds in himself. The Greek phrase is, εἰς αὑτὸν, and has the same meaning with ἐν αὑτῷ. By this he means that God did not seek a cause out of himself, but predestinated us, because such was his will.
But this is made still more clear by what follows, according to the good pleasure of his will. The word will was enough, for Paul very frequently contrasts it with all outward causes by which men are apt to imagine that the mind of God is influenced. But that no doubt may remain, he employs the word good pleasure, which expressly sets aside all merit. In adopting us, therefore, God does not inquire what we are, and is not reconciled to us by any personal worth. His single motive is the eternal good pleasure, by which he predestinated us. (109) Why, then, are the sophists not ashamed to mingle with them other considerations, when Paul so strongly forbids us to look at anything else than the good pleasure of God?
Lest anything should still be wanting, he adds, ἐχαρίτωσεν ἐν χάριτι (110) This intimates, that, in the freest manner, and on no mercenary grounds, does God bestow upon us his love and favor, just as, when we were not yet born, and when he was prompted by nothing but his own will, he fixed upon us his choice. (111)
The material cause both of eternal election, and of the love which is now revealed, is Christ, the Beloved. This name is given, to remind us that by him the love of God is communicated to us. Thus he is the well-beloved, in order that we may be reconciled by him. The highest and last end is immediately added, the glorious praise of such abundant grace. Every man, therefore, who hides this glory, is endeavoring to overturn the everlasting purpose of God. Such is the doctrine of the sophists, which entirely overturns the doctrine of Christ, lest the whole glory of our salvation should be ascribed undividedly to God alone.
(109) “This could not have been obtained by our own strength, had he not by his eternal decree, adopted us into the right and privilege of children, and that by Jesus Christ, to whom he hath so closely united us by faith and love, that we have become his members, and are one with him, and obtain (by communication with him) what was not due to our own merits.” — Erasmus.
(110) “Il nous a rendu agreables.” “He hath made us acceptable.”
(111) “The original word, ἐχαρίτωσεν, ‘he hath made us accepted,’ is not used by any profane authors; however, the sense of it is plain. It is used in the angel’s salutation to the Virgin Mary, ‘Hail, thou that art highly favored;’ and that the word there is rightly rendered, is plain from the reason which the angel himself gives, ‘Thou hast found favor with God.’ (Luk 1:28) So that the plain meaning of the word, and the true rendering of it in the place before us, is, not as we have translated it, ‘made us accepted,’ but ‘highly favored us.’” — Chandler.
7. In whom we have redemption. The apostle is still illustrating the material cause, — the manner in which we are reconciled to God through Christ. By his death he has restored us to favor with the Father; and therefore we ought always to direct our minds to the blood of Christ, as the means by which we obtain divine grace. After mentioning that, through the blood of Christ, we obtain redemption, he immediately styles it the forgiveness of sins, — to intimate that we are redeemed, because our sins are not imputed to us. Hence it follows, that we obtain by free grace that righteousness by which we are accepted of God, and freed from the chains of the devil and of death. The close connection which is here preserved, between our redemption itself and the manner in which it is obtained, deserves our notice; for, so long as we remain exposed to the judgment of God, we are bound by miserable chains, and therefore our exemption from guilt, becomes an invaluable freedom.
According to the riches of his grace. He now returns to the efficient cause, — the largeness of the divine kindness, which has given Christ to us as our Redeemer. Riches, and the corresponding word overflow, in the following verse, are intended to give us large views of divine grace. The apostle feels himself unable to celebrate, in a proper manner, the goodness of God, and desires that the contemplation of it would occupy the minds of men till they are entirely lost in admiration. How desirable is it that men were deeply impressed with “the riches of that grace” which is here commended! No place would any longer be found for pretended satisfactions, or for those trifles by which the world vainly imagines that it can redeem itself; as if the blood of Christ, when unsupported by additional aid, had lost all its efficacy. (112)
(112) “Comme si le sang de Christ sechoit et perdoit sa vigueur.” “As if the blood of Christ were dried up, and lost its force.”
8. In all wisdom. He now comes to the formal cause, the preaching of the gospel, by which the goodness of God overflows upon us. (113) It is through faith that we receive Christ, by whom we come to God, and by whom we enjoy the privilege of adoption. Paul gives to the gospel the magnificent appellations of wisdom and prudence, for the purpose of leading the Ephesians to despise all contrary doctrines. The false apostles insinuated themselves, under the pretense of imparting views more elevated than the elementary instructions which Paul conveyed. And the devil, in order to undermine our faith, labors, as far as he can, to disparage the gospel. Paul, on the other hand, builds up the authority of the gospel, that believers may rest upon it with unshaken confidence. All wisdom means — full or perfect wisdom.
(113) ἧς ἐπερίσσευσεν — “ἧς for ἧ, (by a common Grecism, in which the relative is attracted by the antecedent,) if, at least, we take ἐπερίσσευσεν, with many modern expositors, in a neuter sense, ‘in which he hath renewed his abundant goodness to us;’ but if, with the ancient and some modern ones, in an active sense, ‘to make to abound,’ (as in 2. o 4:15,) the ἧς will be for ἥν, meaning, ‘which he has bountifully bestowed upon us.'“ — Bloomfield.
9. Having made known to us the mystery of his will. Some were alarmed at the novelty of his doctrine. With a view to such persons, he very properly denominates it a mystery of the divine will, and yet a mystery which God has now been pleased to reveal. As he formerly ascribed their election, so he now ascribes their calling, to the good pleasure of God. The Ephesians are thus led to consider that Christ has been made known, and the gospel preached to them, not because they deserved any such thing, but because it pleased God.
Which he hath purposed in himself. All is wisely and properly arranged. What can be more just than that his purposes, with which men are unacquainted, should be known to God alone, so long as he is pleased to conceal them, — or, again, that it should be in his own will and power to fix the time when they shall be communicated to men? The decree to adopt the Gentiles is declared to have been till now hidden in the mind of God, but so hidden, that God reserved it in his own power until the time of the revelation. Does any one now complain of it as a new and unprecedented occurrence, that those who were formerly “without God in the world,” (Eph 2:12,) should be received into the church? Will he have the hardihood to deny that the knowledge of God is greater than that of men?
10. That in the dispensation of the fullness of times. That no man may inquire, why one time rather than another was selected, the apostle anticipates such curiosity, by calling the appointed period the fullness of times, the fit and proper season, as he also did in a former epistle. (Gal 4:4) Let human presumption restrain itself, and, in judging of the succession of events, let it bow to the providence of God. The same lesson is taught by the word dispensation, for by the judgment of God the lawful administration of all events is regulated.
That he might gather together in one. In the old translation it is rendered ( instaurare ) restore; to which Erasmus has added ( summatim ) comprehensively. I have chosen to abide closely by the meaning of the Greek word, ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι, (114) because it is more agreeable to the context. The meaning appears to me to be, that out of Christ all things were disordered, and that through him they have been restored to order. And truly, out of Christ, what can we perceive in the world but mere ruins? We are alienated from God by sin, and how can we but present a broken and shattered aspect? The proper condition of creatures is to keep close to God. Such a gathering together (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις) as might bring us back to regular order, the apostle tells us, has been made in Christ. Formed into one body, we are united to God, and closely connected with each other. Without Christ, on the other hand, the whole world is a shapeless chaos and frightful confusion. We are brought into actual unity by Christ alone.
But why are heavenly beings included in the number? The angels were never separated from God, and cannot be said to have been scattered. Some explain it in this manner. Angels are said to be gathered together, because men have become members of the same society, are admitted equally with them to fellowship with God, and enjoy happiness in common with them by means of this blessed unity. The mode of expression is supposed to resemble one frequently used, when we speak of a whole building as repaired, many parts of which were ruinous or decayed, though some parts remained entire.
This is no doubt true; but what hinders us from saying that the angels also have been gathered together? Not that they were ever scattered, but their attachment to the service of God is now perfect, and their state is eternal. What comparison is there between a creature and the Creator, without the interposition of a Mediator? So far as they are creatures, had it not been for the benefit which they derived from Christ, they would have been liable to change and to sin, and consequently their happiness would not have been eternal. Who then will deny that both angels and men have been brought back to a fixed order by the grace of Christ? Men had been lost, and angels were not beyond the reach of danger. By gathering both into his own body, Christ hath united them to God the Father, and established actual harmony between heaven and earth.
(114) ‘᾿Ανακεφαλαιώσασθαι “I have compared this word with συγκεφαλαιοῦσθαι in the writings of Xenophon, so as to bring out this sense, that ‘to Christ, as the Head, all things are subject.’ I am confirmed in this opinion by Chrysostom, who explains it in this manner: μίαν κεφαλὴν ἅπασιν ἐπέθηκε τὸ κατὰ σάρκα Χριστόν, ‘he hath given to all one head, Christ according to the flesh.’ Polybius. also uses συγκεφαλαιοῦσθαι, instead of ἀνακεφαλαιοῦσθαι. So that it is evident that those two words are employed indiscriminately.” — Raphelius.
11. Through whom also we have obtained an inheritance. Hitherto he has spoken generally of all the elect; he now begins to take notice of separate classes. When he says, WE have obtained, he speaks of himself and of the Jews, or, perhaps more correctly, of all who were the first fruits of Christianity; and afterwards he comes to the Ephesians. It tended not a little to confirm the faith of the Ephesian converts, that he associated them with himself and the other believers, who might be said to be the first-born in the church. As if he had said, “The condition of all godly persons is the same with yours; for we who were first called by God owe our acceptance to his eternal election.” Thus, he shews, that, from first to last, all have obtained salvation by free grace, because they have been freely adopted according to eternal election.
Who worketh all things. The circumlocution employed in describing the Supreme Being deserves attention. He speaks of Him as the sole agent, and as doing everything according to His own will, so as to leave nothing to be done by man. In no respect, therefore, are men admitted to share in this praise, as if they brought anything of their own. God looks at nothing out of himself to move him to elect them, forthe counsel of his own will is the only and actual cause of their election. This may enable us to refute the error, or rather the madness, of those who, whenever they are unable to discover the reason of God’s works, exclaim loudly against his design.
12. That we should be to the praise of his glory. Here again he mentions the final cause of salvation; for we must eventually become illustrations of the glory of God, if we are nothing but vessels of his mercy. The word glory, by way of eminence, (κατ ᾿ ἐξοχὴν) denotes, in a peculiar manner, that which shines in the goodness of God; for there is nothing that is more peculiarly his own, or in which he desires more to be glorified, than goodness.
13. In whom ye also. He associates the Ephesians with himself, and with the rest of those who were the first fruits; for he says that they, in like manner, trusted in Christ. His object is, to shew that both had the same faith; and therefore we must supply the word trusted from the twelfth verse. He afterwards states that they were brought to that hope by the preaching of the gospel.
Two epithets are here applied to the gospel, — the word of truth, and the gospel of your salvation. Both deserve our careful attention. Nothing is more earnestly attempted by Satan than to lead us either to doubt or to despise the gospel. Paul therefore furnishes us with two shields, by which we may repel both temptations. In opposition to every doubt, let us learn to bring forward this testimony, that the gospel is not only certain truth, which cannot deceive, but is, by way of eminence, (κατ ᾿ ἐξοχὴν,) the word of truth, as if, strictly speaking, there were no truth but itself. If the temptation be to contempt or dislike of the gospel, let us remember that its power and efficacy have been manifested in bringing to us salvation. The apostle had formerly declared that
“it is the power of God to salvation to every one that believeth,” (Rom 1:16;)
but here he expresses more, for he reminds the Ephesians that, having been made partakers of salvation, they had learned this by their own experience. Unhappy they who weary themselves, as the world generally does, in wandering through many winding paths, neglecting the gospel, and pleasing themselves with wild romances, —
“ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,”
(2. i 3:7)
or to find life! But happy they who have embraced the gospel, and whose attachment to it is steadfast; for this, beyond all doubt, is truth and life.
In whom also, after that ye believed. Having maintained that the gospel is certain, he now comes to the proof. And what higher surety can be found than the Holy Spirit? “Having denominated the gospel the word of truth, I will not prove it by the authority of men; for you have the testimony of the Spirit of God himself, who seals the truth of it in your hearts.” This elegant comparison is taken from Seals, which among men have the effect of removing doubt. Seals give validity both to charters and to testaments; anciently, they were the principal means by which the writer of a letter could be known; and, in short, a seal distinguishes what is true and certain, from what is false and spurious. This office the apostle ascribes to the Holy Spirit, not only here, but in another part of this Epistle, (Eph 4:30,) and in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, (2. o 1:22.) Our minds never become so firmly established in the truth of God as to resist all the temptations of Satan, until we have been confirmed in it by the Holy Spirit. The true conviction which believers have of the word of God, of their own salvation, and of religion in general, does not spring from the judgment of the flesh, or from human and philosophical arguments, but from the sealing of the Spirit, who imparts to their consciences such certainty as to remove all doubt. The foundation of faith would be frail and unsteady, if it rested on human wisdom; and therefore, as preaching is the instrument of faith, so the Holy Spirit makes preaching efficacious.
But is it not the faith itself which is here said to be sealed by the Holy Spirit? If so, faith goes before the sealing. I answer, there are two operations of the Spirit in faith, corresponding to the two parts of which faith consists, as it enlightens, and as it establishes the mind. The commencement of faith is knowledge: the completion of it is a firm and steady conviction, which admits of no opposing doubt. Both, I have said, are the work of the Spirit. No wonder, then, if Paul should declare that the Ephesians, who received by faith the truth of the gospel, were confirmed in that faith by the seal of the Holy Spirit.
With that Holy Spirit of promise. This title is derived from the effect produced; for to him we owe it that the promise of salvation is not made to us in vain. As God promises in his word, “that he will be to us a Father,” (2. o 6:18,) so he gives to us the evidence of having adopted us by the Holy Spirit.
14. Which is the earnest (115) of our inheritance. This phrase is twice used by Paul in another Epistle. (2. o 1:22.) The metaphor is taken from bargains, in which, when a pledge has been given and accepted, the whole is confirmed, and no room is left for a change of mind. Thus, when we have received the Spirit of God, his promises are confirmed to us, and no dread is felt that they will be revoked. In themselves, indeed, the promises of God are not weak; but, until we are supported by the testimony of the Spirit, we never rest upon them with unshaken confidence. The Spirit, then, is the earnest of our inheritance of eternal life, until the redemption, that is, until the day of complete redemption is arrived. So long as we are in this world, our warfare is sustained by hope, and therefore this earnest is necessary; but when the possession itself shall have been obtained, the necessity and use of the earnest will then cease.
The significance of a pledge lasts no longer than till both parties have fulfilled the bargain; and, accordingly, he afterwards adds, ye are sealed to the day of redemption, (Eph 4:30,) which means the day of judgment. Though we are now redeemed by the blood of Christ, the fruit of that redemption does not yet appear; for “every creature groaneth, desiring to be delivered from the bondage of corruption. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body;” for we have not yet obtained it, but by hope. (Rom 8:21.) But we shall obtain it in reality, when Christ shall appear to judgment. Such is the meaning of the word redemption in the passage now quoted from the Epistle to the Romans, and in a saying of our Lord,
“Look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.”
(Luk 21:28.)
Περιποίησις, which we translate the possession obtained, is not the kingdom of heaven, or a blessed immortality, but the Church itself. This is added for their consolation, that they might not think it hard to cherish their hope till the day of Christ’s coming, or be displeased that they have not yet obtained the promised inheritance; for such is the common lot of the whole Church.
To the praise of his glory. The word praise, as in the twelfth verse, Eph 1:12. signifies “making known.” (116) The glory of God may sometimes be concealed, or imperfectly exhibited. But in the Ephesians God had given proofs of his goodness, that his glory might be celebrated and openly proclaimed. Those persons, therefore, who slighted the calling of the Ephesians, might be charged with envying and slighting the glory of God.
The frequent mention of the glory of God ought not to be regarded as superfluous, for what is infinite cannot be too strongly expressed. This is particularly true in commendations of the Divine mercy, for which every godly person will always feel himself unable to find adequate language. He will be more ready to utter, than other men will be to hear, the expression of praise; for the eloquence both of men and angels, after being strained to the utmost, falls immeasurably below the vastness of this subject. We may likewise observe, that there is not a more effectual method of shutting the mouths of wicked men, than by shewing that our views tend to illustrate, and theirs to obscure, the glory of God.
(115) “The original word ἀρ᾿ῥαβών, seems properly to denote the first part of the price that is paid in any contract, as an earnest and security of the remainder, and which, therefore, is not taken back, but kept till the residue is paid to complete the whole sum. And thus it differs from a pledge, which is somewhat given for the security of a contract, but redeemed and restored, when the contract is completed; but it must be owned that the word is used to denote both an earnest and a pledge, and in either sense it is very properly applied to the Holy Spirit of promise.” — Chandler.
(116) “Louange yci se prend comme ci devant pour la publication et manifestation.” “Here, as formerly, ‘praise’ denotes proclamation and manifestation.”
15. Wherefore I also. This thanksgiving was not simply an expression of his ardent love to the Ephesians. He congratulated them before God, that the opinion which he had formed respecting them was highly favorable. Observe here, that under faith and love Paul includes generally the whole excellence of Christian character. He uses the expression, faith in the Lord Jesus, (117) because Christ is the aim and object of faith. Love ought to embrace all men, but here the saints are particularly mentioned; because love, when properly regulated, begins with them, and is afterwards extended to all others. If our love must have a view to God, the nearer any man approaches to God, the stronger unquestionably must be his claims to our love.
(117) “‘Having heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus.’ It is wrong to argue from this expression, with Olshausen and De Wette, that the apostle had no personal knowledge of the persons whom he addressed. This was an early surmise, for it is referred to by Theodoret. Some, says he, have supposed that the apostle wrote to the Ephesians, ὡς μηδέπω θεασάμενος αὐτοὺς, (as having never seen them.) But some years had elapsed since the apostle had visited Ephesus, and seen the Ephesian Church; and might he not refer to reports of their Christian steadfastness which had reached him? Nay, his use of the word may signify that such intelligence had been repeatedly brought to him.” — Eadie.
16. Making mention of you. To thanksgiving, as his custom is, he adds prayer, in order to excite them to additional progress. It was necessary that the Ephesians should understand that they had entered upon the proper course. But it was equally necessary that they should not turn aside to any new scheme of doctrine, or become indifferent about proceeding farther; for nothing is more dangerous than to be satisfied with that measure of spiritual benefits which has been already obtained. Whatever, then, may be the height of our attainments, let them be always accompanied by the desire of something higher.
17. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. But what does Paul wish for the Ephesians? The spirit of wisdom, and the eyes of their understanding being enlightened. And did they not possess these? Yes; but at the same time they needed increase, that, being endowed with a larger measure of the Spirit, and being more and more enlightened, they might more clearly and fully hold their present views. The knowledge of the godly is never so pure, but that some dimness or obscurity hangs over their spiritual vision. But let us examine the words in detail.
The God of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Son of God became man in such a manner, that God was his God as well as ours.
“I ascend,” says he, “to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” (Joh 20:17)
And the reason why he is our God, is, that he is the God of Christ, whose members we are. Let us remember, however, that this relates to his human nature; so that his subjection takes nothing away from his eternal godhead.
The Father of glory. This title springs from the former; for God’s glory, as a Father, consists in subjecting his Son to our condition, that, through him, he might be our God. The Father of glory is a well-known Hebrew idiom for The glorious Father. There is a mode of pointing and reading this passage, which I do not disapprove, and which connects the two clauses in this manner: That God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, may give to you.
The Spirit of wisdom and revelation is here put, by a figure of speech, (metonymy,) for the grace which the Lord bestows upon us by his own Spirit. But let it be observed, that the gifts of the Spirit are not the gifts of nature. Till the Lord opens them, the eyes of our heart are blind. Till the Spirit has become our instructor, all that we know is folly and ignorance. Till the Spirit of God has made it known to us by a secret revelation, the knowledge of our Divine calling exceeds the capacity of our own minds.
In the knowledge of him. This might also be read, In the knowledge of himself. Both renderings agree well with the context, for he that knows the Son knows also the Father; but I prefer the former as more natively suggested by the Greek pronoun, ἐν ἐπιγνώσει αὐτοῦ
18. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. The eyes of your heart is the rendering of the Vulgate, which is supported by some Greek manuscripts. The difference is immaterial, for the Hebrews frequently employ it to denote the rational powers of the soul, though more strictly, being the seat of the affections, it means the will or desire; but I have preferred the ordinary translation.
And what the riches. A comparison, suggested by its excellence, reminds us how unfit we are to receive this elevated knowledge; for the power of God is no small matter. This great power, he tells us, had been exerted, and in a very extraordinary manner, towards the Ephesians, who were thus laid under constant obligations to follow his calling. By thus extolling the grace of God toward themselves, he intended to check every tendency to despise or dislike the duties of the Christian life. But the splendid encomiums which he pronounces on faith convey to us also this instruction, that it is so admirable a work and gift of God, that no language can do justice to its excellence. Paul is not in the habit of throwing out hyperboles without discrimination; but when he comes to treat of a matter which lies so far beyond this world as faith does, he raises our minds to the admiration of heavenly power.
19. According to the working. Some consider this clause as referring solely to the word believe, which comes immediately before it; but I rather view it as an additional statement, tending to heighten the greatness of the power, as a demonstration, or, if you prefer it, an instance and evidence of the efficacy of the power. The repetition of the word power, (δυνάμεως) has the appearance of being superfluous; but in the former case it is restricted to one class, — in the next, it has a general application. Paul, we find, never thinks that he can say enough in his descriptions of the Christian calling. And certainly the power of God is wonderfully displayed, when we are brought from death to life, and when, from being the children of hell, we become the children of God and heirs of eternal life.
Foolish men imagine that this language is absurdly hyperbolical; but godly persons, who are engaged in daily struggles with inward corruption, have no difficulty in perceiving that not a word is here used beyond what is perfectly just. As the importance of the subject cannot be too strongly expressed, so our unbelief and ingratitude led Paul to employ this glowing language. We never form adequate conceptions of the treasure revealed to us in the gospel; or, if we do, we cannot persuade ourselves that it is possible for us to do so, because we perceive nothing in us that corresponds to it, but everything the reverse. Paul’s object, therefore, was not only to impress the Ephesians with a deep sense of the value of Divine grace, but also to give them exalted views of the glory of Christ’s kingdom. That they might not be cast down by a view of their own unworthiness, he exhorts them to consider the power of God; as if he had said, that their regeneration was no ordinary work of God, but was an astonishing exhibition of his power.
According to the efficacy of the power of his strength. There are three words here, on which we may make a passing remark. We may view strength as the root, — power as the tree, — and efficacy as the fruit, or the stretching out of the Divine arm which terminates in action.
20. Which he wrought in Christ. The Greek verb isἐνέργησεν, from which ἐνέργεια is derived. It might run thus, According to the efficacy which he effected. But the translation which I have given conveys the same meaning, and is less harsh.
With the greatest propriety does he enjoin us to contemplate this power in Christ; for in us it is hitherto concealed. “My strength,” says he, “is made perfect in weakness.” (2. o 12:9.) In what do we excel the children of the world but in this, that our condition appears to be somewhat worse than theirs? Though sin does not reign, it continues to dwell in us, and death is still strong. Our blessedness, which lies in hope, is not perceived by the world. The power of the Spirit is a thing unknown to flesh and blood. A thousand distresses, to which we are daily liable, render us more despised than other men.
Christ alone, therefore, is the mirror in which we can contemplate that which the weakness of the cross hinders from being clearly seen in ourselves. When our minds rise to a confident anticipation of righteousness, salvation, and glory, let us learn to turn them to Christ. We still lie under the power of death; but he, raised from the dead by heavenly power, has the dominion of life. We labor under the bondage of sin, and, surrounded by endless vexations, are engaged in a hard warfare, (1. i 1:18;) but he, sitting at the right hand of the Father, exercises the highest government in heaven and earth, and triumphs gloriously over the enemies whom he has subdued and vanquished. We lie here mean and despised; but to him has been “given a name” (Phi 2:9,) which angels and men regard with reverence, and devils and wicked men with dread. We are pressed down here by the scantiness of all our comforts: but he has been appointed by the Father to be the sole dispenser of all blessings. For these reasons, we shall find our advantage in directing our views to Christ, that in him, as in a mirror, we may see the glorious treasures of Divine grace, and the unmeasurable greatness of that power, which has not yet been manifested in ourselves.
And set him at his own right hand. This passage shews plainly, if any one does, what is meant by the right hand of God. It does not mean any particular place, but the power which the Father has bestowed on Christ, that he may administer in his name the government of heaven and earth. It is idle, therefore, to inquire why Stephen saw him standing, (Act 7:55,) while Paul describes him as sitting at God’s right hand. The expression does not refer to any bodily posture, but denotes the highest royal power with which Christ has been invested. This is intimated by what immediately follows, far above all principality and power: for the whole of this description is added for the purpose of explaining what is meant bythe right hand.
God the Father is said to have raised Christ to “his right hand,” because he has made him to share in his government, because by him he exerts all his power; the metaphor being borrowed from earthly princes, who confer the honor of sitting along with themselves on those whom they have clothed with the highest authority. As the right hand of God fills heaven and earth, it follows that the kingdom and power of Christ are equally extensive. It is in vain, therefore, to attempt to prove that, because Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, he dwells in heaven alone. His human nature, it is true, resides in heaven, and not in earth; but that argument is foreign to the purpose. The expression which follows, in heavenly places, does not at all imply that the right hand of God is confined to heaven, but directs us to contemplate the heavenly glory amidst which our Lord Jesus dwells, the blessed immortality which he enjoys, and the dominion over angels to which he has been exalted.
21. Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion. All these names, there can be no doubt, are applied to angels, who are so denominated, because, by means of them, God exercises his power, and might, and dominion. He permits them to share, as far as is competent to creatures, what belongs to himself, and even gives to them his own name; for we find that they are called אלהים, (elohim,) gods. From the diversity of names we conclude that there are various orders of angels; but to attempt to settle these with exactness, to fix their number, or determine their ranks, would not merely discover foolish curiosity, but would be rash, wicked, and dangerous.
But why did he not simply call them Angels? I answer, it was to convey exalted views of the glory of Christ that Paul employed those lofty titles. As if he had said, “There is nothing so elevated or excellent, by whatever name it may be named, that is not subject to the majesty of Christ.” There was an ancient superstition, prevalent both among Jews and Gentiles, falsely attributing to angels many things, in order to draw away their minds from God himself, and from the true Mediator. Paul constantly labors to prevent this imaginary lustre of angels from dazzling the eyes of men, or obscuring the brightness of Christ; and yet his utmost exertions could not prevent “the wiles of the devil”(Eph 6:11) from succeeding in this matter. Thus we see how the world, through a superstitious dread of angels, departed from Christ. It was indeed the unavoidable consequence of the false opinions entertained respecting angels, that the pure knowledge of Christ disappeared.
Above every name that is named. Name is here taken for largeness, or excellence; and to be named means to enjoy celebrity and praise. The age that is to come is expressly mentioned, to point out that the exalted rank of Christ is not temporal, but eternal; and that it is not limited to this world, but shines illustriously in the kingdom of God. For this reason, too, Isaiah calls him, (Isa 9:6,) The Father of the future age. In short, the glories of men and angels are made to hold an inferior place, that the glory of Christ, unequalled and unapproached, may shine above them all.
22. And gave him to be the head. He was made the head of the Church, on the condition that he should have the administration of all things. The apostle shews that it was not a mere honorary title, but was accompanied by the entire command and government of the universe. The metaphor of a head denotes the highest authority. I am unwilling to dispute about a name, but we are driven to it by the base conduct of those who flatter the Romish idol. Since Christ alone is called “the head,” all others, whether angels or men, must rank as members; so that he who holds the highest place among his fellows is still one of the members of the same body. And yet they are not ashamed to make an open avowal that the Church will beἀκέφαλον, without a head, if it has not another head on earth besides Christ. So small is the respect which they pay to Christ, that, if he obtain undivided that honor which his Father has bestowed upon him, the Church is supposed to be disfigured. This is the basest sacrilege. But let us listen to the Apostle, who declares that the Church is His body, and, consequently, that those who refuse to submit to Him are unworthy of its communion; for on Him alone the unity of the Church depends.
23. The fullness of him that filleth all in all. This is the highest honor of the Church, that, until He is united to us, the Son of God reckons himself in some measure imperfect. What consolation is it for us to learn, that, not until we are along with him, does he possess all his parts, or wish to be regarded as complete! Hence, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, [1. o 12:12 ] when the apostle discusses largely the metaphor of a human body, he includes under the single name of Christ the whole Church.
That filleth all in all. This is added to guard against the supposition that any real defect would exist in Christ, if he were separated from us. His wish to be filled, and, in some respects, made perfect in us, arises from no want or necessity; for all that is good in ourselves, or in any of the creatures, is the gift of his hand; and his goodness appears the more remarkably in raising us out of nothing, that he, in like manner, may dwell and live in us. There is no impropriety in limiting the word all to its application to this passage; for, though all things are regulated by the will and power of Christ, yet the subject of which Paul particularly speaks is the spiritual government of the Church. There is nothing, indeed, to hinder us from viewing it as referring to the universal government of the world; but to limit it to the case in hand is the more probable interpretation.
