References The Epistle to the Ephesians References. I. i. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 1. I. 2. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Re-Stated, p. 11. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 65. I. 3. H. S. B., Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 213. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 8. I. 3, 4. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1738; vol. xxxviii. No. 2266. I. 3-6. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Re-Stated, p. 2. I. 3, 20. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 138. I. 4. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 137. I. 4, 5. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 178. I. 5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 360. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 144. I. 5, 7. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 18. I. 6. Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 79. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 471; vol. xvi. No. 958; vol. xxix. No. 1731; vol. xlviii. No. 2763. * Ephesians 1:7 * Forgiveness of sins lies at the very heart of the Christian religion. That title of our Lord which appeals most to the heart of mankind is the title which is His as Saviour. It is proclaimed in that fact which of all facts in history has most impressed itself upon the imagination of mankind, the Sacrifice of Christ. In the Apostles' Creed we say, 'I believe in the forgiveness of sins'. It is a petition in that prayer which is the model of all prayer the Lord's Prayer, we pray, 'Forgive us our trespasses'. And it is the experience of a multitude of souls fallen into Bin, but raised from the dust of sin to new life, endowed with new spirit, inspired with new hopes, and all because they believe in the forgiveness of sins. I. What is Forgiveness? What does it mean, this forgiveness of sins? It is easy to see that forgiveness is something more than the remission of penalties. A great French writer, Victor Hugo, tells a story of a convict who had been doing penal servitude for nineteen years, and who was released on ticket of leave, and he found on every hand that men's doors were closed to him; how he comes to the door of a French bishop, and there he begs for food and shelter. And the food and the shelter are granted him; but he sees the bishop's silver plate and when he cannot sleep at night the temptation comes to him, and he yields to it, to take the silver, and he goes. A few hours afterwards he is brought back by the police, and they are admitted into the presence of the bishop. 'Ah,' he says, 'I am glad to see you. I gave you the candlesticks too. They are worth ten pounds. Why did you not take them with the rest?' And he turns to the police, explains that a mistake has been made, that the captive must be let go free. The police go, and then the bishop turns to the man and says to him, 'My brother, never forget that you have promised to employ this money in learning to be an honest man. You no longer belong to evil, but to good. I withdraw your heart from the spirit of perdition, and I give you to God.' Now to treat a guilty man as though he were not guilty, is that forgiveness? Certainly in some cases to do so would be an intolerable wrong. Here is a man who makes a livelihood out of vice. To treat that man as innocent would be sinful. But here is this man treated by his friend just as though he was innocent, and to the onlookers such action seems to be what someone has called an inspiration of wisdom, the surpassing wisdom of love which is like the love of God. Where does the principle come in? It lies in the possibility of restoring the man to righteousness. But it is only so long as this restoration is a possibility that such forgiveness can be said to be really forgiveness, and find justification. II. The Justification of Forgiveness. But there must be something in the man which justifies the treatment. The consciousness of guilt, the turning away from sin, the self-identification once more with righteousness there must be these things in the man. And then forgiveness is the embrace of Divine love, the receiving back again into favour, the return of the penitent Let me ask how is this possible? Men are so far below the ideal of righteousness by which God purposes they should live; again and again they fall; and the best of men, the saints, are just men and women who are most tormented with the consciousness of sin. It is St Paul who sets himself down as the chief of sinners. The cry of Job is the pathetic cry of mankind, How should man be just with God? and the answer to that cry came from God. It is proclaimed in the life and death and resurrection of Him Who is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. The mind of man can see but a little way into these secrets, but he sees that there is a close bond of union between Christ and the men that He came to save; mankind is made one with Him by His Incarnation. He came, and what by His Incarnation was made possible to mankind is made actual by baptism. Then we are made members of the Body of Christ, then we are made one in Him and He in us. It is this oneness with Christ, this union of humanity with Him, which inspires St Paul's words, 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus'. III. The Essentials of Forgiveness. The first thing in penitence is the consciousness of guilt, and the guilt of sin is manifested in its penalties, and its penalties are suffering and sorrow and death. Man never knew the greatness of the guilt which attached to sin until he saw our Lord accept it and bear its burdens. That suffering of the body, that darkness, that cry of desolation, 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?' these things taught men as no words uttered by the most eloquent lips could ever have taught these things, taught men as no experience of their own dull natures could ever have taught, God's detestation of sin. As men learned God's estimate of it, so the realisation of His indignation against sin was forced upon their hearts. Then the second essential to true penitence is contrition. There must be genuine sorrow for sin, and that contrition our Lord offered for us. He is the Beloved in Whom we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. He is the propitiation for our sins. Our oneness with Christ, the infinite potency of sacrifice, the fulfilment by our Lord on man's behalf of the necessary conditions of forgiveness from these things a little light is thrown on that deep enigma, how sinful man can be made just before God. References. I. 7. D. L. Moody, The Fulness of the Gospel, p. 11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 295; vol. xxvi. No. 1555; vol. xxxvii. No. 2207; vol. xlix. No. 2863. G. Campbell Morgan, The Bible and the Cross, p. 57. James Orr, Mundesley Conference Report, 1910, p. 342. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 26. The Energy of Grace Ephesians 1:7-8 Grace is too commonly regarded as a pleasing sentiment, a welcome feeling of cosy favour entertained toward us by our God. The interpretation is ineffective, and inevitably cripples the life in which it prevails. Grace is more than a smile of good nature. It is not the shimmering of an illumined lake; it is the sun-lit majesty of an advancing sea. It is a transcendant and ineffable force, the outgoing energies of the redeeming personality of God washing against the polluted shores of human need. I. In the text the energies of grace are more particularly discovered in their relationship to sin. 'Forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.' The word 'grace' is not a prevalent word in modern speech, and its rare occurrence may be explained by the partial disappearance of the word 'sin' from our vocabulary. If we exile the one we shall not long retain the other. What philosophy and personal inclination are disposed to extenuate, the Christian religion seeks to deepen and revive. II. What is the ministry of the heavenly energy? The inspiring evangel of the text gathers itself round about three emphases. Let us feast our eyes on the wealthy programme. (1) Grace flows round about the life in powers of liberation. It sets itself to deal both with the guilt and the power of sin, and it removes the one, and subdues the other. (2) The grace that liberates also illuminates. The grace that brings 'redemption' also confers 'wisdom'. (3) Grace brings 'prudence,' power of fruitful application; power to apply the eternal to the transient; power to bring the vision to the task, the revelation to the duty, the truth to the trifle. III. How do we come into the sweep of the marvellous effluence of the grace of God? 'In whom we have.' That is the standing ground. To be in Him, in the Christ, is to be in the abiding-place of this superlative energy. J. H. Jowett, Apostolic Optimism, p. 111. References. I. 7-10. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 34. I. 9, 10. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 140; ibid. vol. vi. p. 421; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 136. I. 9, 20. Ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 148. I. 10. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 181; ibid. (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 347. I. 11-14. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 35. I. 12, 13. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1978. I. 13. Ibid. vol. x. No. 592. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 268. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 10. I. 14. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 274. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 43. I. 13, 14. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 358; vol. xxii. No. 1284. H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, p. 87. I. 15. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p. 363; ibid. (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 407. I. 15-23. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 55. I. 16. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 165. Progressive Revelation Ephesians 1:17-19 The Apostle prays that the Ephesians may have supernatural light shed upon the gold of their supernatural wealth. I. It is our great privilege to grow in clearness of understanding, beholding with more open vision the beauty and preciousness of the truth as it is in Jesus. The first light that falls upon our spiritual understanding is marvellous light; but whilst we continue obedient unto the heavenly vision, it will shine ever more brightly. The vision of a faithful soul grows in comprehensiveness and penetration, realising with infinite delight the great and beautiful doctrines of the spiritual universe. The biographer of the late Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, says of him: 'He lived under the benignant sway of a succession of great truths, following one another like the constellations of the heavens'. In successive periods of his life familiar truths in succession became extraordinary, captivating him, filling him with wonder, thrilling him with delight. Is not this the ideal life? First one and then another article of the creed glowing into light, dawning on the soul, seizing it, occupying it, delighting it, leaving it with special enrichment and perfection! A true course is one of progressive illumination. No Christian life is altogether right and satisfactory except more light, and more, is shining upon it out of God's Word except uninteresting bits of the raiment of the truth are continually being transfigured; except passages which resemble darkened glass are becoming telescopic; unless commonplace chapters of historian, Prophet, and Apostle suffer a strange change into streets of gold whose stones are like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and unless starless spaces in the firmament of revelation are being sown with galaxies, and irradiated with the glory of the Lord. II. Note that the sources of illumination are within. 'Having the eyes of your heart enlightened.' It is insight rather than reflected light; it springs up in the depths of the soul. This is not the instruction gained by intellectual study; it is rather experimental, coming through the inner powers of affection, thought, and will. W. L. Watkinson, The Ashes of Roses, p. 79. References. I. 17-23. Bishop Stubbs, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 358. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 251, I. 18. J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, p. 148. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 52; ibid. p. 62. In the Heavenly Places Ephesians 1:18-20 The phrase 'in the heavenly places' is peculiar to the Epistle to the Ephesians, where it occurs no less than five times. It is one of many marks of the unique character of this Epistle, in which St. Paul again and again employs it; and yet never once does the expression seem to occur to him in that other letter which Tychicus carried the letter to Colossae which (as we have seen) is so closely bound, by ties of subject-matter, time, and place, to this Epistle. The word translated 'heavenly' occurs about twenty times in the New Testament, including other Epistles of St. Paul, but the expression 'in the heavenly (places)' is found in no other known writing. No substantive is attached to the adjective, and we might render it 'among the heavenly things (or blessings),' if that gave a better meaning. But it does not do so; the familiar phrase 'in the heavenly (places)' is best, and brings us into relation with that unseen world where the risen Master is, where we are blessed 'in Him,' and in which lie those spiritual powers which on the one hand oppose us, and on the other hand rejoice to learn the mysteries of man's redemption. We shall find that it is impossible too severely to Locate the phrase; 'it is a region of ideas, rather than a locality,' says Dean Armitage Robinson; although the thought of place cannot, as we shall see, be wholly eliminated from it. I. There can be no doubt that chapter 1:20 comes first in order of thought. It brings us face to face with the common theme of both Epistles the supremacy of Christ over all rivals. In the spiritual realm, here described as 'the heavenlies,' lie all the forces that rule the universe. There is the throne of God; there Christ sits 'at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father'; thither He has been raised, above every conceivable rank and order of celestial beings, the sharer of the throne of God. II. The next context (II. 6) takes us a step farther. This verse states a fresh truth, and reveals the almost startling fact that, our Lord being thus 'raised' and 'seated' 'in the heavenly places,' we too are raised and seated there 'with Him'. In other words, the present abode of Christ (I. 20) is the present abode of the Church (II. 6). All who 'believe that Jesus Christ hath suffered death upon the cross for them, and shed His blood for their redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits they have thereby, and giving Him hearty thanks therefore,' are in actual present possession of these blessings, because they are ' in Christ'. In other words, this life in the heavenlies is a present reality, an anticipation, as well as a pledge, of future glory. The Christian can even here on earth 'lay hold on the life which is life indeed'. III. In chapter 1:3 a still further stage is reached. Every spiritual blessing which we receive depends upon the first two stages of the argument. Our Lord is 'in the heavenly places'; we are 'in Him' in a real and present sense, and so are ourselves in the same 'heavenly places'. What follows? Being thus united to Him, all His fulness flows to us, we are in contact with the sole fount of every blessing, so that we have thus reached the very summit of St. Paul's great argument. We are 'blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places'; but mark how all this is so! 'in Him.' Our standing 'in the heavenly places' depends upon our union with 'the Lord,' and every conceivable blessing that we can enjoy depends upon this contact there with Him. IV. In chapter 3:10 St. Paul is speaking of the great 'mystery' or secret, once hidden but now revealed, of 'preaching unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.' All men are destined in this Gospel age to learn God's purpose in history, which is, in St. Paul's language, 'the dispensation of the mystery'. But not only are all men to understand this progress of the Divine purpose; there are celestial intelligences who love to learn more of the gracious outcomes of God's love. 'Which things,' says St. Peter, 'angels desire to look into' (1 Peter 1:12 ). V. The last context in which we find the words (VI. 12) is a surprising and a startling one. The same words which are used to describe the abode of Christ, our own position of blessing in Him, and the home of the holy angels, are here used to describe the scene of our conflict with 'the spiritual hosts of wickedness'. 'Our wrestling' with them is described as taking place 'in the heavenly places,' just as in this same Epistle Satan is described as 'the prince of the power of the air'. The common use of this word 'air' in Scripture is of the atmosphere which surrounds the earth; and we must remember that the word 'heaven' has a wide range of meaning, for there is 'the heaven of heavens,' and St. Paul speaks of being caught up into 'the third heaven'. We may, therefore, think of 'a heavenly place' which corresponds to the region of 'the air,' no less than of one which is the abode of the holy angels and of God Himself. But it is foolish to attempt to localise too closely; the term is designedly vague, so as to include the realm and abode of all spiritual forces and powers. There reigns the Father in His supreme majesty, there the Son of God reigns in His mediatorial kingdom, there the Holy Spirit pours 'blessed unction from above,' and there we are the object, not only of watchful interest to those ministers that do God's pleasure, but also of never-ceasing attack from the ministers of Satan. Thus, if our life 'in the heavenly places' involves great privileges, it also involves serious conflict. We are 'in the heavenly places,' but so too are our foes; or, at least, they can reach us there, and disturb our peace. But, thank God, we can face the fact without fear. Bishop Drury, The Prison Ministry of St. Paul, p. 157. The Standard Miracle Ephesians 1:18-20 The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the New Testament standard of power. It is the sample and pledge of what God can do for man. I. The uniqueness of Christ's resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead reveals the might of God working at the fulness of its strength. When we want to know what God is able to do, we go back to the Resurrection of His Son. This crowning miracle is inclusive of all others. It demonstrates conquest over every dominion that affects human life. Of the unique significance of the resurrection the Scriptures leave no room for doubt. It is God's crowning testimony to His Son, and the essential witness of the Christian Church. Spiritual identification is the end for which Christ died and rose again. Salvation becomes a personal possession to all who, by personal faith, accept Jesus as their Representative and Lord. II. Spiritual Resurrection. Regeneration is the spiritual counterpart of the resurrection. It is a birth out of death. Conversion is the standing miracle of the power of God. Like the resurrection, the miracle of conversion includes in one act the salvation of the whole man. Regeneration secures all elements of reform. The spiritual resurrection inaugurates a new life. The man who lives in the power of Christ's resurrection is raised to a plane of life beyond the imitations of the natural man. The life which began in a miracle is miraculously sustained. III. The power of the Spirit (1) This resurrection power is the power of the spirit, which is the efficient course in all Christian service. 'Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you.' The spirit of Pentecost is the spirit of power. (2) Christ's resurrection is the pattern and pledge of our own final resurrection. The ultimate demonstration of this power 'will fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able to subject all things unto Himself. S. Chadwick, Humanity and God, p. 137. References. 1.18, 20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1466. 1.19. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 157. 1.19, 20. Bishop Alexander, The Great Question, p. 129. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 72. I. 19-23. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 534. F. D. Maurice, ibid. vol. ii. p. 85. I. 20. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 297; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 248. I. 20, 21. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 249. I. 23. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. v. p. 31. I. 22, 23. G. Packer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 392. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 136. Ephesians 1:22-23 Anthony Froude 'is as delighted with Arnold as I am; on his remarking to Dr. Pusey on the beauty of Arnold's comparing the Church and State to the Soul and Body, Pusey quietly but most solemnly said, "I consider the Church belongs to a much higher Body".' Caroline Fox's * Journals. * Reference. I. 23. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 241. Ephesians 2 The Apostle Paul is not always just the same. He is consistent, but never monotonous. He is a sevenfold man; his Epistles are his truest photograph. Have you ever read the Epistles in the light of that suggestion? not only to find out what the Epistles are, but what their author was. He never wearies us, because he has a great gift of escaping monotony. He is rugged, incoherent, sometimes almost verbally self-contradictory; he is full of parentheses, he makes great use of bracketings and asides and literary diversions, yet all the while there is a wholeness which eyes that love him can perfectly discern. In some Epistles he is argumentative, almost contentious; he is pushing a point upon the attention of his correspondents, and he wants to establish a plea. He is not so enjoyable in such Epistles. He sometimes elicits pity for the other man. He is heroic in his logic and destructive in his conclusions; then I sometimes prefer to turn over a page. To the Colossians, the Ephesians, he is as it were in another sense more vividly and tenderly and approachably the Apostle of the grace of God. In the Galatians he talks to the Galatians; in the Corinthians he talks to the Corinthians; they have their local disputes and matters to adjust and to determine. But to the Ephesians and Colossians he speaks universals, he reveals solar systems; his strides are constellations; they are infinitely wondrous in intellectual conception, in imaginative and ideal colour and emphasis Catholic Epistles in very deed; addressed to one church, but meant for all men and all ages. I. Take the first verse of this chapter: 'And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins'. That verse is theology in one sentence; you need no more. As we found in Genesis 1:1 all the Bible, so we find in Ephesians 2:1 , the whole scheme of God and the whole revelation of human history. You dead, quickened; you alive, brought from the dead. There are moral resurrections as well as physical. II. 'Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience' (ver. 2). There is the world for you in one gloomy sentence. This is Paul's reading of moral history. Paul was no fancy lecturer; Paul did not write out a course of dreams and call them a course of lectures: Paul recognised that the air is full of the devil. The devil has hardly left room for the summer in all that air which he breathes and poisons. He would edge out the summer if he could; he tempts the spring; he says to that sweet young thing, the vernal spirit, Blight, O blossoms! Arise, O East Wind, and kill the buds! choke those little birds in their homely nests 1 It is the devil. Do not attempt to argue him out of existence. Never undervalue the enemy; never under-estimate his resources; take it for granted that, whether you are fighting spiritually or physically, you have a great enemy to meet, and prepare yourselves accordingly, or you will lose the battle, and you will deserve to lose it. III. 'Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others' (ver. 3). That is not modern talk. We have schooled ourselves by false schooling out of these great solemn, bedrock verities. The Apostle never would have suffered for our poor superficial theories; the Apostle would not have endured suffering and gloried in tribulation because he had received into his fancy some cobweb theory of creation, its evolution and its destiny. Not for such things did men preach in sorrow and seal in blood. If we have little conceptions about man and God, we shall have a little crumbling church, always at war with itself, and always losing the sham fights which it challenges and invites. Marvellous master was Paul! What deftness! what magnanimity! what wondrous subtlety of persuasiveness! 'We all had our conversation.' IV. 'But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved); and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus' (ver. 4-6). 'Us,' 'us,' always 'us' a priest who invokes a benediction upon himself as well as his people. That is brotherhood, that is holy masonry. 'God, who is rich in mercy' not rich in thunderbolts only, not rich in lightnings and tempests and great whirlwinds. Mercy is the greater part of Him, if we could but see it. It was 'when we were dead in sins' that God showed the richness of His mercy. It was not when we were partly recovering ourselves, it was actually when we were dead in sins, and, being dead, helpless, lost; it was then that the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings. God makes us now sit in heavenly places; that is, in the heavenlies, in the world above the world, in the unseen kingdom. V. 'That in the ages to come He might shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God' (vers. 7, 8). Salvation is not by intellect, knowledge; because then heaven would be full, if fall at all, of grammarians. 'Grace,' 'faith,' that is a foreign tongue. It is! it is heaven's tongue; it is the tongue of the Infinite Love. Grace means favour, pleasure, kindness, pure simple love, appreciation; it is a gift, not a bargain; it has no equivalent; the number stands alone, and the sign of equal-to never follows it. It is above algebra, above grammar. VI. 'Not of works lest any man should boast' (ver. 9). That is the very point There must be no boasting; we must simply stand out, and say, It is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our eyes. 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy hath He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.' We have nothing to do with our own making. We had nothing to do with our physical birth, we have nothing to do with our superior or spiritual birth. For the next verse says: VII. 'For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them' (ver. 10). Into what beautiful English might this be rendered! Instead of saying 'workmanship,' speak the word that is almost Greek in its very form 'we are God's poems'. God is the Poet, we are the poems. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. II. p. 176. References. II. 1. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 127; vol. xxxviii. No. 2267, and vol. xl. No. 2388. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 205. II. 2. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 36. II. 3. Bishop Stubbs, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 385. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 40. J. Johns, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 409. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 149; ibid. vol. ix. p. 12. II. 4. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 141. II. 4, 5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 805, and vol. lii. No. 2968. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 81. II. 6. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No. 2741. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. pp. 201, 203; ibid. vol. x. p. 297. ** Ascending with Him ( For Ascension Day ) Ephesians 2:6 ** The great Forty Days of our Lord's Resurrection Life on earth are ended. These days have been a season of waiting, a time of rest and preparation for the great work of the future. Our Lord has appeared again and again to His own, but His appearings have been fitful and mysterious, as though to prepare them little by little for His final farewell. And now He and His Apostles meet together for the last time. How little did they realise that it was so! The veil was still lying on their hearts, and although He had told them plainly that after 'the little while' He would be leaving them to go to the Father, yet the very last question they asked Him a few moments before His Ascension shows us clearly how wide they were still of the mark. 'Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?' They felt that they were standing on the threshold of some tremendous change. The news of Easter Day, and the Resurrection of their Master, had raised their hopes once more of seeing the kingdom established, but our Lord's answer gives no encouragement to such thoughts; 'it is not for them to know the times or seasons.' the poor brain would reel had He drawn but an outline of one century's history of that spiritual kingdom which he was then founding. No! Lift up your hearts, He seems to say the Father Himself loves you, leave the future in His hands you shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you. And then, 'while they beheld,' in the act of blessing them, He was parted from them. There is no grief, strange to say, at what appears to be His final departure from them. They return to Jerusalem with great joy. I. What was the Secret of this Great Joy? Was there a lingering feeling that this was only a further manifestation of His glory that He had not really left them, but only withdrawn from sight for awhile? Death they knew could not separate them; He had spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over the long-cherished victory of the grave, and all power is now given unto Him in heaven and earth. Perhaps He has gone to muster His legions of angels and to restore again the kingdom to Israel. Is this the cause of their joy? Nay, but even then an earnest of the Spirit was given them; another Comforter unseen stood near, and their deep but unexplained joy was the fruit of that Spirit which was poured upon them on the Feast of Pentecost without measure; the Divine light of those streams of fire penetrated the darkness of their understanding and showed them the things of God in their due proportion; they walked about Zion and beheld her battlements rising on every side; they saw the living stones hewn and shaped with unseen hands coming from all parts and filling their places in the Spiritual Temple; they counted the towers of that city, which hath the twelve foundations, whose Maker and Builder is God. From that day old things had for ever passed away with them. II. This is Our Joy too. Little by little the Apostles learnt the full significance of the Lord's Ascension, that in Him and by virtue of His Ascension they were also sitting in the heavenly places; in His Ascension they saw the firstfruits of our race passing beyond angels and archangels, and established on the right hand of God's throne on high. The Lord had gone up with the sound of the trump, and once more the trumpet should sound, and the waiting Church would be caught up to meet Him in the air. This was the comforting thought of those early days, and it shall be ours too. In the hour of trial let us lift up our hearts to our home beyond. On Good Friday, as we gazed on His bleeding figure nailed to the Cross, we smote our breasts and said: 'There I see myself, it is my place'. Today the veil is lifted, and we see heaven open and behold ourselves sitting with Him in the heavenly places. The cross has won for us the throne and crown of glory. Lift up your hearts in praise and thanksgiving for His glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and for the coming of the Holy Ghost! III. Our Life here must be a Life of Heavenliness. In the East the firstfruits of the early figs were called forerunners, they were pledges of the coming harvest; so Christ is our Forerunner, and we must grow up into Him in all things, we must be like Him, our affections must be set on things above, our hearts must be weaned from the world and prepared by self-discipline and by the grace of the Holy Spirit for the life of the world to come. High Latitudes Ephesians 2:6 The text does not speak of a future exaltation, but of one that has already taken place; it does not refer to a rare mood or passing ecstasy, but to a permanent loftiness of soul: it teaches that in the power of the Spirit the Christian habitually realises an ideal life in Christ Jesus. Let no one in the name of the practical despise the mysticism of the text. What would become of literature if a transcendentalist like Emerson or Maeterlinck did not appear every now and then? What would become of art if an idealist like Watts did not occasionally excite our wonder? What would become of ethics if it were not for the intermittent visitation of poets, mystics, and saints fluttering the utilitarians? What we now propose is to insist on the splendid gain of realising to the full this heavenly life, the vital advantage of living with a vivid consciousness of God, in the rich experience of His grace, in the clear, commanding hope of immortality. I. In heavenly places in Christ Jesus we are most exempt from error. If we mind only earthly things, we must necessarily become the victims of manifold misconceptions, prejudices, superstitions, and illusions. What, then, shall we do that we may retain the sanity of our nature, the truth of vision, and that our verdicts may be reliable? Mount into 'God's own climate, beyond fog, dust, and cloud, beyond the causes and occasions of disturbance and aberration; see life in God's light; test all by the spirit and teaching of the Christ: so shall you "be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding"'. II. In heavenly places in Christ Jesus we are safest from contamination and peril. Already to many of us certain forms of moral besetment are as though they were not; if we mount to higher ranges, other possibilities of evil of which we are conscious will similarly cease; whilst on the highest summits of all we best deal with whatever assaults of the soul are still inevitable. Yet, live high as we may, we cannot get beyond the range of temptation. 'Heavenly places' are the best places in which to fight the foes of the soul, the choicest coigns of vantage. III. In heavenly places we realise fulness of peace and blessedness. These radiant altitudes mean perfected felicity. Whymper, the Alpine climber, said of one of his guides that 'he was happy only when upwards of ten thousand feet high'; and no one knows the pure joy of life until he leaves beneath him the eagle's nest and finds the mystic edelweiss of snow-white purity in the blue depths of 'God's own climate' of infinite holiness and love. W. L. Watkinson, Inspiration in Common Life, p. 23. References. II. 6. C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 159. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 138; ibid. vol. x. p. 340. II. 7. H. Bonar, S hort Sermons for Family Beading, pp. 273 and 282. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1665. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 91. II. 8. W. M. Sinclair, Simplicity in Christ, p. 83. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 221. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii. No. 1064, and vol. xxvii. No. 1609. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 143. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 98. II. 8, 9. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 327. J. Johns, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 324. II. 8-10. H. S. Holland, Church Times, vol. lix. p. 624. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 195. J. Hannah, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 324. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 291. II. 9. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 338. II. 9, 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvii. No. 2210. The Redeemed Life God's Workmanship Ephesians 2:10 I. Note, first, The Christian's New Nature. 'We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.' The idea that in believing men a change has been wrought which amounts to a reconstituting of their nature, is here expressed twice over, for the sake of emphasis. To begin with, the word translated 'workmanship' implies that a Christian owes his character and standing to God precisely as a poem owes its conception to the singer's intellect and fancy. The dramas he produced we call the works of Shakespeare, and in like manner men and women are the works of God. God is the author of what they now are. A believer's soul is the Divine poem. Elsewhere in the physical world we may read the Divine prose, but when God writes His name in a human heart, that is His poetry. Then besides that, the same idea is underlined by the use of a second cognate term; we are created, says the Apostle, in Christ Jesus. Creation is one of those words which distinguish, and form the special glory of, the Bible. Doubtless in other religious books you will find cosmogonies and cosmologies of the most varied kind; half-noble, half-fantastic attempts to explain the origin and genesis of all that is. But it was left for the Bible, as some one has said, 'to inscribe the name of God on all things visible and invisible, and append to it the word create'. The note is struck in its first sentence. 'In the beginning God created.' II. Note, The Purpose for which the New Nature is Bestowed. We are 'created in Christ Jesus unto good works'. St. Paul indicates in one brief phrase the right relation of good works to the Christian life. It is 'unto good works' that we are created in Christ. Or, to put it otherwise, good works, holiness, Godlike character, is the aim of God in creating us afresh: it is His ultimate goal; accordingly it cannot be the cause of our being saved, but must be its issue and consequence. It is the fruit of the good tree, not its root or vital sap; and we are said to be created for good works just as a tree is created, or exists, for its fruit. Hence the true relation is altogether distorted and reversed when character and conduct are made preconditions of our obtaining Divine grace, instead of the joyous result of our having accepted it. III. Note, The Pre-ordained Divine Ideal. These good works, the Apostle adds, 'God has prepared that we should walk in them'. In other words, for each of us a path of spiritual development has been prepared beforehand, our travelling by which will be the realisation of that Divine ideal of our life which has hovered before the mind of God from the beginning. H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, p. 43. References. II. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1829. Bishop Sheepshanks, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 295. E. H. Bickersteth, Thoughts in Past Years, p. 215. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 108. II. 11, 12. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 184. Sin As Alienation From God Ephesians 2:12 These terrible words form part of the description given by St. Paul of the state of his heathen converts before they accepted the Gospel of Christ But though they were thus originally applied, it is, I think, quite allowable to see in them a description of the effect of sin generally. For the words are used of the heathen because they were sinners; it was as sinners, and in consequence of their sinful state, indeed we might say, as the essence of that state, that they 'had no hope, and were without God in the world'. I take them, therefore, as my text, when I consider the final and most fearful aspect of sin, its power of alienating us from God. 'Without God in the world.' The word translated 'without God,' ἄθεοι , is capable, indeed, of other explanation. It might be taken to mean, as in our word 'atheist,' unbelievers in God. But this rendering is excluded by the qualification ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ in the world, which clearly points to a contrast between the relation of the sinner to God and his relation to the world. He is in the world, and subject to all the influences of the world, and he is 'without God'. Not merely forgetful of God, or without belief in Him, but withdrawn from His life, without knowledge of Him, without His help in the dangers of the worldly life, without any hope of His mercy and love. They had 'no hope, and were without God in the world'. I. This, then, is the effect of sin on the soul; it alienates the sinner from God, it leaves him in the world and without God. It is not, of course, meant that any man while yet alive on earth is altogether separate from the God 'in whom we live and move and have our being'. He upholds the whole order of creation; not a sparrow falls, and therefore not a man breathes without His will, His help. Withdrawn from God the world would cease to be; there can be no such thing as absolute alienation from God in this life. Sinners are 'without God' because they lose the power of communing with Him, of 'feeling after Him and finding Him'; and, further, they are 'without God,' because He is hostile to their sin, and to themselves so far as they are identified with their sin. Man is alienated from God, and God is alienated from man by man's sin. That is the twofold aspect of this final result of sin which we have to consider. II. Man loses by sin the power of communing with God, of relying on His help, of realising His love. This communion is destroyed by sin. I do not mean repented sin, for that, though it weakens and clouds the soul, is by God's mercy in Christ forgiven, and the sinner is restored to his lost union with God; but I mean sin which the soul will not give up, sin entertained and delighted in, sin which dwells in the memory and controls the will. Whenever a man is living in sin and finds pleasure in it, the thought of God is no comfort or rest, but bitterness and disquiet, and He flies from communion with Him. For sin takes away the very conditions which make the thought of God the stay of the soul. When external troubles or anxieties come upon a man, troubles uncaused by anything he has done, but none the less oppressive, there is no consolation or rest like that of laying the whole before God, and leaving the solution of it in His hands. It is not our own doing, its causes are independent of us; God will accept the burden we lay upon Him, and sooner or later 'unto the godly there ariseth up light in the darkness'. But when our own sin has caused it, and we will not cease from the sin, there is no comfort in appealing to God. The first condition of His help is wanting; we dare not give up the very cause of the trouble that is weighing us down. So the sinner shrinks from the one source of comfort, and cuts himself off from communion with God. For he trembles before the wide and unyielding claims of God on the soul. He wants to keep something back, to retain one 'bosom sin,' to hide a part of himself from the Divine eyes; and God claims the whole or will have none. III. God Himself is not, cannot by His very nature be passive while man is forsaking Him. He is always hostile to sin, and must therefore hate that which is sinful, in so far as it is identified with sin. The sinner chooses his own pleasure, his own will instead of God's will. He has turned from God, and has chosen himself, and in the pursuit of his own ends has forsaken his Master and Friend; and then when he would return, he finds that his rebellion is also banishment, that God has forsaken him, that sin, which is man's desertion of God, is also punishment, which is God's departure from man. He has preferred himself to God. and God's punishment is to leave him with himself. 'Ephraim has joined himself to idols; let him alone.' Yes, even in this world we see that punishment beginning, as the sinner wakes up to find himself far from the abiding source of happiness, cut off from communion with God, estranged from the Divine life; and yet he cannot forsake his sin, for it has enthralled his will, and has become itself his sharpest penalty. But this is only the partial anticipation of the 'last state of that man,' in that condition which is only conceivable to us as 'eternal sin,' eternal 'alienation from the life of God'. A. T. Lyttelton. College and University Sermons, p. References. II. 12. O. Bronson, Sermons, p. 107. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 57. II. 12, 13. H. W. Webb-Peploe, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 396. II. 13. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 851. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 31; ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 223. II. 13-17. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 461. II. 14, 15. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 135. II. 15. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 137. II. 16. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p. 436; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 31. II. 17. C. S. Horne, Daily News, 23rd December, 1907, p. 3. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 373; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 104. II. 18. W. P. Du Bose, The Gospel According to St. Paul, p. 143. II. 19. H. S. Holland, God's City, p. 29. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 123. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 103. J. Martineau, Endeavours After the Christian Life, p. 65. II. 20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1388. R. Vaughan Pryce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 401. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 27. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 118. II. 22. C. Gutch, Sermons, p. 124. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i. p. 255. Bishop Westcott, Disciplined Life, No. ix. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 267. III. 1-12. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 235. III. 3-6. G. F. Pentecost, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 259. III. 4. A. W. Robinson, The Mystery of Christ, No. xi. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 269; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 362. Christianity a Revelation Ephesians 3:4-5 I. First of all, let us notice what is implied in this, when we say that Christianity is a revelation. For one thing, there is implied a contrast. When we say that Christianity is a revelation, we mean that it is not an induction or an invention. Every religion purports to be a revelation. Ay and more, every religion in so far as it is true and there is an element of truth in every religion is what it purports to be, a revelation. We need not be surprised at the statement that there is an element of true self-revelation by God Himself to the hearts of men in even the crudest religions. Not only are the ideas of religion and revelation, as Sabatier says, 'correlative and religiously inseparable,' but it is in line with Scripture. 'God left not Himself without a witness.' The Old and New Testaments are both full of this thought. The sun in the heavens is His herald. The recurring seasons, the gifts of harvest-tide, are His messengers. Conscience and the sense of right and wrong are His witness within. And when the Parsee worships the sun he has caught one ray, and reflected it, from the light Divine. The Greek worshipping Demeter, the great Earth-Mother, has caught and reflected another. Confucius heard a voice Divine in the call of duty. And the Furies with their lash for the transgressor were held in holy reverence because to their worshippers they seemed the vindicators of a law which, men discerned, had come into their hearts from God. It is where and when God shows Himself that men fall down and worship. Till then they are seekers with a void in their hearts which nothing earth-born can satisfy. But God appears; God reveals Himself; and they recognise Him and reverence and adore. A revelation alone can satisfy the religious instinct which is an essential element in our human nature. II. Being satisfied that our religion is and must be a revelation if it is a religion at all, the second point for us to consider is the way in which the revelation has been made. How has God shown Himself? (a) For one thing, God has revealed Himself progressively. He has come like the 'sun shining more and more unto the perfect day'. The history of Christianity is the history of a steadily enlarging understanding of the wealth of the revelation which there is in Jesus Christ our Lord. (b) For a second thing, God's revelation of Himself is not intellectual only, but personal. (c) A third point to be noted about God's method of revealing Himself is that He has revealed Himself first to individuals, and then through them to their fellows. R. J. Drummond, Faith's Certainties, p. 3. References. III. 6. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 19. III. 7. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 375. Wealth That Never Pails Ephesians 3:8 'The unsearchable riches.' The inexorable wealth, ranging vein beyond vein, mine beyond mine, in land beyond land, in continent beyond continent! And, then, side by side with this immeasurable glory, the Apostle puts himself. 'Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given!' What an arresting and daring conjunction! Let us turn our contemplation to one or two aspects of this 'unsearchable' wealth. I. The Lord Jesus Christ has created so exacting a conception of Himself in the minds of men that no ministry of man can satisfy it. No human ministry can express it. In all our best representations of the Lord there is always a missing something, an 'unsearchable' something, which the most masterly figures cannot span. II. But it is not only that our Saviour has created an exacting conception of Himself, He has also, by His 'unsearchable riches,' created an exacting ideal of human possibility. Every summit brings a new revelation, the reward of every attainment is a vision of further glory. III. We cannot exhaust their powers of application to the ever-changing conditions in human life and destiny. In the Christian life new conditions never find us resourceless. Our wealth is inexhaustible, and always manifests itself as current coin. IV. But it is not only that 'the unsearchable riches of Christ adapt themselves, and reveal the wealth, to the changing condition of our years, it is, that in our personal crises, when life suddenly leaps into fierce emergency, their resources are all available, and never leave us in the lurch. There are three great crises in human life the crisis of sin, the crisis of sorrow, and the crisis of death and by its ability to cope with these crises every philosophy and every ministry must be finally determined and tried. We can never get to the end of 'the unsearchable riches of Christ. They are our glory in time, they will be our endless surprise in eternity. J. H. Jowett, The British Congregationalist, 24th January 1907, p. 84. Ephesians 3:8 Christ gives us to possess not God only, but men also as our riches, the unsearchable riches which we have in Him. McLeod Campbell. References. III. 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 745, and vol. xx. No. 1209. Bishop Westcott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 360. F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i. p. 60. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. p. 398. III. 8-11. J. Clifford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 209. III. 9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 32. III. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 448, and vol. xvi. No. 933. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. pp. 138, 153; ibid. vol. vi. p. 77. III. 11. Ibid. vol. i. p. 32. III. 11, 20. Llewelyn Davies, The Purpose of God, p. 28. III. 12. W. P. Du Bose, The Gospel According to St. Paul, p. 143. Patriotism and Intercession Ephesians 3:14-19 All great missionary pioneers, founders, and leaders seem to come to a time in their lives when God's purposes and plans become unveiled to their vision, and, as in a moment, the future unfolds itself to their spiritual gaze. So it was with Noah after that great crisis in the world's history at the Flood. By faith, in the spirit of simple obedience and holy, farseeing awe, he had prepared the Ark and entered it with his family. He had passed reverently through the discipline of his strange retreat, and was ready, after his sacrifice of thanksgiving, for the vision of God's providential government and the future expansion of the race of man. So with Abraham, strong in the faith that boldly faces the unknown and 'waits on the Lord to renew its strength'. Step by step he approaches the crucial and unexpected trial of his belief. But the discipline of faith had prepared him. He offers his son in sacrifice, but stays his hand immediately at the Divine call. Then it is that the whole vision of the purpose of God in the family and tribal and national life of Israel opens before his mind. Think, too, of Moses and his training, all preparatory to that magnificent vision of God on Mount Sinai as a Moral Being having personal moral relations with mankind. I. And St. Paul, the greatest of missionary pioneers, steeped in all the visions and hopes of Judaism, burning with zeal for its glorious revelation, its secure privileges, and its inspired claims when the eyes of his soul were opened on the Damascus road to see the glimmerings of a world-wide significance in the religion and history of his people, and see it all focussed in the incarnate personality of Jesus, immediately he 'confers not with flesh and blood,' but bursts through all conventional bonds and cautions and expediencies. He takes the yoke of Christ, becomes the Lord's slave, submits his whole being, is led by the hand of Ananias, is healed, taught, and baptised. Then he goes into his retreat in the wilderness, hears unspeakable words, sees the meaning of the call to 'go far hence unto the Gentiles,' and simply goes. He founds Church after Church, leaving with each the Divine gifts of the Faith, the Ministry, and the Sacraments, with powers of self-government, self-support, and self-expansion. And he does this work, too, if in all simple joy of soul, yet in 'much trembling,' in much depression, in bodily infirmity, amidst the scorn of philosophers, the hatred of his own people, 'fightings within and fears without,' in 'prisons frequent and deaths oft'. He sees the incarnate life of Jesus becoming incarnate in all humanity. For God's purposes there is one race, the human race; but one Saviour, His Son; one family, the Church; 'one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism,' as there is and can be but 'one God and father of us all'. And within sound and sight of Caesar's Palace, where was focussed, in the person of the Emperor, Rome's Imperial and imperious world-wide sway, St. Paul sees and feels in it all a parable of the universal Kingship of Jesus, the universal brotherhood of mankind, in the one universal family of His Holy Catholic Church; and as the glorious vision lays hold of and enthrals his soul he 'bows his knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant unto the world to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that it might be filled with all the fulness of God.' II. In the second chapter of this Epistle to the Ephesian and other Churches of Asia St. Paul passes quite naturally from the fact and idea of the Fatherhood of all humanity to the idea of the family and then to the home, the house itself, the temple of the Triune God. 'Through Christ we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father, and are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Corner-stone, in Whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.' Then suddenly his prison-chamber expands and becomes to his soul like some vast cathedral temple, and, as though ministering at its high altar, he lifts his hands and bows his knees unto the Father in heaven and raises the great intercession as the Imperial vision of Christ's universal sovereignty holds him and claims and proclaims the Real Presence of God in, to, and for humanity in the Sacramental efficacy of the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of the Son of God and Son of Man, 'in Whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit'. No wonder that it has been said of this Epistle that 'in it St. Paul has given to his teaching a new centre, that of the Church of God'. It is eucharistic in its visions and ideals and practical exhortations. It begins with thanksgiving and ends in a benediction, and its core and centre in the text is like a consecration prayer. There is the unity of all Creation, and the restored unity of humanity in Christ the Head of the Body the Church. Christ, the Great High Priest of humanity, ministers the great salvation in and through His own Body, prepared from all eternity in and within the mystical Body which He was forming out of universal humanity, and wherein, as far as salvation or 'saving health' was concerned, there was to be no individual privilege or preference, neither Jew nor Gentile, and yet wherein all differences of race, language, or circumstance, all varieties of genius, talent, or experience would find themselves unified, strengthened, perfected, and glorified in the manifold (many-coloured) 'unity of the Spirit, which is the bond of peace'. Am I wrong in thinking of this Epistle to the Asian Churches as the account of a great Sacramental vision which had germinated and grown in the soul of the Apostle, and became incarnated in his life as the years went on? Again and again you can feel the heart of the great missionary pulsating to bursting-point as the thrill and throb of the infinite movement and purpose of the Blessed Trinity in Creation, Providence, and Grace, like some great drama set to music, possesses him, lightens and brightens his spiritual vision, enthrals and compels his will, inspires and inflames his soul, so that he could even 'wish himself accursed from God' if only the Israel of Abraham could but see the vision and accept its destiny as the Israel of God, and if only Rome and the nations in their worship of force, and Greece in its worship of beauty and wisdom, could and would but see revealed as in a Sacrament, in the Incarnate Word, 'Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God'. 'For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye might be filled with the fulness of God.' He sees in Jesus Christ, the God-man, the one and only principle of a universal brotherhood, a universal citizenship, and a universal Empire, demanding faith in the eternal justice of God, hope in His eternal mercy, and an all-embracing love shown in mutual service Each for his brethren, all for God. Bishop W. T. Gaul, The Guardian, 16th September, 1910. References. III. 14. Bishop Westcott, The Incarnation and Common Life, p. 161. III. 14, 15. J. Martineau, Endeavours After the Christian Life (2nd Series), p. 95. III. 14-16. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. ii. p. 148. The Love of God Ephesians 3:14-19 I. The fact that God feels a deep love for men is one hard to contemplate, still harder to realise. Yet it is the starting-point of Christianity. It is the very core of the revelation of Jesus. The inspired declaration that 'God is Love' (1 John 4:8 ; 1 John 4:16 ) has changed the temper and life of every man and every community which has come to believe that the statement is true. It has been a thousand times more potent to produce right living than had been the previous belief that God is power. Therefore love is more potent than law, and love is the essence of the Gospel. It is true that in the case of an earthly ruler affection may be thrown away upon unworthy subjects, and that legal compulsion alone will produce results. Nevertheless, Jesus insists that God Himself is so constituted that He can never rest content until He has won for Himself the love of all His creatures. Jesus uncovers the love of God for men, and allows it to work. It may work by sharp methods, for love can be 'cruel to be kind'. But, we are taught, the object which God sets before Himself is not to break a recalcitrant will, or compel a sullen obedience to His laws, but to draw all men to Himself. But the fact that God loves men, though it may gain a certain amount of assent in the abstract, becomes difficult to realise, and raises grave doubts in the human mind, when men reflect on what the statement involves. (1) The sense of one's own individual insignificance in the universe of Existence this thought presents one difficulty. That God should entertain affection towards humanity as a whole does not seem unreasonable, but we cannot realise the fact that God has a distinct and separate love for each single human soul which has ever lived. Yet, if this be not the truth, then His love for men becomes a mere phrase not worth contending about. (2) Another difficulty is the fact of human unloveliness. Men, taking them as a whole, are not very lovable. Comparatively few inspire real affection. Alas! it is but too true that those who come personally into contact with multitudes, and have to deal with them officially or commercially, come to have a sort of contempt for humanity; they see too much of the foibles and petty faults of character to feel any general sentiment of affection; they have discovered the unloveliness of men. (3) There is one other difficulty, and that the most formidable the fact of human suffering. If it be true that God loves His children, why does He leave them to suffer so? This has been the dark mystery of the ages; it is the difficulty with many still. It has led men to atheism. It has led them to attribute to God the qualities of the devil. It has driven them, in frantic despair, to curse God and die. It has led others to grovel before God as abject slaves before an Oriental despot. It has led others, again, to throw their children into the flames and the waters as propitiatory sacrifices to angry deities. It has led many among us to think of a Law, instead of a Person, as the Centre of things has this apparent Divine indifference to the cries of human agony. II. Now St. Paul looks these facts squarely in the face, and yet bursts out in praise of the goodness and lovingkindness of God. Why does he do so? What new light has he upon the 'painful riddle of life'? He is not hazarding a mere opinion; it is not a conclusion thought out or discovered by any method common among men. Jesus had said not long before that any one who saw Him would see the Father. Now many beheld Him, but comparatively few recognised Him for what He was. In this minority was St Paul. (The Apostle Paul claimed for Himself an equal authority with the other Apostles, because he had seen the Lord, not in a mere vision, but 'objectively' after His Ascension in glory). This sight of God in the Person of Jesus Christ changed his estimate of his fellowmen by changing his notion about God. It set all the facts of life with which he was familiar in a new light. They remained the same, but they no longer meant the same. As he learned from the Master what is the real disposition of God towards men that all men are the sons of God, and that God has a personal interest in each individual soul, because of this relationship this kindled in him that 'enthusiasm of humanity' which is the great mark of Christianity. Real love for men is only possible in the Presence of God. So absolute is the Christian conviction of God's lovingkindness that from it he educes an explanation of human pain, and he does it clearly: 'My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord; for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth... ( et seq. )' (Hebrews 12:5-11 ). The Apostle's assertion amounts to this that the ills which assault men, and sometimes take the zest out of living, are no meaningless accidents, nor purposeless agonies caused by the crampings of a soulless 'law,' but that they are the smartings from the stripes of a rod laid on reluctantly, but intentionally by a Father. It is true that we see many an ill which we find it hard to account for on this theory; that we see sufferings which teach no lesson to the victim, because they do not leave the victim alive to learn, so terrible and swift are they. Nevertheless, while the theory of suffering must remain in some cases partly shrouded in mystery, as a trial of our faith, no other theories of life bring the same intellectual relief and moral uplifting as does the great Christian doctrine that God is love, and that He is slowly bringing His children by this mysterious discipline, among other things, into a recognition of their relationship to Him. S. D. M'Connell. References. III. 14-19. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 216. A. M. Fairbairn, ibid. vol. lviii. p. 19. God's Family Ephesians 3:15 There are many illustrations used in Holy Scripture to set forth the relationship in which the people of God stand to each other and to Him, but the most expressive of these is taken from domestic life. It is the one presented in our text, and under its familiar imagery the Church of God is described as one great family, the members of which are bound to each other by the possession of one common life, the distinction of one common name, and the union with the same parental head. It is a family, the members of which, though sundered by time and space, and divided into two great sections, the one in heaven and the other here on earth, are all bound together in one blessed bond, and linked to each other by special sympathies, and are looking forward to dwell together in one happy and eternal home. I. Relationship with God. It is only through that relationship that they can have communion with each other. To be united to each other they must first be united to Him. Just as in a family it is the possession of a common life, derived from the same parental source, which constitutes the bond of union, so in the family of God it is the spiritual life, derived from Him, which forms the basis of communion. St. John puts this beyond question when he says, 'That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ' (1 St. John 1:3 ). In another place he testifies that this fellowship of Christians with God as their common Father is through faith in His dear Son; for 'as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the Sons of God, even to them that believe in His name' (St. John 1:12 ). Elsewhere we are clearly taught that the impartation of this Divine life is wrought through the Holy Spirit, 'for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God,' and the contrast is very solemn 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His' (Romans 8:9 ; Romans 8:14 ). All true believers, then, are members of this family, and in that respect are designated 'saints' not only on account of their separation from the rest of the world, and the holy service to which they are called, but on account of the Divine life of which they are partakers. II. The Ideal of the Christian Church. To us who are not gifted with omniscience or discerning of spirits, the visible Church is the body of those who profess His truth, are baptised into His name, and observe His ordinances; but all who belong to it do not necessarily belong to that spiritual communion to which properly the name of Saints belongs. A visible Church with its external ordinances and terms of communion is, from the very nature of the case, indispensable in our present state; and the commands concerning our union with the visible Church and our observance of its appointed ordinances are clearly laid down in Scripture; but still we must not forget that this is not enough for our salvation. In order to that there must be vital union with Christ Himself; there must be forgiveness of sin through faith in His precious blood; there must be renewal of heart by His Holy Spirit; there must be willing and faithful service, which springs from love to Him. The judicious Hooker, who is so distinct and copious in speaking of the Church as a visible body, is equally clear in speaking of the Church as the mystical body of Christ. He says: 'That Church of Christ, which we properly term His Body Mystical, can be but one; neither can that one be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as parts thereof are some in heaven already with Christ, and the rest that are on earth (albeit their natural persons are visible) we do not discern under this property, whether they are truly and infallibly of that body.... They who are of this society have such marks and notes of distinction from all others, as are not objects of our sense: only unto God, who seeth their hearts, and understandeth all their secret cogitations, unto Him they are clear and manifest.... If we profess, as Peter did, that we love the Lord, and profess it in the hearing of men, charity is prone to believe all things, and therefore charitable men are likely to think we do so, as long as they see no proof to the contrary. But that our love is sound and sincere, that it cometh from 'a pure heart, and a good conscience, and a faith unfeigned,' who can pronounce saving alone the Searcher of all men's hearts, who alone intuitively knows in this kind who are His?' So that while there is, and must be, a visible Church on earth, and in it a visible communion of saints, there is within that Church a still more sacred shrine, and a still more holy fellowship. There is a Church as seen of men; there is a Church as seen of God. We cannot ignore the one without a breach of duty and of charity. We cannot overlook the other without a forgetfulness of truth, and of our own salvation. We must beware, on the one hand, of that easy and fashionable but deceptive religion which contents itself with the profession of orthodox doctrines, or the observance of appointed ordinances; we must beware, on the other, of that arrogant and selfish spirit which, relying on its own strength or spirituality, considers itself independent of those visible means of grace which have been appointed by God for the personal and mutual benefit of ail His children. III. This twofold view of the Church of God, if it seem on the one hand to narrow our view as to its extent, will help to widen and deepen our ideas as to 'the communion of saints,' for it will show us how manifold and how real that communion is. But does it really narrow our views as to the extent of the Church of God? Does it not rather expand them? Are we not too prone to ask, with the querulous disciples, 'Lord, are there few that shall be saved?' Are we not too apt to exclude from our ideal of the Church those who do not belong to our own communion, or to include in it only those who agree with us in certain views concerning the doctrines or ordinances of religion? And do not our ideas enlarge when we come to think of all the saints of God who lived in all the ages before Christ's birth, and of all who have lived in all the centuries ever since? Do they not take a wider range when we remember the great multitude which 'no man can number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues,' who shall stand at the last before the throne of God, having 'washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb'? It is when we dwell on thoughts like these that we begin to realise that outside our own communions there are and have been saints of God, with whom perhaps we cannot sympathise in respect of all their views, but with whom we can and ought to sympathise in the best of bonds as members of the one great family of God. We come to recognise the family likeness even where we cannot trace the ecclesiastical genealogy, and gladly admit the spiritual relationship even where we cannot verify the mode of admission to it. And we can do all this without prejudice to our convictions or surrender of our principles. The Church a Family Ephesians 3:15 The name of the Church in the text I have selected is 'the family'. There are many names for the Church in the Bible; the family represents perhaps the sweetest. I. What is the Church? When the Church began, it was a family, with the love of a family, the cohesion of a family, the economy of a family, and very soon there came the quarrels that so often happen in a family. Yet a family that sometimes has moments of discord still is full of love. St. Paul calls the Church a brotherhood; it is the development of the idea of the family, for the Church, increasing in ever-widening circles, has names corresponding to that increase. The brotherhood is a wider term than family, it is a uniting of certain people from many families. And, as the Church grows, you find another name for the family in the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is now more than a family, more than a brotherhood; it has become a city, with all the complications of a city, all the varied interest of a city, with its business, its pleasure, and sometimes its vices. But the Church is more than a family, more than a brotherhood, more than a city; it is a commonwealth, and that is the name I like the best The commonwealth. Every member of it is bound to kill selfishness, to work for the good of the community. 'What is best for the people?' is the question of the Church, and the individual must always make his own interest subservient to the good of the whole community. But the Church is more than a family, more than a brotherhood, more than a city, more than a commonwealth; it becomes in the Bible a nation, a collection of nations, until the idea of the Catholic Church is the world converted. II. The Foundation of the Church. What is the Church founded on? What have we got? Now notice. We have a Person Jesus Christ; we have a Book this Bible; we have an Institution the Church of God. A Person, a Book, an Institution the world killed the Person, Jesus Christ, yet today He is alive and more at work than ever; the world tries to kill the Book, yet here it is in your pulpit today as strong as ever; the world has tried to kill the Church, yet, after two thousand years, it is getting larger than ever. Why do they not kill the Book, Why do they not kill the Church? Because they cannot Institutions that are not wanted, die. The Church lives because it is wanted. You want it, you know that Your home wants it That boy of yours in business wants it; that girl of yours, who is just getting married, she wants it The poor children in the slums, they want it The institution is wanted. The Church lives because it is wanted. The immortal part of man wants the Church, and so the Divine foundation fits the Divine need in man, lays hold of your soul, and that is the reason that it lives. You cannot kill it. Churches have died, or in the language of the Book of the Revelation, their candlestick has been removed out of its place churches, but not the Church. The Church lives. References. III. 15. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1249. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 75. C. H. Grundy, Luncheon Lectures at St. Paul's Cathedral, p. 45. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 100. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 128. The Inner Life of a Nation Ephesians 3:16 Who would not desire to possess a strength as invincible as that which was the secret of St. Paul's faith and hope and life? There is an inner and there is an outer man in every one of us. There is an inner and there is an outer life in the nation, in the family, and in the individual. In the nation the inner life is not always recognised, even by its own people, until some grave necessity sets the heart of the nation beating and throbbing, and the people are roused by a common feeling hitherto unsuspected. I wish to point out four of the great characteristics that ought to mark the inner life of our nation. I. No One ought to Forget that in whatever Position he has to Live he ought to be dominated by such a sense of responsibility that he never forgets that the people around him will judge not only his religion but will judge his nationality by the example and evidence which they have in him. II. The Love of Duty must ever characterise every individual among us. It is well known that when Napoleon wrote his despatches he never forgot to mention the glory that he said attached to the achievements of his troops; it is equally well known that when the Duke of Wellington wrote his despatches he never mentioned the word glory, but he never failed to call attention to the duty which his men performed. III. There must be Sympathy with those over whom we have any Authority and those among whom our lot is cast. If India is maintained for long as our great trust and the sphere of our beneficent rule, it will be due not only to the excellence of the rule but to the exhibition of the spirit of sympathy. And that which is true of that nation you may depend upon it is characteristic and true of all those over whom England has any rule. IV. There must be Self-sacrifice. We may thank God for the noble examples given of self-sacrifice by our troops, by our blue-jackets, by men who have done signal and noble service to the Empire. Whether standing, like Lord Cromer, almost alone in Egypt; whether standing like those great Viceroys of India who have maintained our rule and been loyal for our crown; whether it be the lonely hearts or whether it be in the most active spheres of operation; it has been by self-sacrifice, by not seeking their own but by seeking the good of others, that the name and the fame have been obtained. It is the inner life of the family which begets the inner life of the nation. References. III. 16. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 132. III. 16-19. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 707. The Indwelling Christ Ephesians 3:17 There is no religion in the whole world, except the religion of the Gospel, that hints even at such an idea as this God, Christ, in my own self. It is the most wonderful and unexpected thought in the whole inspiration of God. The question that starts in our minds is this 'is this promise to be accepted, to be fulfilled, in anything like its literal meaning'? The answer is this It is a personal and real fact. Jesus Christ dwells in our hearts and rules them, if we are children of God by faith. In proportion as simple faith takes hold of the living Christ, He becomes a real Person and a real Life. If we approach Jesus Christ critically, He will look another way; if we approach Jesus Christ doubtfully, He will look the other way, too; if we approach Jesus Christ sympathetically, the Holy Spirit will help us to know, and to see, and to feel that He is the Friend of our life. I. The thought of Christ dwelling in our heart ought not to be a very difficult one for people like ourselves to grasp its conception. Let us think of an analogy. A widowed mother, with no child but one single boy. This boy, as he grows up, becomes increasingly dear to her heart. As he grows up, to her great sorrow he is overwhelmed with a passionate love of the sea. For years and years that poor lonely widowed soul never hears of him, and wonders whether he is living or dead. She never will leave his name out of her prayers. Is it very difficult for you to understand what is meant when it is said of such a person, 'Her boy dwells in her heart?' Is it more difficult to think of Jesus Christ as the object of religious love dwelling in our hearts also? II. But then Jesus dwells in our hearts in a much more real way than this. Jesus Christ in the believer's heart not only as the object of his affection, but as the very life of his soul. You know, perhaps, the process of grafting, by which a little twig, with no root, is grafted into a tree till it becomes part of the tree, and the life of the tree flows into the twig, and the life of the tree becomes that of the twig. Is it difficult for you, with that analogy, to realise the conception of one person dwelling in another person's heart as the power of that person's soul and life? So the believer appropriates the life of Jesus, and the conception of Christ dwelling in your heart as the life of your soul is not a very difficult one for you to understand. III. Another question arises to one to ask and to answer, which is this, How does Jesus Christ get admission into our hearts in such a way that He may be said to dwell in them? Is that a very difficult question to answer? Is it necessary even to ask the question? How does anybody get admission into our houses so as to dwell in them or to stay in them? By our consent, not otherwise, by no other way. How does Jesus Christ get admission into men's hearts so as to rule and dwell in them? The answer is the same, by men's consent, not otherwise, and in no other way possible or conceivable. Jesus Christ gains admission to our hearts by our own consent, but how does He enter? What is the opening through which, when you have invited your friends to your house, or given them permission to come, they enter? It is the door, and there must be some similar opening through which Jesus Christ enters the heart. What is the opening? What is the means? The opening, the means is this: it is our faith, our simple acceptance of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as the sinner's substitute and the believer's Light. It is the beginning of everything that is good to let Jesus into the heart. You cannot go far wrong when you do that. It only requires a little faith just to open the door. He will bring the Light with Him, pardon, strength for service, and hope, and glory. The way to keep Christ is the way in which we get Him to come. He keeps in our hearts by continual acts of faith on the part of believers. That is the sum and substance of Christianity, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Christ in the soul of the child of God. References. III. 17. C. Brown, God and Man, p. 54. H. S. Holland, God's City, p. 86. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 138. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p. 120. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 142. The Church's Conception of Christ Ephesians 3:17-19 * (R.V.) * The true man desires to know, to understand, to apprehend. Paul was a man who wanted to know to know the highest things. He made it his business in life, next to knowing for himself, to make others know, to be their teacher. At the same time, he was willing to know from others. Paul's desire for these Ephesians was that they might be strong to apprehend with all saints the love of Christ in its breadth, and length, and height, and depth: that is, in its wholeness and fulness. I. It has been said that Paul's thought was something like this. From that old captivity of his in Rome, his mind went away, carried him to the Ægean Sea, whose blue waters lay in beauty about the yellow sand of the Ephesian shore; and, looking in thought upon the land, he seemed to see a mighty castle, a splendid fortress. There it was, beautiful, strong, capacious, majestic. But would all men look at it alike? Paul thought that every one looking upon it would not give the same judgment about it; not that they would disagree about any part of it, but each would be so struck by one part of it as almost to neglect the rest. II. To Paul there was in history one Form, one Existence, one Personality, upon whom many men had been lavishing their thought after His appearance. That Form, that Person was Jesus Christ. He was Love. (1) Some saw the breadth of that love; they thought of 'the nations lying beside each other on the earth, over all of whom the love of Christ would extend itself. (2) Others saw the length of it; they could not forget 'the successive ages during which it will reach'. (3) Others thought of the height of it, of 'the glory at God's throne and near His heart to which it could elevate all'. (4) But others thought of the depth of it; they thought of 'the misery and corruption of sin, into which it will descend'. III. And today in considering Christ, His character and work, men in various ways grasp special aspects of it. Now, it is well for us that we should, therefore, consider the belief of the saints as a whole. As a body, they preserve the symmetry of truth. IV. What was Paul's desire for these Ephesians, and for himself also? It was this that they might be able to apprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth of the love of Christ. He did not desire them to see aspects only of that love, but the whole of it. V. The conception of Christ by the Church is larger than that of any specific Church. He is in each, but is fuller and finer than any one of them represents Him to be. J. Alford Davies, Seven Words of Love, p. 134. References. III. 17-19. R. W. Church, Village Sermons, (2nd Series), p. 287. F. de W. Lushington, Sermons to Young Boys, p. 94. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 95. The Depth of Love Ephesians 3:18 The love of Christ is the love of God. What we find in the heart of Christ, in His character, in His words and actions, is to be regarded as a revelation of the Invisible God. That indeed is the whole significance of Christ's manifestation 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father'. This manifestation was made, we may believe, because apart from it we were incapable of gazing into the heart of God. The aspect of things speaks with sufficient clearness of Law, of Intelligence, of Power working to an end; but it can hardly be said to bear on it the legend of love. Apart from Christ it is open to any man to maintain that God is an unknown Force, inexorable, indifferent to human suffering, regardless of human life, a concatenation of awful uniformities which move like a car of juggernaut over prostrate human beings to some unknown goal. Remembering, then, this incontestable fact, we shall examine with eager interest the evidences of the Love of Christ, and seek to know it, though it passes knowledge. I. First of all there is the human life of Jesus, as it is recorded in the Gospels. However fragmentary the reports, however difficult the attempt may be to harmonise them into a consistent record of facts, or a harmonious combination of features, there can be no question that the records give us an unexampled impression of a heart of love. Not only is the love of Christ indisputable, in the Gospel narrative; but it stands out as a passion of a new type. Compare it with the love of which Plato's Symposium treats, that love, not wholly free from sensual passion, and when free from sensual passion, losing itself in a cold intellectual atmosphere. II. But the impression of His love, made by the course of His earthly life, is wrought to an extraordinary fulness and intensity by the cross. Whenever the cross is allowed to give its own witness, undisturbed by imperfect theories and dogmas, whenever Christ is evidently crucified before the eyes of men, a great appeal proceeds from the unique spectacle. III. And yet, when we have made all allowance for the portrait of love, unexampled and affecting in the story of Christ's life and death, can we say that these historic facts fully explain the language of the text? Surely not. This passion which echoes in the language of Paul and re-echoes with undiminished force in the hymns of Bernard, and again, with even increased fulness and feeling in the letters of Samuel Rutherford; this passion, which is known at the present time, and rises beyond the power of language in millions of Christian hearts, is only to be explained by the interior movements of the Spirit R. F. Horton, The Trinity, p. 133. References. III. 18, 19. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 146. Archbishop Benson, Living Theology, p. 3. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 161. The Fulness of God Ephesians 3:19 These words form the conclusion of St. Paul's prayer on behalf of the Ephesian Church. It is a very wonderful, one might almost say a very awful prayer. And what St. Paul prayed for on behalf of his Ephesian converts, that we too ought to seek for ourselves. I. St. Paul takes for granted that a Real Christian is a Man who has been Made Over Again, and not merely a man of this world who is a little more moral, or a little more decent, or a little more outwardly attentive to his religious duties than other men of the world. Quite the contrary. According to this mighty prayer, the Christian is one upon whom all the powers of the Godhead have been brought to bear, so as to make him what may be termed a Divine man, not a worldly man. See the orderly progression of the Divine work as thus prayed for by St. Paul. First of all St. Paul prays that God the Holy Ghost will give him strength; then that God the Son may dwell in him, giving him first the grace of love, and then the grace of knowledge of Divine things that knowledge which passes or exceeds the comprehension of other men. And then, when the man has been thus prepared by the strengthening which the Spirit brings, and by the Divine love and the Divine knowledge which Christ brings then St. Paul prays for the final grace of all namely, that he may be filled with all the fulness of God the Father. None of us can fully enter into all that these words convey. Perhaps even those who come nearest to being filled with that fulness would be least able to speak about it or to explain it. But still we may try to set forth a little of what it must mean. II. For a Person to be filled with anything, it is Plain that, first of all, he must be emptied of all Else. Hence it is absurd for any of us to think of being filled with God's fulness so long as he is under the dominion of any purely earthly or temporal wishes, or desires, or ambitions, or passions, or tastes. The words imply a totality of self-surrender to God. In praying to be filled with God the Father's fulness, we pray that all our powers and faculties and desires and energies and likes and dislikes may be just what they would be if all our merely earthly desires were taken out of us, all that is selfish and mean and bad were emptied out of us, and the vacant space filled up by a pouring in of the character of God our Father. It is the same as praying that we may be just what God would be if we could imagine God to be put in our place. III. This, then, is what St. Paul Prays for: (1) That each Christian man upon earth may be, each in his own way and in his own sphere, an 'Image of God'; and (2) that each of us may have God's approbation and God's service as his chief end and aim, as an ever-present motive, as a thought never absent from our minds. After all, Christianity consists not so much in what we do as what we are, or rather what we become. Faith in God and Christ; faith in Christ and in the Holy Ghost raises us to a good hope that, if we will but empty ourselves of all that is earthly and selfish, and cling to Him in whatever walk of life He points out to us, God will take care of the growth of our Christian character; He will fill us with His own fulness. References. III. 19. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 455, and vol. xxix. No. 1755. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 256. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 171. Ephesians 3:20 Luther said: 'No one believes how great is the force and efficacy of prayer, unless he has learned it from experience. It is a great thing when anyone feels a mighty need and then can lay hold on prayer. I know this, that as often as I have prayed with earnestness with real earnestness I have without doubt been abundantly answered, and have obtained more than I asked. Our Lord God may sometimes have delayed, but yet He heard me.' E. Kroker, Luther's Tischreden (1903), p. 338, No. 646. References. III. 20. W. F. Shaw, Sermon-Sketches for the Christian Year, p. 87. III. 20, 21. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 273. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1266. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 180. III. 21. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 278. Ephesians 4 In the Memorials of Dr. McLeod Campbell (vol. I. p. 127), he observes, apropos of Edward living's dying conversations, 'I was finding no trace of the subject of the Church in anything she ( i.e. Mrs. Irving) was mentioning, until she said that in the course of that same last day he had asked her to read to him "the testament of the Lord to his Church the neglected testament"; when she read to him the fourth of Ephesians'. The Heavenly Calling Ephesians 4:1 When St. Paul bids us 'walk worthy of our calling,' he bids us do a great thing, and perhaps his words make little impression on many of us. For, in truth, our Christian calling seems a long way off from many of us, and almost out of sight. For the most part we left it behind at our baptism, and have made no further inquiry about it; other callings occupy our time and thoughts. And these lower motives do us injury; they are apt to shut out and overpower the higher. Indeed, this is the rule which the world itself sets up for us. If we keep up to its standard it is enough. And if we were to live here always this might be enough. We might go on buying and selling, and not trouble ourselves about anything further. But, you know, we are not to live here always, and this makes all the difference. There is another and a higher world to be taken into account, and the calling which will suffice for this present world will not suffice for that other world, which is our true home, and whither we are bound. And, what is more than this, God has given us a calling which alone, if we follow it faithfully, will enable us to attain it. I. God has given us His only begotten Son to be our Pattern and Guide. He has come down for this end first of all, to put away our sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and then to guide us in the way which He has trodden before us to Heaven. To this, then, we are called to the imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ to nothing less than this. The world's rule and calling will not carry us far; we must not trust to it, it will break off and fail us when we need it most in the hour of death and in the day of judgment. II. The Ephesians, to whom these words were written, doubtless understood them better than we, for they had been called from being heathens, and all around them were heathens still. Now, we can only understand clearly by way of judgment or comparison, and so, when all around us are professing Christians, it is difficult to understand what our Christian calling is. We do not see, as the Ephesians, the light of Christianity and the darkness of heathenism side by side. And, moreover, what we do see tends to confuse us, for we see men who have been baptised and plainly called to be Christians living in many ways like heathens, though not openly or in the same degree. Thus our views of our Christian calling become indistinct and confused; the Church and the world become one; we cannot tell what our calling is, or how we may walk worthy of it. Yet III. There are certain marks of our calling which cannot be mistaken. (1) There are the sure outward marks which distinguish us Christians from heathens and make up our calling. God has called us through His Church, and by a Sacrament, and has bidden us serve Him in it. By the Sacrament of Baptism we were admitted into His Church, otherwise we could not be Christians at all. This is what really separates us from the heathen: we are made by our baptism members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. These are privileges which Christian men have, and the heathen have not. They are not joined to Christ by His ordinances, they have not the remission of sins, or the gift of the Holy Ghost, which come by Christian baptism, and in no other way. They are not made partakers of the Divine Nature, they have no share in the blessings which are given through the Church in Confirmation of holy matrimony, in sickness, or in death above all, they cannot be partakers of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Communion. (2) Again. There are certain other marks, of which St. Paul here tells us. There is the mark of Unity. After having exhorted us to walk worthy of our vocation, the Apostle thus explains what he means: 'With all lowliness and meekness, and longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace'; for, he adds, 'there is one Body and One Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, One God and Father of all, Who is above all, and through all, and in you all'. Here, then, is a plain mark we must be lovers of unity; this is the end of our calling, that we may all be one in Christ Jesus. He came to make us one, to take away the ancient curse, to join men together once more in Himself, to be Himself the centre of their unity, to join them to Himself, and make them one in His Body, which is the Church. (3) There is the mark of Christian love. 'Love,' says the Apostle, 'is the fulfilling of the law.' 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, for love worketh no ill to his neighbour.' So that Christian love or charity is the very bond and foundation of this unity. It does no ill to its neighbour it does the very contrary, its seeks out all means of doing him good; and so, as injuries divide men, and cause them to hate each other and separate from each other, so does love, by doing good, unite and bind together in one. (4) There are those graces which are the grounds of Christian love, the only condition of its existence. So when the Apostle bids us to 'walk worthy of our vocation,' it is 'with all lowliness, and meekness, and longsuffering, forbearing one another in love'. And for the same cause he bids us put away 'lying, and wrath, and theft, and filthy speaking, and bitterness, and clamour, and evil speaking,' because these things tend to separate men and destroy the unity which Christ has appointed for them. These, surely, are plain marks of our calling. Unless we have these marks in some good measure we cannot be His. We must be joined to Him by the Sacraments which He hath ordained for that purpose first by Baptism and then by Holy Communion and by being partakers of the Church's offices and prayers; that, thus being made one with Him, we may be one also, by this outward union in His Body, and by the grace of charity which is its life, with all our brethren. References. IV. 1. W. J. Hills, Sermons and Addresses, p. 137. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 170. F. de W. Lushington, Sermons to Young Boys, p. 15. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 194. God's Mild Curfew Ephesians 4:1-2 We are all familiar with Mrs. Browning's beautiful words: Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines For all the heat of the day, till it declines And death's mild curfew shall from work assoil. Should we not rather say God's mild curfew? If life is long, that curfew comes before death. Between the hour of curfew and the hour of the last rest there is a blessed and solemn pause. We are assoiled from labour before we die, if only we keep our ears open. If we really pray for guidance to the Most High, we shall hear the curfew and hail it when it comes. It is because we do not hear and obey the signal of release that with so many of us the last act is tragedy. I. In how many cases this is so! Laborious, honoured, and powerful lives have again and again ended in frustration and stress. Men would not hear the mild curfew of God, and they have tried to ignore or to battle with the unkindly summons of man. They have purposed that more than the full lustre that beamed in the days of their meridian triumph should glorify their last years. And the result has been that gloom has come upon them at the last and lain upon them like a pall. The statesman has lived to the extreme limit of human life to sit among the ruins of the tower which he built, and which he has thrown down with his own hand. Even when this destiny has been devoutly endured, it has been full of sadness and of warning. Another has been expelled from his kingdom and has spent his closing days in bitter and chafing thoughts, in cruel, scornful, impotent protests and complaints. The great preacher who stayed beyond his hour has died shattered in soul and body upon the field. The ambition to sit too long at life's imperial banquet has brought the proudest to sup off the broken meats in the end, and to eat their bread in tears. It may be said, and it is sometimes true, that these humiliations have subdued the spirit, and that it had to be subdued thus before there could be worked upon it the last miracle of spiritual change. It may be said that sometimes unchequered success has blinded and hardened, and that a new nobility of soul has sprung from the new discipline of sorrow and failure. It may be so, but this must mean that the moral nature was partly stunted and partly diseased. II. They are right, we believe, who think that the last stage of a long life ought to be its glory and its crown. John Bunyan was inspired to speak of the land of Beulah as bordering the Jordan on this side. Yet how few of our greatest and noblest visibly tarry there at last and pass away in the splendour of its peace. A famous Swedenborgian was wont to speak of the progress towards perfection as made by the removal of present happiness. If happiness were continuous there would be no advance. So happiness is taken from us, and we pass on to a new stage, day succeeding day through the six stages of regeneration till the evening and the morning of the sixth day, and then the finished work and the day of rest. The dream of the mystics was not all a dream. They imagined that there was a land to be reached before death, secluded from the tumult and the pain of time, and before which the tempests might blow their challenging horns in vain. The Middle Age imagined the famous temple, Sangreal, with its dome of sapphire, its six-and-thirty towers, its crystal crosses, and its hangings of green samite, guarded by its knights, girded by impenetrable forests, glittering on the onyx summit of Mount Salvage, invisible to the impure, inaccessible to the faithless, but giving to the simple the immediate presence of the Infinite. There before dying it is granted to gaze, to love, and to know. There is a spiritual reality which corresponds to this. For years and years on to old age men dream that there is only one kind of happiness, the happiness of their wills gratified and their ambitions realised and the little idols they have set up smiling down upon them. When they are made wise in the communion of the Holy Ghost, they understand that the true blessedness is quite other than that, that it comes to those who have died to the anarchy of inordinate desire and live the life that is hidden with Christ in God. The mood of intense and simple blessedness, which is so much higher than the happiness that comes from prosperous and prominent and well-rewarded work, rises from our faster attachment to Christ, from our completer detachment from the things of earth and time, from our clearer realisation of the Mystical Union. The Christian realises the height of his peace, not in the company of admiring and applauding crowds, not in seeing the spirits subject to him, but in the company of that Love which has chosen him, and found him, and carried him away. It is to that profounder blessedness God's mild curfew calls us. W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, p. 45. References. IV. 1-3. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. ii. p. 132. IV. 1-6. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 148. IV. 1-16. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 97. A Plea for Unity Ephesians 4:2-3 Much is heard about Christian unity and the paralysing effect that our divisions inevitably produce on various Christian bodies. We may well consider this question on the Sunday after Ascension Day, and our text is certainly appropriate. I. Why has there been Failure? 'Endeavouring' suggests failure, does it not? 'Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,' that is the lesson which comes home to us in this season. Surely Ascension time should strongly develop our appreciation of the living Christ Who is at our very hand. When we think of the growth of wealth and the influence that is exerted by it, it is easy to see that material things attain a great hold over the thoughts and the imaginations of men, and the result is a weakening of our spiritual capacity. The announcement was made to the Apostles that Jesus Christ would come again. It was graven deep in their memory. Jesus was gone, but they felt that He was very near, and they felt that that unseen Presence might at any moment come to them again. But to us Christ is hidden. He is, as it were, far off behind the veil which hides Him from us. Is it not so? We have not the sublime faith of the Apostles, who thought that at any moment He might be with them again; and it is this which separates us from those who do not agree with us; it is this want of spiritual force which prevents unity. We must pray that the Holy Spirit may operate with all Christians, and it is this operation which leads to unity. II. The Qualities of the Holy Ghost. What are the qualities of the world-restraining, world-uniting Holy Spirit? Do not these qualities make for peace and the bond of love? We cannot wonder that the Lord Jesus Christ made it His last prayer that His Church might be one when we know what has occurred, what is always occurring by the lack of unity. Yet this unity which has always been desired has never yet been realised. How do we account for our Lord's Prayer that His Church may be one? He knew that dissension was bound to come into the Church, and that there was bound to be disagreement between it and the world bound to be disputes between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of man. Did unity exist in the days of St. Paul? No, it never did exist within the Church; and when we read of the differences in the early Church, and of those differences of opinion, of course there must be a feeling of bewilderment on all those who have prayed for unity when they think that there has never yet been that blessed peace which we have all hoped for, and which we will try to pray for more earnestly than ever. We should do our best to heal our divisions, and we should seek after that unity of the spirit of which St. Paul speaks in our text. III. Unity is Strength. Let us be united. Above all, let us be united in prayer. We may surely hope that if our hearts be opened to let in the influence of the Holy Spirit, the day will come when we are united in peace because we have endeavoured to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. References. IV. 2. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays After Trinity, p. 129. IV. 2, 3. Bishop Creighton, The Heritage of the Spirit, p. 201. Unity, Not Uniformity Ephesians 4:3 These words of St. Paul find their place in the letter which has justly been called a treatise on the ideal Church. Its constitution, its ministry, and its aims show themselves in indwelling, vital force. Much needed as they were, no doubt, to those to whom they were at the time addressed, they have had their application in all the ages of the world-wide Church, and they come home to us with a special force in these later days. Let us try to arrive at their real meaning. I. The Oneness of the Spirit. Let us get away from the time-honoured and beautiful language of our Authorised Version, and let us make for ourselves & clearer and more literally plain version of the words as St. Paul wrote them. 'Eagerly striving to guard the oneness of the Spirit in all,' that is in the bond of peace. The oneness of the Spirit! The Apostle is inspired by that glorious conception of the one holy apostolic Church which has ever been the cherished dream of all the noblest and best Christian teachers and leaders of all shades of opinion in every age, yet which has never been realised since the first few years of the infant Church's life in Jerusalem. It seems that, if we look at the whole body of professing and baptised Christians throughout the world, or if we narrow our horizon and confine our scrutiny to our own branch of the Church, this ideal is farther from us than even in the most controversial and troublous times of the past. II. The Dawn of a Brighter Era. In spite of all this, however, there are many signs around us which herald the dawn of a new era and a better time. The day has gone by and thank God for it when men treated unity as if it were uniformity, and endeavoured to procure it by physical torture or the penal clauses of Acts of Parliament. We have learnt by experience that men cannot be coerced by human and material means to think alike, and that carnal weapons will never promote the spiritual kingdom of our dear Lord and Master; and if we have learnt so much, we have surely advanced towards a right comprehension of what St. Paul in his text begs us seriously to strive for. Even in his days grievous party faction had arisen in many of the newly formed Christian communities, and yet he could write, in spite of these divisions and factions, 'guard the oneness of the Spirit,' as if it were a treasure which had not been lost. III. The Treasure not Lost. Let us who now read his words lay them to heart, and take heart and thank God. Let us remember, while we naturally lament the bitterness of party jealousy and sectarian strife, that, paradoxical as it may seem, it was the Prince of Peace Himself Who said of His own mission, 'I am not come to bring peace, but a sword'. For you and for me, then, it seems that the message of God is this: let us hold fast that form of sound words which we have received as our most precious heritage. 'One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one hope of our calling,' let these be our watchwords in the battle; but let us remember that we are called upon to be in charity with all men; let us fight the unfair and sneering judgment of our fellows who cannot see our aspect of the truth; let us remember the words of Him Who said, 'Forbid him not, for he that is not against us is for us'. But let us also rejoice in the success of any endeavour to win souls for our dear Master's kingdom; so we, by zealously trying to guard the oneness of the Spirit by means of the bond of peace, and having continued faithful to our trust here, may be counted worthy of entering into the home of perfect peace hereafter, where all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity shall be finally united in Him, and shall be made partakers in the glory of the Trinity in unity. The Unity of the Spirit Ephesians 4:3 The world upon which St. Paul looked out was divided by most serious divisions, although outwardly it appeared more united than ever it had been before, in the unity of the great Roman Empire. To the Jew the Gentile was a dog, and no words could express the contempt of the Gentile for the Jew. Here was one of the great divisions of the world. Another was the division between slaves and freemen. A slave was hardly accounted a man. Besides this, there were the divisions which we ourselves look out upon to-day rich and poor, noble and baseborn, educated and ignorant, cultured and rude. Yet St. Paul could speak of a unity, a oneness which could bind men together. I. Let us try then to understand what this unity was. The Jews had always been looking forward to a great Prince Who should come from God to draw them together as a nation, and make them victorious over the heathen world. And the Messiah had come, but in so different a guise that they disowned and rejected Him. St. Paul had learned to see in Christ the Son of God, Who had become Man, as the One who had shown to men what is the true human life, and had lifted our humanity to the very throne of the universe. Here was a hope for all mankind. Those who accepted Christ as their Lord received a new life. They were made and kept one in Him. In Christ's name they were placed on a level of perfect equality. It did not matter whether they were slaves or freemen, they were lifted up by their baptism into a position of equal spiritual privilege. The slave, St. Paul says, was Christ's freeman, and the master was Christ's slave. It did not matter whether they were rich or poor, high or low, wise or unlearned, they were lifted by their baptism to an equal wealth and nobility of spiritual riches and Divine sonship. This was the unity which St. Paul so prized. Here was, to his view, the hope of the world. II. As St. Paul looked into the future he saw the vision of a splendid hope. The Body of Christ was growing as new members were being perpetually baptised into it. If only the unity could be preserved, that was the essential point. The conception of the body must be grasped and lived up to. The Christian life must be above all things a life of membership in the body. What has been the result to the world of that little seed of unity which was planted in apostolic days? First, the fierce controversy between Jew and Gentile as to their rights and privileges within the Christian society has disappeared. Next, after many centuries the great curse of slavery has been removed from all Christian countries, and men are no longer bought and sold like cows and horses. Further, the provision of education for the very poorest has begun to do something to bridge the gulf which for so long divided those who could read from those who could not, and a way is opened for the workman's clever boy to reach the university. Something has been done, and we do well to take account of it. It is slow work, indeed, but yet the world moves, and this in spite of the fact that the Christian society has fallen so short of the Apostle's ideal, and has failed so conspicuously to keep the unity. If the unity had been kept, how great would the progress have been! As we look round today we are tempted to despair in view of the division among the Christians themselves. Where, we ask, is the humility that delights in lowly service, where is the mutual forbearance that makes quarrels impossible? What has become of the unity of the one body and the one Spirit? Must we sadly despair of the one hope of mankind? Has Christianity failed? If it has failed, or so far as it has failed, it has been because it has lost sight of its early ideal. It has forgotten to keep the unity. If it is to recover its ancient power, and to continue its sacred work, we must recover the lost ideal, we must realise the truth of the body and its members, we must cultivate the life of fellowship. References. IV. 3. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 607. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 248. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays After Trinity, p. 140. Archbishop Maclagan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 241. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i. p. 56. R. Kemp, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 340. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 155. Bishop Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 116. Basil Wilberforce, Sanctification by the Truth, p. 85. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 112. Ephesians 4:3-6 The call for unity is always attractive to the social instincts of mankind, and in times of danger it becomes a stirring cry. No one, I suppose, but a misanthrope, would desire, if it could be avoided, to remain at variance with his neighbour. And there are times when religion is threatened, or when evil seems to loom large, when we turn instinctively toothers for sympathy and help. Unity, whether of outward organisation or inward spirit, always stands for some kind of strength. I. Our Unhappy Divisions. At the bottom, I suppose, of all our Christianity lies the one object that the whole world should be converted to Jesus Christ; and nothing, surely, can be more contrary to the mind of Him we call our Master, and by Whose name we are called, than the unhappy divisions of Christendom. St Paul comprises in the unity of the Spirit nine sources of oneness. When we have so much in common, how is it that we cannot forget the points on which we are not alike? We are bound to ask ourselves sometimes, What is the reason for this discordant element? Why is it that there has been hostility even to some of the historic survivals of primitive Christianity? St. Paul would not force unity into uniformity. He recognises that under the operation of the same Spirit there are diversity of gifts. But all are to be parts of the same body, joined together in Jesus Christ. We think, perhaps, of the sins of the official Church in the past; but I think it was not merely the unwisdom of the Church in those times towards those bodies or men who had new ideas which seemed to be contrary to the spirit of Christianity, but which have often proved to be merely a reinterpretation of its creeds. It was not merely the grasp of temporal power. It was not merely the un-Christian and careless lives of those who have at different times represented the Church. There must be some stronger reason than this why men who claim to be animated by the Spirit of Christ are yet very widely separated from each other. I suppose the dividing line is often found in the very primary conception of what the Church is. II. The Basis of Unity. Unity, if it is something more than a mere philosophic dream, if it is to have something more than an abstract value, is bound to have some outward expression. It would seem from the first that the Church which was to be Christ's representative in the world must have some rules, some outward organisation, some officers who should be held responsible, and some form of belief which it could hand on as descriptive of the religion it maintained. History has brought to us certain wide divergencies of opinion as to the character of the essence of Church organisation. On the one side a great deal has been sacrificed to this ideal; while, on the other, liberty of conscience and opinion has become a sort of fetish. The Church of England holds a middle way between these two ideas. But surely the great thing for us when we aim at the unity of the Spirit, is to recognise that there is a great deal for the Church, and, while we hold fast our own interpretation of the best way to reach it, to recognise that others sincerely believe that there is a different interpretation of the facts. III. A False Unity. At the same time, in religion, which demands the very highest exercise of all man's faculties, the truth is of the utmost importance, and for a man to acquiesce in anything which appears to him not to be the highest form of truth is for him to be a traitor to his nature which was made in the image of God. There can be, perhaps, no unity of the Spirit between a man who holds firmly the Divinity of Christ, and another who is entirely doubtful about Christ being God at all. Surely it is not compromise of this kind that is asked for. We believe that God has appointed the Church to convert the world through certain means of salvation; this is His way, and we have no right to choose another. Again and again we are implored in the New Testament to hold fast the form of sound words. We are warned against thinking that it does not matter what belief we have or how we express it in worship. These things, we are bound to remember, have really the closest relationship to practical life. But when we have put before ourselves this ideal of Christ's Church, when we have sincerely looked into our hearts and examined what our belief is, then we may go on to be charitable towards other people whom we may also sincerely believe have a different conception of the ideal. One Spirit Ephesians 4:4 'One Spirit' means that, just as in the fulness of time, the Eternal Son, Who had from all eternity been in the secrets of the Father's counsels, Who had been the agent in creation, Who had made all things, and without Whom was nothing made that was made, came forth to carry out their joint plan of Redemption with the cry, 'Lo! I am come to do Thy will, O God'; so also in the fulness of time from the heart of the same Godhead came forth God the Holy Spirit; and with the sound of a rushing mighty wind and with tongues of fire He came forth and tabernacled on earth as God the Son had done. This and nothing less is the awful truth, that He is as really on earth now as Jesus was in the home of Bethany, that He has never gone back, that there is an Ascension Day for God the Son, but that there is no Ascension Day for God the Holy Ghost. I. What then is it that the Christian Church believes? (1) First, that He is a Person that He comforts, strengthens, guides, loves as only a Person can. (2) That He is a distinct Person; at the baptism of Jesus Christ, God the Father says: 'This is My beloved Son'. God the Son is in the water; but God the Holy Ghost descends in bodily form as a dove, distinct from the other two Persons of the Godhead. (3) That we live under His dispensation now; that these are the times of the Holy Spirit; and that we might as well describe a home and leave out the mother's love, as describe religion and leave out the 'One Spirit'. II. How is 'One Spirit' the secret of a peaceful, loving, and progressive religious life? We see in a moment by looking at the functions the Spirit came into the world to fulfil. (1) He came first, we are told, 'to take of Christ and show Him to us'; He was to make Christianity real to us; He was to take of the cross and bring its meaning home to us, and so convict the world of sin, and righteousness, and judgment; He was so to work upon our hearts as to make us cry each to ourselves as we look at the cross: 'He loved me and gave Himself for me'. (2) He was to give us the sense of the Fatherhood of God and help our infirmities in prayer. (3) The express object and aim of the One Spirit was to draw us together, to make the world good and to make it one. III. What, then, are we to do in order to put ourselves in connection with the moving Power of the Spiritual world? (1) We are told to ask for Him to come. To pray for the Holy Spirit means to put yourself in a frame of mind to which the Holy Spirit can come. It means (a) Self-examination. (b) Surrender. (c) Obedience. IV. But suppose you do all this, and pray for guidance to the 'One Spirit,' and then apparently are guided wrong? What are we to say? (1) There is no promise at all that the immediate results of the guidance will appear. We must hear what the years and centuries may say against the hours. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, p. 133. References. IV. 4. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 207. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 498. IV. 4-6. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 212. IV. 5. J. Keble, Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, p. 19. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 39. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 203. IV. 5, 6. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 111. IV. 6. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 173. W. M. Sinclair, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiv. p. 240. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 334. Ephesians 4:7 Henri Perreyve writes: 'We must indeed admire that flexibility of the Christian faith, which makes it accessible, even in the practice of perfection, to souls of very different kinds. Thus the same faith, the same worship, the same morality lead to heaven the soul of a profound philosopher like Thomas of Aquinas and the soul of a poor village child.' Lettres de Henri Perreyve a un Ami d'Enfance, p. 252. References. IV. 7. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 199. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 207. IV. 7-12. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 982. IV. 8. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 103. W. Knight Chaplin, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 70. H. J. C. Knight, The Record, vol. xxvii. p. 2. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 195. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 271. IV. 8-10. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. pp. 242, 361. IV. 8-12. J. Clifford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 88. IV. 8-13. T. H. Ball, Persuasions, p. 195. IV. 9. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 85; ibid. vol. vi. pp. 145, 334; ibid. vol. vii. p. 222. IV. 9-10. G. Bellett, Parochial Sermons, p. 197. IV. 10. W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches for the Christian Year, p. 108. J. Keble, Sermons for Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday, p. 114. IV. 11. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 16. IV. 11, 12. J. B. Brown, Aids to the Development of the Divine Life, No. vi. W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 110. J. Parker, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 201. IV. 11-13. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. ii. p. 195. Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 35. IV. 12. Bishop Creighton, University and other Sermons, p. 138. Till and Until Ephesians 4:13 The immediate point is not what we are coming to, but the fact that we are coming, and that something is coming to us, and that this double action is the secret of the inspiration, the culture, the strengthening of our innermost life. The text therefore is 'till... until,' the something that says, You have not finished yet; there is another hill to climb, and then you will see it; there is another stream to ford, and on the other bank of that stream you will see what flowers can grow, and how mean are all the plants on this side the river. Till the sunshine comes, till the heavenly band appears and sends its thundering anthem through the quivering sky; till then, hope on! You have not yet arrived, but you are proceeding, you are on the right road, and you have this little singing word to cheer you in all your climbing and in all your descending and in all your fighting and in all your sorrow, 'until !' The keyword is till or until; the same word, the same idea, and that idea an idea of encouragement and assurance, a word to hide in the heart and to listen to in the darkness when there seems to be no 'until,' when there seems to be but one settled frown on the brow of time. Yet the custodians of God's decrees, the Divinely appointed priests of the eternal ark, are enabled to hear the sweet word 'until,' and such men, unknown, mayhap despised, have kept the world alive. I. Where does this word 'till' or 'until' occur? Where all the great words occur, as I have told you a thousand times. Where do all the great words occur? In the Book of Genesis; and you have never read it! I speak not to the few who are familiar with the Divine Word, but to the many who never read it. You do not read the Divine Word when you only read it in the letter. The Divine Word is not a letter, but a spirit; it is not written music, but music sung and music brayed out from brass and throbbed as it were on living drums. We must go to Genesis for our first grand 'until' (chapter 49:10). Jacob is dying, he knows that his life is slowly but certainly trickling away; he calls all his sons around him, and makes such speeches as mortal man never made either before or since; and most of you have never read them! Never was such eloquence heard before; there are no forged climaxes, no mechanically built periods, no half-forgotten and hesitant recitations; but great, grand, flowing eloquence. When the patriarch came to his son Judah he waxed almost as eloquent as when he came to his son Joseph, but not altogether as eloquent. The old man was at his best when his hands as it were groped for the head of Joseph, but he was beautiful when he spake to Judah Judah who bore an awful scar of unfaithfulness and badness, but which was much covered up, if not wholly healed, by processes of grace which only experienced souls understand. Said Jacob, 'The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come'. There is the 'till' or the 'until,' the word of promise, the gleam of hope, the pledged morning. No man can tell us what 'Shiloh' means; we have had the word in Hebrew and in Greek, and we have called around it a whole marketplace of expositors, a whole gallery and sanhedrin of learned men, but they can make nothing really final out concerning all the wells and fountains and springs that are hidden in this word Shiloh. But there is a Christian acceptation of the term, which is sufficient for us. The ancient Jews, indeed, associated the name Messiah with the word Shiloh, and regarded them as practically interchangeable terms; but the ancient Jews did not know Messiah as we know Him; therefore we must attach a Christian interpretation to Shiloh, and find him in Bethlehem, and on Calvary, and on Olivet, and away yonder in the midst of the temple of intercession. II. Another 'until' we find in Psalms 73:17 , 'Until I went into the sanctuary'. Then I saw all about it. The sanctuary is the only place where you can see everything, Church or State, just as it is. You see nothing really until you see it from the point of the altar. The religious soul, the soul that bathes itself in the stream of the Divine wisdom and the Divine light, is the greatest soul under heaven. III. We might call on our way in the house of Canticles, the house of the love-dreams, and there in chapter 2:17 we shall read, 'Until the day break and the shadows flee away'. That is a grand 'until'. Is it possible that the sun can find his way through all the grey cold clouds of December? Is there a day promised? Will the day break? Who ever heard the gates of the morning creak as they swung back on their golden hinges? Who ever heard a cramping army bringing up the sun as if by strength of muscle? Who ever heard the stars make a noise? Yet through all this wondrous process of the suns there is a silent march, a silent incoming of the Messianic period, and when the day breaks upon the grave, the grave shall be as a cradle; and when the day breaks on sorrow and sickness, failure, disappointment, and manifold misery, we shall see the whole sphere of life in its proper colours, relations, and proportions, and find that God has been busy in the darkness. God does wonderful things in the night time; what He has done in the sanctuary of densest darkness we shall never know till the shadows flee away; then we shall find that all the while He has been building a palace for us, a right glorious and royal house, and making things ready for our souls away beyond the humble paths of the stars which now we think a long way off, but we shall think them a longer way off still when we get above them and look down on them with a kind of gracious contempt of their twinkling and quivering lamps. Hope on! There is a word in the wintry air, a song in the wintry night 'Until!' IV. Paul's idea of 'until' was a coming to the measure of the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus. Perfect does not mean what it is often supposed to mean and what people get up more or less futile and senseless meetings for the purpose of promoting. There are no perfect men in that narrow sense. There is probably no sin greater in its possible implications than sinlessness as it is narrowly and imperfectly understood. Not until resurrection has done for the body what regeneration has done for the soul shall we know the meaning of 'perfect' in its moral and spiritual sense. Meanwhile, it may signify the culmination of a new period, the advancement, chapter after chapter, of a new book, promotion after promotion to school after school in the higher academies of creation; it may mean as much as can be done here and now, but not perfection except as the end is the beginning of another period. The Bible ends, Revelation can only begin. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. II. p. 252. The Perfect Man Ephesians 4:13 Christ gave His gifts to men that they might grow up to be men, and reach that perfect manhood in which there is no error or infirmity. I. The body has to be seen to if we would be perfect men; an unhealthy body is a great hindrance. II. The full and free use of all our intellectual powers, whatever they may be, is necessary to the attainment of the perfect manhood. III. Above all, we must see to the complete development of our moral nature. W. C. Smith, The Scottish Review, vol. VII. p. 443. References. IV. 13. C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 313. H. J. C. Knight, The Record, vol. xxvii. p. 2. T. G. Bonney, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xv. p. 940. Bishop King, The Love and Wisdom of God (A Sermon for Railway Men), p. 186. R. J. Drummoud, Faith's Certainties, p. 275. W. L. Watkinson, The Fatal Barter, p. 177. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 148. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 216. IV. 13, 14. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 31. IV. 13-15. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. i. p. 198. Doctrinal Fickleness Ephesians 4:14 I. The Apostle suggests to us a grave impediment to religious growth. 'That we henceforth be no more children.' (1) The words before us imply that doctrinal fickleness is inconsistent with advanced religious life. It is the symptom of childishness, a state that must be outgrown before the standard of Christ can be in any sense reached. We smile at the tastes of those eccentric orientals who have brought themselves to admire a cramped foot and tottering gait in their women, and yet there is a sphere in which some of us show a taste as perverted as that. We praise faith in proportion to the crippled daintiness of its foothold and the diameter of the oscillations it describes in its clumsy effort at progress. With some people, doctrinal fickleness is the fashionable trick that stamps a man a member of the higher coteries of culture. (2) The Apostle traces back the diverse teaching that issues in doctrinal inconstancy to the loose moral conditions of the society in which his readers lived. II. The conditions of religious growth are suggested in the words before us. 'But speaking the truth in love.' Alford translates, 'Being followers of the truth'; and Ellicott, 'Holding the truth in love'. It is only in the sphere of the renewed affections that the perception of truth in its ultimate certainties is possible. Do not hanker too anxiously after scientific verification for the highest religious truth. The highest spiritual truth can only be known through spiritualised affections. The touchstone of truth is its power of promoting moral growth, and little moral growth seems possible to us away from the atmosphere of Divine love diffused through the ministries of the Church. III. The standard of Christian growth. 'May grow up into Him in all things which is the Head, even Christ.' His life was spotless, and the sacrifice unwavering and absolute a continuous daily carrying of the cross on which He died, because the faith was unclouded and steadfast. And this unclouded vision of God and of the world for which He gave Himself was received and sustained through the Spirit that descended upon Him in visible witness at His baptism, when the heavens were opened to His humanity, and the glory of the far-off wonders streamed into the nature He had received of the Virgin. The standard is put up for us in Jesus Christ. And it is this same Spirit which prepared this humanity and then inhabited it with constant light, which proceeds from Him to us, which works through the true Christian ministry in all its forms, and will, if we are followers of the truth in love, take us up even into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Ephesians 4:14 In some of the typhoons that sweep the coasts of Eastern Asia, trees that are torn up by the roots not infrequently suffer less permanent injury than trees to which no visible damage has been done. I have seen a tree, blown down after it had attained a height of ten or fifteen feet, strike a new root at the summit of the old growth, and thrive again for years. Trees, on the other hand, from which scarcely a bough has been snapped, die from the mere shock their sensitive fibres receive in the storm. I have seen men who were my contemporaries in theological study turn their backs upon the Christian ministry and become leading sceptics. The hurtling storm broke, and they were plucked up by the roots. I am not so sure that their destiny is so sad as that of other men I know, who have retained every separate article of their creed intact, but the sensitive fibres of whose faith have been so agitated by the passing controversies, that their beliefs, whilst retaining the old logical completeness, have almost ceased to be vital and operative. T. G. Selby, The Imperfect Angel, p. 119. References. IV. 14. W. B. Selbie, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 294. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 207. Ephesians 4:14-23 We are reading in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. It is more like walking through a forest than dallying in a garden. We must in many a case give up his grammar and acquaint ourselves with the music of his soul. Paul did not write much; when he did write he wrote as a blind man might be supposed to write, in large capital letters, saying, 'Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand'. Poor weak-eyed man, he could hardly see the boldest capitals which he inscribed upon his paper; and as a tired man he thought he had done more than he really had done; he thought it was a large letter because it took so much out of him. There are many standards of measurement. I. We have come to the fourteenth verse of the fourth chapter: 'That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.' Yet we must always be children. Children are so good that we baptise them; we receive them into our arms with this certificate, written in light and perfumed in the incense of the morning, 'Of such is the kingdom of God,' and we baptise them with the dew of the morning. Yet we must in another sense no longer be children, we must not tarry in the cradle; he would be a monster, not a man, who at thirty years of age still needed to be rocked to sleep in his cradle. It is in these things that we are not to be children; not in the child-sense, the childlike sense, the little clinging, trustful child-sense; always that; in that sense the heavens are full of cradles. To God we must always be beginning; to the Infinite we must always be little sparklets, mere specks and blossoms of things, holding within us great and solemn possibilities. In another sense we are not to be childish, foolish, receiving instruction and letting it fall out of the mind as soon as it gets into it; in that sense let us be no more children, tossed to and fro, carried about by every wind; that is the children's little game, and for children it is natural and it is pleasant. II. Look what an image of human nature is given in these words 'alienated from the life of God.' The whole of the eighteenth verse is a great nocturne, it is a picture struck out of a cloud, it is a statue hewn out of sevenfold midnight. 'Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.' 'Alienated from the life of God' O how shall we represent that isolation, that desolated orphanage? Shall we imagine a tree taking its roots out of the earth and placing itself upon the face of a rock that it may have no more connection with the soil? for the soil is full of light, the soil is full of dew; though there be no rain on the surface, there is dew at the core. We dig down to dew, and in all the strata through which we dig we are cutting sunshine to pieces; the earth is a store of morning, a gallery piled with sunshine. Shall we imagine the poor tree saying, I will have none of it, I will tear myself out of this place, and instead of seeking to plant myself in another part of the soil I will lay myself down on the rock and turn my roots to the morning sun? It cannot be; for a day or two it may seem as though it were a possibility and even a fact, but only for a day or two; the tree must be rooted in the earth as the earth is rooted in God, where all things grow harmonically, proportionately, sympathetically, and tree waves to tree as hymn might sing to hymn. There is a dread possibility of a man taking himself out of the current of things. The soul that takes itself out of the appointed currents shall die Many persons are trying to live without God; they are alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them. They do not know that other people are praying for them, they do not understand the philosophy of intercession. We know not who may be praying for us in the general assembly and Church of the firstborn; but we know that Jesus Christ Himself ever liveth to make intercession for us. In the nineteenth verse there is an expression more terrible, if possible, than we have yet come upon. 'Past feeling.' Read the whole verse: 'Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness'. 'Past feeling.' Is not he past feeling who for thirty years has heard the Gospel preached with simplicity and pathos and power, and is today a worm of the earth, a groveller in the mud? 'Past feeling': the spring comes without being hailed and saluted, and the summer is allowed to pass by without a smile of recognition, and the golden autumn is only regarded as a contribution to the marketplace, and all the jewellery of frost and all the spotless linen of the mountain snow go for nothing, because he who was made in the image and likeness of God has lost sensibility and power of response to all poetic and ideal and spiritual appeals. III. In all this magnificent portrayal of human nature there are top-lights, half-lights, bright lights, gleamings above the brightness of the sun. For example, Paul talks about coming 'into a perfect man'. He will not despair at all the rubbish which he has been portraying and pathetically describing; he sees the possibility of growth. A perfect man means a mature man, a full-grown man who has reached the highest inch of his possible stature, not a perfect man in any merely sentimental and pietistic sense, but full grown. The orchard is perfect when the apples are ready for plucking; the acres are perfect when the golden grain swings in the gentle breeze, and says without words, I am ready to be cut down and to be turned into bread. And what a beautiful expression we find in the fifteenth verse 'speaking the truth in love': truth-ing it in love, doing everything in love; growing up into Him in all things in love; finding our duty in love. If we lose this power of love we cannot do any duty, we cannot be our best selves. It is motive that gives a man the true self-possession. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. II. p. 210. Ephesians 4:15 After Macaulay had published his article in the Edinburgh Review on Gladstone's ecclesiastical views, the latter wrote a letter to him, containing the following words: 'In those lacerating times one clings to everything of personal kindness in the past, to husband it for the future; and, if you will allow me, I shall earnestly desire to carry with me such a recollection of your mode of dealing with a subject upon which the attainment of truth, we shall agree, so materially depends upon the temper in which the search for it is instituted and conducted'. Ephesians 4:15 In his Apologia (ch. I.), speaking of Thomas Scott's writings, Newman says that for years he used 'almost as proverbs what I considered to be the scope and issue of his doctrine, "Holiness rather than peace," and "growth the only evidence of life"'. References. IV. 15. A. S. Ray, Penny Pulpit, No. 1679, p. 471. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 143. W. M. Sinclair, Simplicity in Christ, p. 27. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 215. W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 365. W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 40. IV. 15, 16. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2653. J. Denney, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 312. J. Barker, Plain Sermons, p. 1. J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 172. The Church, the Body of Christ Ephesians 4:16 I. The Church itself is spoken of in terms that suggest both the inter-adaptation and cohesion of its parts. As in the natural body there is no friction between the several members, but all work smoothly together, so it is in the body of Christ. Different gifts are not to be ranged in rivalry, as though each existed irrespectively of the rest, and with a view to independent ends. Each contributes in its own way to the efficiency of the whole, so that none can be suppressed or unduly discouraged without the general good being a sufferer thereby. Moreover, each in itself is incomplete, and depends upon others for producing its full and appropriate effect, as musical notes only attain their maximum of expression in harmonious combinations. II. The sole source of the Church's life is Christ. All Christians admit that from Christ originally every gift and quickening influence proceeds. The points of difference appear when you begin to ask about the means through which these are conveyed. The great thing is to keep in mind that it is to Christ Himself in the last resort we must be indebted, and that anything connected with the Church is serviceable to us just in so far as it brings us into connection with Him. For what is true of the whole Church is also true of its individual members; and, indeed, only becomes true of her by being true of them. It is by that which every joint supplies, by the contact of souls each with its living Lord, that she is fitly joined together and compacted. III. St. Paul here describes the manner of the Church's growth. It is harmonious, according to the working in due measure of each several part. As the excessive growth of any one limb disfigures the body and impairs its general usefulness, so the undue cultivation of any special gift, or the over-accentuation of any particular doctrines, will lead to a one-sided development of the Church's activity and life. In order to advance there must be some sort of equilibrium and unity of movement. Growth is not growth when, in a complex organism, it only involves a part of the whole. It is simply a process of malformation. In like manner extreme developments of ritualism or extreme protests against it: exclusive devotion to one favourite truth, without paying attention to others that counterbalance and correct it; an absorbing pursuit of one kind of excellence or usefulness contribute not to the strength but to the weakness of the Church. Lastly, St. Paul sets before us the god or aim of the Church's growth: that it may edify itself in love. But remember that the love to which St. Paul refers is not merely a sentiment or feeling of fervour. He speaks of that grace which is the fulfilling of the law, and synonymous with the bearing of one another's burdens. C. Moinet, The Great Alternative and Other Sermons, p. 247. References. IV. 16. W. M. Sinclair, Words from St. Paul's, p. 113. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 41. The Christian Life Ephesians 4:17 * ; Ephesians 4:1 * I. Who is it that makes this appeal? It is St. Paul, one of the most majestic figures in the history of God's work in the world, who has heard the call and made himself a faithful answer to it. We must remember that St. Paul was now in prison, and so far from his condition of imprisonment, so far from that withholding him or checking him in the mighty work to which he had been called, and in his faithfulness to that call, indeed, we may say that, as a matter of history, it only emboldened him, made him more brave, made him persevere, made him cling the more, made him full of living, earnest zeal and charity towards his fellowmen. Yes, we see that, if we look below the surface, God's power does not work in the tossing of the storm, or in the devouring power of fire, or in the violence of earthquakes; it is rather in the still small Voice. And so it was in that small Voice, so to speak, within his state of imprisonment, that St. Paul's power was increased, and it was from that state of imprisonment in Rome that he, as it were, captured the whole world for Christ at all times. II. 'I beseech you.' There is his earnest appeal. He has done it himself; he has listened to the call and obeyed it to the utmost, to the abandoning of everything in the world which his lower ambitions pointed to. Everything he sacrificed to this great call of Heaven, and he lived the life afterwards in entire obedience to the Lord. Well, there is the one who appeals to us, and to this appeal we all ought to listen. What is it he points to? It is the calling of the Christians to God's service. He remembered that call from Heaven 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?' First of all, that call from above comes home to every soul who listens to Heaven's inspiration; and then the life which follows that call, the obedience for which that call asks. 'Follow Me,' not merely 'Listen to Me,' but 'Follow Me'. There is the calling of the Christian first, and then his life, the life of service, the life of unselfishness, the life of the love of heavenly things, the life of faith, of true purity and self-abandonment, following Jesus Christ, following on in the way of your own salvation, following on in the noble work of uplifting man from his state of sin and death, helping God in the great cause of the regeneration of the world this is the calling of the Christian, this is what God wants. Every one of us, old and young, rich and poor, has to go to Him, and live His life, and join in His splendid work for the salvation of mankind. III. Then St. Paul follows on to give some marks of the Christian life. 'With all lowliness and meekness.' Are not these two of the Beatitudes? 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' What is that but lowliness and humbleness of mind, the conquest and the putting out of our hearts of all boastful intentions, all envy and jealousy of others? And then, again, meekness. Is not that another of the Beatitudes? 'Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.' The quiet ones, who do not use the sword, who turn from fleshly weapons to the weapons of the Spirit these are the ones who win the world and inherit the world. St. Paul has another mark of the Christian soul, 'longsuffering,' the longsuffering which is the virtue contrary to impatience, putting up with things which are contrary, crosses which have to be borne, difficulties which have to be met, temptations which have to be fought, going on perseveringly, unyieldingly, putting faith in God and going on with the battle for God's sake, because God can never fail, and if you belong to God He will not let you finally be vanquished. 'Forbearing one another in love.' Instead of these impatient and quick condemnations of others, these quick and hard judgments bestowed upon others. these unkind thoughts which spring so readily into our minds, this forbearance, forbearing one another, holding yourself in, checking yourself when some angry or unkind and uncharitable thought arises here is another mark of the Christian soldier, of him or her who is true to the vocation and calling. 'Forbearing one another in love,' because we are all one body. Then he passes to that fifth mark of the Christian faithfulness to the Christian calling, charity, the Spirit of unity. Then he ends by reminding us what is the real underlying bond to which we are called, and to which we in duty ought to try to be true our Lord, because we are all one. So he ends this part of the appeal by speaking of the great unities of God. IV. Look over the world, look above the world into the millions of the stars of the Heavens, look back over the centuries which have passed, and there seems sometimes to be an enormous, endless variety of change. But it all goes back to the One great Author, and Creator, and Lord of all. Or, look again at the different human beings, their different talents, tastes, and places of living, and ages of living. How different they all are, what an individuality! And yet God calls all men into the mystical body. You ought to be one in spirit, full of love, charity, and forbearance, and humble towards all men because you belong to one body, comprising different conditions, gifts, works, states of life, but one body. References. IV. 17. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 196. IV. 17-19. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 201. IV. 17-32. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 111. IV. 19. O. Bronson, Sermons, p. 149. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 203; ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 218. IV. 20. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 145. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 118. Christ Our Lesson and Our Teacher Ephesians 4:20-21 The words which I have selected as my text are but a fragment of a closely concatenated whole, but I may deal with them separately. They lay, as it seems to me, the basis for all Christian conduct I. Christ our Lesson and Christ our Teacher. The relation of the person of Jesus Christ to all that He has to teach and reveal to the world is altogether different from that of all other teachers of all sorts of truths, to the truth which they proclaim. You can accept the truths and dismiss into oblivion the men from whom you got them. But you cannot reject Christ and take Christianity. (1) Christ our Lesson The sum of all duty, the height of all moral perfectness, the realised ideal of humanity is in Christ, and the true way to know what a man or a nation is to do is to study Him. (2) Christ our Teacher The conception of Christ as a teacher which is held by many who deny His redeeming work and dismiss as incredible His Divinity seems to me altogether inadequate, unless it be supplemented by the belief that He now has and exercises the power of communicating wisdom and knowledge and warning and stimulus to waiting hearts. Reverence the inward monitor. II. The Condition of Learning the Lesson and Hearing the Teacher. Unless we keep ourselves in union with Jesus Christ His voice will not be heard in our hearts, and the lesson will pass unlearned. If we would keep ourselves, by faith, by love, by meditation, by aspiration, by the submission of the will, and by practical obedience, in Jesus Christ, enclosed in Him, as it were then, and then only, shall we hear Him speak. What does a student in a school of design do? He puts his feeble copy of some great picture beside the original, and compares it touch for touch, line for line, shade for shade, and so corrects its errors. Take your lines to the Exemplar in that fashion, and go over them bit by bit. III. The Test and Result of having Learned the Lesson and Listened to the Teacher is Unlikeness to Surrounding Corruption. It is just as needful as ever it was, though in different ways, for Christians to exhibit unlikeness to the world. I do not want you to make yourselves singular. A Christian man's unlikeness to the world consists a great deal more in doing or being what it does not do and is not, than in not doing or being what it does and is. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ The Lessons of Childliness Ephesians 5:1 It is the great mark of the Gospel that its deepest truths are presented to us in forms taken from our daily life. The cleansing water and the simple meal are made sacraments revelations of Divine mysteries. The ties of family are the chosen emblems of our heavenly fellowship. One of these relations is set before us in the words which I have taken for my text. We all are as children in His household, heirs, indeed of a glorious inheritance, but yet children and then nearest Him when we realise most fully our childly duties at His feet. Let us then dwell on three lessons of childliness. I. The Lesson of Dependence. A child never forgets his dependence. He sees before him the image of a noble future, but he makes no haste to escape from the bonds of grateful service For he, too, has a service to render. Effort, vigour, patience, are included in all action, and the child's reward is that his work is like his father's work, or in harmony with it. And this is a just description of our position with regard to our heavenly Father. II. The Lesson of Trustfulness. A child has no doubts, no misgivings. It is enough that his father has spoken. He examines not the message but the credentials of the bearer. There is something sublime in such a faith, which in later years is wholly unattainable. But all human powers fall below the claims which it makes. It can be satisfied only in its spiritual aspect There, indeed, the childly heart will find no rude disappointment The Christian will not yet see all, but all which he sees will strengthen his trust. III. For the lessons of dependence and trustfulness are completed in The Lesson of Partial Knowledge. The Christian professes that he knows in part. At present his Father knoweth all things, and when that which is in part is done away, then will he know even as he is known. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 101. References. V. 1. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1725. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading (2nd Series), p. 45. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 101. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 270. To the Dear Children Ephesians 5:1-2 The text calls on all of us, as God's dear children, to try to follow, not our own pleasures and our own tastes, but to walk in the footsteps of Christ our Saviour. And we cannot do this without some care, and pains, and watchfulness over ourselves. I. What are the faults, the temptations, to which you feel yourselves most liable? (1) There is, first of all, selfishness, the caring much, or the caring only for your own comfort and pleasure, and the caring not in the least, or very little for that of others. (2) Again, there is meanness; the readiness to tell an untruth, a lie, plain and direct, in order to gain something for which you wish. (3) Boastfulness. It is not the attempt to get everything for yourself, but it is the constant making yourself, not other persons, or other things but yourself, and yourself only, the subject of all your thoughts and words. (4) Faults of temper. (5) Fits of sullenness. II. Let me add one or two words on two different kinds of unselfishness. 'Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous,' says St. Peter. (1) Let me take the last first Remember that by politeness or courtesy we mean nothing more than the showing in our outward manners, and often in little things, that we think of others, not merely of ourselves. It is not a very hard task if you go to the root of the matter strive to be glad to make those around you happy, and you will soon learn the welcome secret of true politeness, true courtesy, and find in it no sham piece of artificial polish, but a means of making yourself near and dear, not only to others, but to your Saviour and your God. (2) And lastly, be pitiful. Never, never, let your after memory, when you grow up, be stained with recollections of cruelty. Learn to find a joy and pleasure in kindness and tenderheartedness, in making others happy, in obeying the royal law that bids us do to others as we would have them do to us. G. G. Bradley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXI. p. 20. References. V. 1, 2. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 18. Marcus Dods, Christ and Man, p. 25. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 45. V. 1-7. Ibid. vol. xii. p. 131. V. 1-14. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 128. V. 2. C. S. Home, The Soul's Awakening, p. 83. A. Tucker, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 176. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 287. W. J. Brock, Sermons, p. 225. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 230. V. 4. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 296. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 63. V. 6. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 23. Darkness and Light Ephesians 5:8 I. This word 'darkness' is not indicative of mere dim or transient fog or inconvenient grading of light; it is a deeper, severer, ghastlier word. 'Ye were sometimes darkness,' not dark, but darkness itself, sevenfold night, yea, more than night ever was; for surely every night must have somewhere and somehow its relieving star. It was not so with you in your former state; you were living darkness, without ray or glint or beam of light, as far away from light as it is possible to be. That is a wonderful conception of human nature and of human condition before the Father of lights. You were not merely broken lights, scattered beams, that it was impossible to put together; there was no beam in you, you had never been illumined, you had never been warmed, you had never even heard of the summer of holiness; ye were simply incarnate, embodied darkness. Who could call us out of that state? What matchmaker could strike a little flash that would drive away such gloom? Where the darkness is so dense God Himself must handle the occasion, or there is nothing for it but fatal night. Sometimes we have said of a great singer, he is not musical, he is music; that is to say, he is not a merely mechanical player, a man who has got into his memory what is written in a book, but the music is in him, a well of water springing up into everlasting melody. So, reversing the picture, the Gentiles were not dark, they were darkness; un-penetrated, and but for the Divine mercy, impenetrable clouds. Occasionally we say of a man, He is not eloquent, he is eloquence, embodied, incarnate, breathing, walking, living eloquence; he has not learned something by rote, he has not recited something of which his memory is in charge, but the holy gift is moving in him like a spirit, a genius, a heavenly choir. Reverse the picture, and you have the Apostle's idea: Ye were not dark, you were darkness, the thing itself, sevenfold night; no imagination could conceive the intensity of the darkness of your condition. II. Then the contrastive 'but' 'but now... light'; not partial light, not a grey light, not a mere hint of light, but as truly as you were once darkness, so truly are you now light. 'Walk as children of light.' The miracle is as great on the one side as on the other. Chaos was not partial chaos; chaos was not a mere mood or transient phase of disorder; it was utter confusion, without date, without measure, without figure, a tumultuousness and disorderliness not to be spoken of in words in any adequate sense or with any adequate fitness. Chaos is not partly order and partly confusion; the old chaos on which the Holy Spirit brooded was utter chaos, shapelessness, amorphousness, that which could not be ruled into order by any skill created; but now, since the beginning, chaos has given place to order, proportion, music, perspective, and all the apocalypse and summer of colour. That is the difference. Chaos has no history. People want to know when the creation began. They can never know it. All depends upon what you mean by creation. The thing upon which creation operated may be calculable, but the thing out of which creation took its materials may lie back, so to say, in the memory of God alone. Transfer the figure to the Christian life, and then you have first the darkness, utter dense darkness, on which moon and star never shone, not to speak of dawning light and wakening morning. Then you have light, glory, midday, points of extreme. Unless we recognise the extremity of the points we shall lose the whole movement of the miracle. Let us keep our memories well refreshed with the fact that once we were darkness; let us pity those who are in darkness still. Do not imagine for a moment that the man on the street can come into the sanctuary of God and partake of it and be as one of the called saints of heaven all in a moment. He cannot; nor can he hear the Gospel, much less understand it. He is darkness. A great mystery of movement must take place in his soul by the power of the Holy Ghost. We want again Genesis first chapter and first few verses; we want especially the Spirit brooding over the infinite night, the infinite disorder, with a view to having brought out of it proportion and harmony and rest. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. II. p. 220. Reference. V. 8. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 277. The Fruition of Fuller Life Ephesians 5:9 Abundant fruit-bearing, whether it appear in character or in service, depends on the quickening of spiritual life. Everything else is subordinate to this, although much else is to be desired. It may not seem to outsiders that success in religious work depends on this. They may attribute it to social or intellectual influences, but in so far as success is spiritual (and that alone abides) its source is not in us. Spiritual power only passes through us from above to enrich the world. We believe that spiritual life in the soul of man depends on the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, who both initiates and intensifies it. Our enjoyment of it simply depends on our fulfilling the condition laid down by the risen Christ. 'If any man open the door, we will come in to him.' I. We are often reminded in Scripture that fruit is expected of us. I will point out a few specimens of those fruits we too seldom see in the debilitated Christian life with which we are sadly familiar. (1) Zeal for the salvation of souls has become with some professing Christians an unmeaning phrase, or at least an unpopular one, although sinners never needed more than now a Saviour from sin, from self, from pessimism, and from hell here and hereafter. Let us never forget that the world will test us by the presence or absence of this Divine fire. (2) Amid the fruitage of a fuller Christian life will be found that love which our Lord makes much of, and of which some of His followers think so little. II. It remains that we should notice certain conditions on which fuller spiritual life depends. (1) Like all other life, it requires nourishment, and this we are to take, not with fitful infrequency, but constantly, as those who have been taught to pray, 'Give us this day our daily bread'. (2) Atmosphere is as important as nourishment. Children require fresh air as well as food. Even the strongest man becomes depressed and his vitality lowered if he remains long in a vitiated atmosphere; but he becomes exhilarated, shaking off gloom and brooding, when he strides onward in the bracing air of a sunny hillside. And that is the idea suggested to my mind by the declaration of the Psalmist about the happy 'people who know the joyful sound, they shall walk all day in the light of Thy countenance'. A. Rowland, The Burdens of Life, p. 157. The Fruit of the Light Ephesians 5:9 I. The Light which is Fruitful. The light of which my text speaks is not natural to men, but is the result of the entrance into their darkness of a new element. Now I do not suppose that we should be entitled to say that Paul here is formally anticipating the deep teaching of the Apostle John that Jesus Christ is ' the Light of men,' and especially of Christian men. He is here asserting that the only way by which any man can cease to be in the doleful depths of his nature, darkness in its saddest sense, is by opening his heart through faith, that into it may rush, as the light ever does where an opening be it only a single tiny cranny is made, the light which is Christ, and without Whom is darkness. II. The Fruitfulness of this Indwelling Light. Fruit is generally used in Scripture in a good sense. It conveys the notion of something which is the natural outcome of a vital power. And so when we talk about the light being fruitful, we are setting in a striking image the great Christian thought that if you want to get right conduct you must have renewed character. III. The Specific Fruits which the Apostle here Dwells Upon. They consist, says he, in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Now all these three types of excellence are apt to be separated. For the first of them amiability, kindliness, gentleness is apt to become too soft, to lose its grip of righteousness. Righteousness, on the other hand, is apt to become stern, and needs the softening of goodness to make it human and attractive. Truth needs kindliness and righteousness, and they need truth. He desires that each of us should try to make our own a fully developed, all-round perfection all goodness and righteousness and truth. We should seek to appropriate types of excellence to which we are least inclined, as well as those which are most in harmony with our natural dispositions. A. Maclaren, Christ's Musts, p. 239. References. V. 9. R. C. Lewis, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 296. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 279. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 286. Pleasing Christ Ephesians 5:10 What pleases Christ is the Christian's highest duty. I. The only attitude which corresponds to our relations to Christ. How remarkable it is that this Apostle should go on the assumption that our conduct affects Him, that it is possible for us to please or displease Jesus Christ now. That loving Lord, not merely by the omniscience of His Divinity but by the perpetual knowledge and sympathy of His perfect manhood is not only cognisant of but is affected by the conduct of His professed followers here on earth. Then, surely, the only thing that corresponds to such a relationship as at present subsists between the Christian soul and the Lord is that we should take as our supreme and continual aim that 'whether present or absent, we should be well-pleasing to Him'. II. We have here the all-sufficient guide for practical life. What is it that pleases Jesus Christ? His own likeness. And what is the likeness to Jesus Christ which it is thus our supreme obligation and our truest wisdom and perfection to bear? Well, we can put it all into two words self-suppression and continual consciousness of obedience to the Divine will crucify self and commune with God. But not only does this guide prove its sufficiency by reason of its comprehensiveness, but also because there is no difficulty in ascertaining what at each moment it prescribes. If a man wants to know Christ's will, and takes the way of knowing it which Christ has appointed, he shall not be left in darkness, but shall have the light of life. III. We have here an all-powerful motive for Christian life. No motive which can be brought to bear upon men is stronger when there are loving hearts concerned than this simple one, 'Do it to please me'. And that is what Jesus Christ really says. So we have the secret of blessedness in these words. For self-submission and suppression are blessedness. A. Maclaren, Christ's Musts, p. 249. References. V. 10. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 295. V. 11. Ibid. p. 303. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2401. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 205. V. 11-21. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 313. V. 13, 14. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 163. ** Sleepers, Wake ( for Advent Sunday ) Ephesians 5:14 ** No eye but a man's own can gaze, almost as the eye of God, on the unveiled human heart. But when men's eyes are opened, and they have been brought to look fairly and fully on themselves; when they have entered that awful solitude in which the soul is alone with God; when they have been brought to connect their own personality with the shame and guilt of sin; when the voluble spirit of excuse is at last dumb what follows? I know no word which will describe the result of self-revelation so briefly as 'awakenment'. The ordinary moral and spiritual condition of most men, in their common life, can only be pictured by the metaphor of sleep. There are many degrees and forms of this spiritual sleep. There is that of human feebleness, that venial imperfection to which our Lord referred when He said, 'The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak'. Then deeper and worse is the sleep of those who, though not guilty of flagrant sin, are yet absorbed in the worldly life; given up to its dissipations and trivialities; losing, for the sake of living, all that constitutes a true life. But deepest and deadliest of all is the slumber of those who have sold themselves to do evil; who work all uncleanness with greediness; who have abandoned themselves to a life of falsehood, or avarice, or drink, or sensualism, or crime. Yet so common is this sleep, in one or other of its forms, that the Scriptures are constantly striving to arouse men from its fatal torpor. This sleep, in any of its forms, cannot and will not last for ever. In vain men may fold their hands; in vain they may cry, 'A little more sleep, a little more slumber' they must be awakened. Either in this world or the next must come the awakenment which results from seeing ourselves as we are. Thus, then, to each one of us either by our own repentance or with penal retribution, either here or in the world hereafter awakenment will come. I. It conies in different ways. 'There are those to whom it comes in storms and tempests; others it has summoned in hours of revelry and idle vanity; others have heard its "still small voice" in leisure and placid contentment; and others during seasons of sorrow and affliction, to whom tears have been the softening showers which caused the seed of heaven to take root, and spring up in the human heart.' But when it comes penally, and in the way of catastrophe, it is then an awful moment. (1) Awakenment has its awfulness even for the best of men. 'Behold,' cried David, 'I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me' (see Job 9:30-31 ). And Peter: 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord'. And Paul: 'Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' And Augustine: 'Liberate me from a bad man myself!' And so many others. Such are the confessions of the holiest; yet so ignorant is the world of the depth of the true soul's contrition when it sees its own sinfulness, that it has interpreted these confessions as a proof of unusual personal vileness, and not the self-reproach of souls who longed only to be pure as He is pure. (2) But if awakenment has its awfulness for the holiest and best, what must it be to the man who, in spite of the self-revelation, still loves, and refuses to forsake, his sins? It is a tremendous moment which first reveals to a man that he, too, is hitherto a lost soul. What must be the feelings of a man who for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years has been outwardly honest and moral, but who, suddenly held by the accelerating impulse of sins secretly cherished, forced to own to the bond to which he has set his own seal, commits a crime, and is forced to sit down amid the ruins of his own life? The man who first deviates from rectitude takes a first step toward a precipice; and he soon finds that to stand still is impossible, that to retreat would be ruin, and that to advance is destruction. II. How terrible the awakenment when nothing of the sin is left but the ruin it has wrought; when the man realises that the beautiful life God gave him has been lost and wasted; that he has been an utter and inexcusable fool; that it had been better for him that he had not been born in that moment the man must know what Christ meant by the 'outer darkness,' the 'worm that dieth not,' and the 'fire that is not quenched'. And yet it is a most blessed thing for any man if that awakenment so he neglect it not comes during life; yea, even if it comes in the very hour of death. But remember how much more often death ends not in contrition, therefore not in repentance, but in dull torpor or hard defiance. III. Has not Christ died for us? died to save us and all mankind? He offers us peace here and beyond the grave; and not to us only, but to all who believe in His name. All that we have to do is to trust Him; to seek Him now now in the accepted time; to love one another; to work for Him; to obey His laws; to spread His kingdom. If, happily for us, the awakenment from the dream of sin have come, not in terror and as with the thunder-clap, but through 'still small voices,' let us seek to make those voices heard by others. And let us, while there is yet time, pray: 'God be merciful to me a sinner'; 'That it may please Thee to have mercy upon all men; we beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord'. F. W. Farrar, * Sermons in America. * Christ the Light-giver Ephesians 5:14 The progress of thought in later times has resulted in our becoming more alive to the seriousness and difficulty of questions concerning our very existence and destiny. In all ages there have been some who have asked these questions anxiously, and at times indeed they have convulsed the world. But now (more than ever) we are sent straight to nature and to fact, and we are told to be real; to think of what our words mean; and these questions of the whence and whither of mankind are felt by us more than by our forefathers to be formidable ones. Eyes have been opened to see the wonders and the mysteries of the most familiar things of life: the triple mystery of certain inexplicable facts; the mystery of sin, of pain, of will. Whence and why do I come into life? What is to become of me? What am I on the way to? These questions cany with them to those in the street, and by the domestic hearth, happiness or distress, hope or darkness, life or death. And one thing further has been brought home to our consciousness, and that is, that Nature by itself cannot give the answer. Nature does indeed speak of God, of duty, of immortality. 'The heavens declare the glory of God.' Conscience cannot escape from Right and Wrong. The human soul in the face of death believes that it is not to die. But though Nature does teach us of God and hope, of justice, purity, and prayer, its answers to our questions are dark and imperfect. The gainsayer declares that it is silent; the doubter that it is ambiguous. It hardly helps man to understand himself. I. Whence come we? Where are we? Whither are we going? Who can help asking? It is impossible to measure the hopelessness of such an answer as science only gives us. Have we indeed nothing besides? Ah, yes! Encompassed in mystery as we are, little as we know of the infinite, yet that dreadful sense of not knowing what we are, and why we are, of being fatherless, uncared for, has passed away from the world. 'The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death; and to guide our feet into the way of peace.' But whatever we know or. do not know, we know this that One has come, as no one ever came to the world before, Who came to make quite certain questions on which men have been in the deepest perplexity; Who came to tell us whence and why we are, and what we have before us in the after-time. He came to tell us, once for all, that we are not orphans and castaways; He came to tell us of our Father in heaven, even God. We know that He is come, we know that He died, we know that He is risen from the dead. Some one among the sons of men has conquered death; and we know that this tremendous event has changed, not only the course, but the aspects of the world and human life. Neither are, nor can be, what they were before it what they would be without it. 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' He has come, and He has spoken. He has given light by His victory over the grave, and in that light all that He was, and said, and promised stands before us in the illumination of a Divine unveiling: 'God manifest in the flesh'. 'We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' II. The answer, as far as it goes, is as clear, as real, as the question. It is given in terms of which we can measure the meaning and the force For we know what death is, and we know what must be meant by 'One being alive from the dead'. We ask what Nature cannot tell us from whose hands we came? One from the dead tells us that we come from, and are ever in, our Father's hand. We grope in darkness among the tremendous problems of moral evil. One from the dead has come, and tells us that sin indeed is a reality; that He died for the sin of men, and that its forgiveness and cure are in His hands. We ask, What is death? He is come from the grave itself, and He tells us, and shows us in His own Person, that death is but an incident, an appearance; that there is life beyond it life with its purpose fulfilled; life and righteousness; life and immortality. We stand silent when the sufferers ask us why they suffer. What is the meaning, or justice, or use of those tremendous dispensations of agony which seem to visit without distinction the innocent and guilty the misery of the helpless child, the pangs of the brute creation? Pain and its phenomena are ultimate facts, insoluble as they are awful. But this we know, that He Who was the conqueror of death and the Redeemer of His creatures drank together with them the cup of pain. III. And we know more. We know that He is come, and has conversed with men. We know that He has promised, though He went away, yet still to be with us in our course through the storms and pains of life. 'Lo, I am with you all the days, even to the end of the world.' 'Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.' We have Him Who once appeared among us; who was dead, and is alive for evermore. We have Him, the King and Master of all living men, to our comfort and blessing and guidance, if we will. He is here unseen, watching us, judging us. He is here, though they know it not, to the proud and insolent; He is here, to the humble and meek. References. V. 14. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 716. Basil Wilberforce, Sanctification by the Truth, p. 25. T. J. Madden, Tombs or Temples? p. 69. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 289. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 143. T. Rhondda Williams, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 189. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 126. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p. 87. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 351. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 318. V. 14, 15. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 396. Not As Fools, But As Wise Ephesians 5:15 I. 'Not as fools, but as wise.' St Paul appeals to us as reasonable creatures; he appeals to our common sense to what must be clear to our mind and judgment as soon as we give the subject serious thought. Judge for yourselves, he seems to say; the things which you know and believe of yourself and the world around you must make a difference to your way of living. A fool is he who will take no count of his circumstances. Consider your real circumstances; think of what you have learned to believe without any kind of doubt of what this life is, what it was given you for, and what is to come after it. Think of the part God has taken in it to help and save you; what Christ has done, given, and promised; and then, consider how 'wise men' ought to shape their lives. But II. Suppose it had been different. Suppose, for a moment, that all we know and believe had never been; that we had never heard of God; that we found ourselves here on earth, not knowing how we came, why we were living, or what we were meant for; and that all we knew of life were that there it was. Or suppose that we had only heard of God, our Maker and Ruler, by dim and uncertain report, as the heathen may, but that He had never had any dealings with us, and that we knew not where to find Him, or what He was. Imagine this to be our state passing through life without the faintest notion of what life is, where it comes from, and whither it goes; having no light to guide us but what we could get for ourselves; no help out of this world, no comfort, no refuge, no prospects, nothing but the dark, unknown, hopeless grave. Suppose this were the condition of things in which we were living. Then there would be no prayer, for there would be no God to pray to, or to hope in. There would be no faith, no love of God, no obedience. There might be a certain sense of right and wrong, but there would be nothing to support right and condemn wrong. We should be in the world as forlorn outcasts, knowing their own bitterness, pain, heartache, and death all the evils of the world and knowing, too, all the evils of the world and of our own hearts, but without anyone above to look up to; without redemption, without remedy, without hope. III. And now consider what is, in fact, the case with us. We cannot imagine, without difficulty, what we have been supposing. Even the very heathen dimly see the awful Power and Godhead amid their foul idolatries. Not we only, but the whole world, knows God. The heathen know something of Him; forgetful Jews know more; but we Christians have a knowledge which leaves all this behind. We know that God has been with men, spoken to them, made them know something of His mind. We believe in Jesus Christ, the Everlasting Son of the Father, the Maker, the Light and Life of men. We believe that He took upon Him to deliver man, and that, for this purpose, He did not abhor the Virgin's womb. We believe more that He died for our sins, that He overcame the sharpness of death, and did open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. We believe that He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father, and that He shall come to be our Judge. And we believe that we now have in Him One who hears all prayers, heals all wrongs, and can bind up every broken heart. Men may now appeal to a love which has made God's world look new. 'We therefore pray Thee help Thy servants, whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood.' Look where we will, our eyes ever encounter something which reminds us of the cross of Christ. IV. Put these two pictures side by side: life as we supposed it without knowing anything of God, or our origin or destiny; and, on the other side, life in which man throws himself on the love of God, as His servant, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ Then 'walk not as fools, but as wise'. St Paul appeals to us as men of common sense. Would any man of sense, who knew and believed the facts last stated, think of living as if all that we knew were depicted in the first picture? And yet it is one of the commonest sights of our experience to see men living a life which they would live just as well if they were absolutely without God in the world. Many still live as those who, in their ignorance, said: 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die'. Are not St. Paul's words the words of truth and soberness when he calls us 'not as fools, but as wise' knowing and believing what we do not to live as if we knew it not; as if we had nothing but this life and this world before us, but to live as Christian men and women ought to live doing the will and fulfilling the purposes of the God with Whom they have so much to do? References. V. 15. Bishop Westcott, Disciplined Life, No. ix. V. 15, 16. C. M. Betts, Eight Sermons, p. 19. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 259. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 327. Watch Yourselves, Your Opportunities Ephesians 5:15-17 These are admonitions addressed to Christian people by an inspired Apostle; not only to Christian people as individuals, but to Christian people organised into communities. The passage might be compressed into two lines: Look diligently to yourselves, ...and your opportunities. I. Yourselves first. There are two kinds of temper to be steadfastly guarded against The temper of levity, which turns everything into a jest. And the other temper to be guarded against is sleepy self-satisfaction. (1) A Christian man needs to make constant and fresh effort to remember who he is and Whose he is. That He is the property of Christ redeemed by the agony of the Son of God. (2) And then he is to realise clearly and sharply where he is. Do not let us make any mistake on this point; he is in an unfriendly world, a world, that, to say the least of it, cares nothing for the things which most interest him. (3) The Christian man must remember that the world is hostile to God. (4) We are not only in an unfriendly world; we are in a world that is to be won to God, and won by us. (5) We are not only surrounded by an unfriendly world we are still more closely surrounded by an unfavourable spiritual atmosphere; by invisible agents whose aim is to weaken and destroy the finest fruits of the spiritual life. II. We need to look carefully to our work. There is no reason why there should be any folly in Christian work. Enthusiasm does not mean irrationalism. (1) 'Understand,' the Apostle says; use that faculty, and understand what the will of the Lord is. (2) And having understood it, we are to do it, and to do it promptly. That is the meaning of the phrase, 'Buying up the opportunity'. The psychological moment comes, and you must act, or it goes, and carries the opportunity with it. Every department, of life abounds in illustrations of the importance of this precept of the fatality of neglecting it. Why does the Apostle speak about buying up the opportunity? Because the embracing of it means cost. You yourself were not redeemed without sacrifice. You will never carry out the will of God without cost to yourself. Charles Brown, Light and Life, p. 91. References. V. 15-17. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 118. V. 15-33. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 140. V. 16. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 314. Archbishop Maclagan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 248. W. Baird, The Hallowing of our Common Life, p. 6. R. Appleton, The Pulpit, vol. i. p. 31. J. S. Bartlett, Sermons, p. 172. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. i. p. 115. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 1. W. J. Brock, Sermons, p. 335. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. i. p. 50. H. Bonner, Sermons and Lectures, p. 206. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons (2nd Series), p. 176. V. 17. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 190. The Plenitude of the Spirit Ephesians 5:18 What is meant by the Plenitude of the Spirit? I. The phrase occurs in a command or exhortation; the Apostle makes use of the imperative mood. We are bidden to do, or to be a demand is made upon us. Yet the verb is passive in form, and it is natural to object that the process described is God's work, not ours. That august Breath of God blows when and where He lists; we can neither originate nor control Divine influence The 'baptism of the Spirit,' the 'outpouring of the Spirit,' the 'descent of the Spirit,' do not denote action on our part, but the reception of an essentially Divine gift. When we read of the Primitive Church that they were 'all filled with the Holy Ghost,' or that Stephen or Barnabas was 'full of the Holy Ghost,' the impression conveyed is one of supernatural power resting on these men. Self-inspiration is absurd. To issue a command that men should acquire what God alone can confer might seem to imply either a blunder or a blasphemy. II. The injunction 'be filled' means that we may, we can, and therefore we ought to play our part 'Ye must be born again' implies that we can be so born, and then a glorious possibility of privilege becomes a sacred duty. The relation between the Divine and the human is not that of an alien supernatural power energising passive clay into fresh life. That is a heathenish notion of inspiration which would regard the Holy Spirit as a magical, external power which must be invoked in the fashion of the prophets of Baal, who cut themselves with knives to procure the boon of supernatural fire from heaven. The Spirit is here, waiting oh, how He waits! He is unspeakably near to every heart of man longing, wooing, drawing, striving, filling each soul as far as He can whenever there is room to receive Him, quickening when the faintest movement of response makes it possible for Him to infuse new life; or as a favouring wind to fill the sails of the soul still further, and carry the frail vessel on its forward, homeward way. But that is not precisely the thought of the text. It is addressed not to mankind at large, but to the Church. It refers not to the vague indefinable Divine Spirit of the Pantheist or the Mystic, but to the Spirit of Christ The Spirit who is known, loved, understood, and obeyed; the Spirit who originated the new life in the heart of every member, and made each man who is in Christ a new creation; the Spirit who operates in us every moment, though in scanty measure because of our meagre faith and lukewarm love; the Spirit who at every moment at this moment waits, longing to raise, inspire, purify, and empower us as He has never done before. We are directed to find our fulness in Him, and in Him alone. That does not mean the cessation of effort till a Higher Power shall quicken us. Nor does it mean a feverish and anxious occupation in good works and religious ordinances, as if we could kindle loftier affection by sedulous attention to detailed duties. It means that we are to go back to the Fountain-head at once, and always with a directness and immediacy that takes no denial; that every Church and every member is to be in his own place an organ of a Higher Will, intelligently and earnestly co-operating with a Power which informs and sustains and animates the whole. The work that was done at first was not done by us, but by a Higher Power in us and through us; decline begins when men forget this and concentrate attention upon their own efforts. Renewal implies a requickening from the primal source the love of God in Christ poured abroad in the heart of the Holy Spirit given unto us. III. The heart that would be Spirit-filled must first be empty. Empty, that is, of everything that would prevent the Spirit from doing His characteristic work. For there is no necessary antagonism between the operation of the Spirit of God and a thousand varied aims for which the Church legitimately strives, a thousand interests in the world which she seeks to promote. Distinguish between a true and a false spirituality. Not by withdrawing the leaven from the mass of meal can the lump be leavened, but by the potency of a ferment mighty enough to quicken the whole. Still it is clear that the Holy Spirit of God cannot fill as He would an already full vessel, and there simply is not room enough for the Spirit to work in some churches that are calling loudly for His presence, in many hearts that are praying earnestly for His indwelling. Apart from subtle forms of sin, with which we are not now concerned, the pathways of the soul may be blocked, the Divine channel may be obstructed, the soil of the heart choked with a tangle of thorns and weeds, and thus not the entrance, but the plenary work of the Spirit be effectually hindered. W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, p. 235. The Spirit-filled Life Ephesians 5:18 The Spirit dwells in the believer, and the believer lives in the Spirit. The Spirit finds in the believer His home, medium, and means; and the believer finds in the Spirit his sphere and element. Every need of spiritual life and Christian service is supplied in the fulness of the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit is every believer's birthright, but there are many Esaus. Fleshly desires hinder the work of the Spirit, and the inheritance is bartered for the things of earth. Jesus Christ is the supreme example of the spirit-filled life. To Him the Spirit was given without measure. His life was lived in abiding surrender to the will of the Spirit. He is the ideal and pattern of the life made possible to all by the coming of the Spirit. The leading features of the Spirit's work in Him are marked by special mention of the Spirit as directly connected with them, and in the study of them we may find the distinctive marks of the Spirit-filled life. I. The Spirit-filled life is a life of conquest over temptation. Being full of the Spirit does not bring immunity from temptation but exposure to it. I Jesus was tempted like as we are. it follows we shall be tempted as He was. Every man's Pentecost is the signal for Satan to gird himself. Temptation comes to the spiritual man in its intensest and most subtle forms. (1) The first temptation in the Spirit-filled life is the temptation of bread. The temptation is to use the gift of God for self-gratification. Satan urges the use of the power for selfish ends: to make it a means of getting bread. (2) The second temptation deals at the root with the same question as the first. It is still self, only at the other extreme. The first appeal was to give self the first care, the second to give it no care at all. (3) The third temptation is also a question of adjustment. The Spirit is given for ministering, and to the Spirit-called and Spirit-filled worker there comes the problem of the relative positions of the human and the Divine, the natural and the spiritual, in the work of God. In his zeal there is urged upon him the use of carnal weapons for spiritual ends. II. The Spirit-filled life is a life of service. The preparation, the call, and the equipment for Christian service is of the Holy Ghost. Our need is not more churches and better appliances, but a universal baptism of the Spirit of God. III. The Spirit-filled life is full of joy. We cannot be gladsome by resolution. Joy is a fruit, the natural product of an inner life. How does the fulness of the Spirit open a fountain of joy? The Spirit makes men glad with the consciousness of God, and a Godlike enthusiasm for out-flowing. There is no life like the life filled with the Spirit. S. Chadwick, Humanity and God, p. 227. The Enthusiasm of the Spirit Ephesians 5:18 I. The enthusiasm of the Spirit takes a man out of himself. A man hampered by circumstances is like a bird in a cage. He continually strikes against the cruel iron bars; he frets with impatience at his stern limitations, and he wants to escape somewhere. Well, he can escape into the forgetfulness of sleep, or the madness of intoxication, but it is the wrong way of dodging his limitations. The right way is to seek refuge in God. There is an escape from self, there is an actual transfiguration of a man's personality. There is such a thing as being lifted up out of the drudgery and routine of life. There is such a thing as being possessed by a power nobler than ourselves, and it is to be filled with the Spirit. II. The enthusiasm of the Spirit, instead of destroying a man's personality, ennobles it and builds it up. Wine makes me forget my troubles, but it dissolves my character, makes my personality fall into pieces, spoils and mars and destroys my manhood. But when the Spirit of God comes, He simply finds my nobler self, and causes it to blossom and to fructify. You can be your worst self by being filled with the Spirit of greed and selfishness and wine, but you can only be your higher self, the self that you are intended to be, by being filled with the Spirit of God. III. The enthusiasm of the Spirit produces harmony and order and joy. One of its manifestations is to speak to each other in psalms and hymns, and 'making melody in our hearts'. This is in striking contrast to the intoxication that comes from wine, which agitates and upsets the life, and engenders wretchedness and misery. We are possessed of a great number of faculties, and each faculty under proper stimulation yields joy and pleasure. But the joys resulting from the exercise of the lower faculties are more tumultuous and transient and less satisfying and wholesome, while the joys that ring forth from what is noblest in our nature are calm and deep and permanent. IV. The enthusiasm of the Spirit leads a man to a right relationship with his fellowmen, 'subjecting yourself one to another in the fear of God'. False excitement leads into the exaggeration of a man's self-importance. But the Spirit of God leads to service and self-denial, to patience and humility, to the obliteration of self, and the appreciation and helpfulness of others. The Holy Ghost is ethical and social. Whatever the Pentecost means, it means a baptism of humility and love. T. Phillips, Baptist Times and Freemen, vol. LIV. p. 447. Ephesians 5:18 After being drunk at Corrichatachin, Boswell rose next morning and 'went into Dr. Johnson's room, and taking up Mrs. McKinnon's Prayer-book, I opened it at the twentieth Sunday after Trinity, in the Epistle for which I read, "and be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess". Some would have taken this as a Divine interposition. Ephesians 5:18 'The energy natural to the English race degenerates to savage brutality,' wrote Cobden, in one of his letters, 'under the influence of habitual drunkenness; and one of the worst effects of intemperate habits is to destroy that self-respect which lies at the bottom of all virtuous ambition.' References. V. 18. W. F. Adeney, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 59. J. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 218. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2111. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, A Mission of the Spirit, p. 111. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 57. V. 18, 19. J. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 228. E. H. Bickersteth, Thoughts in Past Years, p. 137. V. 19. E. Griffith-Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 387. R. Moffat Gautrey, ibid. vol. lxxviii. p. 294. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 202. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii, p. 27. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 402. V. 19, 20. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 63. The Thankful Life Ephesians 5:19-22 I. Live the thankful life. Let us have no more groaning and complaining, but let us have music and psalm and hymn and spiritual song, an inward and outward melody. The Church has forgotten all its exhortations to thankfulness and to music; it has made for itself a series of threnodies very depressing and soul-enslaving, services and tests of discipline and standards of heartless and often hypocritical solemnity. The Apostle says, Let us have no more of this; there is a sunny side even to Christian faith; there are whole days, long bright summer days, in which it becomes us to sing one to another in psalm and hymn and spiritual song and to match the summer with a human melody. Let a cheerful life be added to the evidences of the truth of the Christian religion. Paul was never ashamed of his overflowings of joy; he mingled the cup of life so dexterously and with so sweet and sacred a cunning that no man ever drank such a cup as Paul drank; he said, Yea, we glory in tribulations also. Nothing could repress him or depress him; his religion forced its way through fog and smoke and storm and pain and loss; he took tribulation with a strong man's hand, and added it to his wealth. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Always hear the music that is in everything. There is fire in ice; there is music in silence, there is music in the radiance of the face. II. If we have had our psalm and hymn and spiritual song, what then, thou great disciplinarian of the Church? I will tell you, says Paul; after the song must come the discipline. You will find all along the Christian line that song and discipline alternate; they seem to balance one another; in that, as in the record of Genesis, the evening balances the morning, and the evening and the morning are the whole day. Discipline succeeds melody: 'Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.' We shall miss the whole point of this if we take it out of its connection and make a jest of it. There are no jests in the Bible. The buffoon can find them on the altar, almost on the Cross, but the wise man finds no such blots. Observe the atmosphere in which the Apostle is now writing; take note of the atmosphere which he has created around these Gentile converts. Do not place the Ephesian converts on a level with Christian and experienced nations. When the temperature is at the highest, when joy is at the zenith, when all the summer fruits are growing and all the summer birds are singing, he says, Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God. And in that atmosphere it is easy to do so; in any other atmosphere it is impossible That is the exposition. Where the atmosphere is right there will be no difficulty. 'Submitting yourselves one to another.' That is the key of all that follows. The submission is never to be on one side only; and where there is submission on both sides there is no humiliation, there is sympathy, there is union, there is a mysterious kin. III. You cannot lay down little rules upon any matters of personal or household discipline. What then can we do? The Apostle has already told us 'Be filled with the Spirit'. To rule without ruling, to lead without leading, to drive without cracking the whip, to be a man without being a fool; that is only possible when we are filled with the Spirit, when we are breathing the vital atmosphere, when we are one with Christ. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. II. p. 242. The Royal Debt Ephesians 5:20 I. The Spirit of Thankfulness ought to be the temper of our whole life 'giving thanks always for all things'. (1) God merits our thanks, if such an expression may be allowed. Our very being is His wondrous gift. The things which gladden and go to the enrichment and perfecting of life are His gifts. And as He is the supreme giver, so is He the source of all our blessing. (2) God expects our thanks. We cannot believe that the living God is indifferent to the Spirit in which His boons are accepted. Our nature teaches us better. He whom we worship is not the great machinist, chemist, or artist such a being might be insensible to gratitude; but we give thanks 'to God, even the Father,' and it is impossible to think that love and gratitude have no place in our relation to Him. II. This spirit of thankfulness is possible only in the grace and power of Jesus Christ. The name of Christ is that general and holy element, as it were, in which everything is to be received, to be enjoined, to be done, and to be suffered. The Spirit of the natural man is the spirit of criticism and depreciation. Dowered with treasures of light and darkness, inheriting a large and wealthy place, the language of discontent is our native speech. Let us see, then, how in the Christian life these infinite repinings are changed into praise. (1) The truth and grace of Jesus Christ make thankfulness possible by convincing us of our true position before God. Ingratitude, in the main, arises out of infinite and inveterate conceit. Satisfied that we are worthy of the greatest of God's gifts, we really appreciate none. Here the truth of the Gospel effects a fundamental change; it convinces us that we are sinners, without merit and rights; and in doing this, gives a new standpoint whence we view the whole field of life. (2) Christ makes thankfulness possible through restoring in us the spiritual faculty by which we discern the greatness and sweetness of all things. Genius shows itself and its transcendence by discerning the grandeur, romance, and joy of all things great or small. The Spirit of Christ creates in us a faculty of spiritual appreciation corresponding to genius in the mental realm. (3) Christ makes the habit of thankfulness possible by assuring us that the painful things of life serve equally with the brightest. The 'all things' must not be limited to agreeable things. 'Forget not all His benefits.' We cannot recall all the treasures of the deep along whose shore we have travelled; but we can keep a few pearly shells which retain the echoes of the vast music of the ocean of the eternal love W. L. Watkinson, Themes for Hours of Meditation, p. 20. Ephesians 5:20 If we had to name any one thing which seems unaccountably to have fallen out of most men's practical religion altogether, it would be the duty of thanksgiving. It is not easy to exaggerate the common neglect of this duty. There is little enough of prayer; but there is still less of thanksgiving.... Alas! it is not hard to find the reason of this. Our own interests drive us obviously to prayer; but it is love alone which leads to thanksgiving. Faber, All for Jesus, pp. 208, 209. References. V. 20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1094. G. A. Sowter, Sowing and Reaping, p. 96. The Glory of Submission Ephesians 5:21 These words set before us the spirit of unselfish devotion in which as Christians we are directed to regard the relations of life. And if we consider the words attentively, I believe that we shall find in them one of the very central rules of Christian action. Here if anywhere the contrast between the promptings of our natural spirit and the teaching of our Lord is sharp and decisive. The impulse of benevolence leads to noble acts of devotion; but that devotion which the Holy Spirit teaches is ever present in all the commonest details of our life, converting all into one great sacrifice to God. And it is in this that we have the full account of that submission of which St. Paul speaks. I. It is a sacrifice of ourselves. Submission in the Christian sense is an act of strength and not of weakness; a victory and not a defeat; a victory over self, felt and realised. This is the first characteristic of that submission to one another by which we must each endeavour to fulfil St. Paul's words. It is not the easy, thoughtless, indifferent acquiescence of a mind which is alike incapable of resolution and resistance; but the calm, steady, deliberate denial of his own wishes by one who knows well the value of that which he forgoes, and knowing still forgoes it. II. It is also a sacrifice for others not for one only, but for all among whom God's providence may place us. As Christians we are simply told to submit one to another; and thus we have opened to us a boundless field for the trial of our faith. Every act of our daily business may furnish us with a test whereby we may know whether we are indeed serving God. III. Thus we come to the third work of Christian submission; it is in the fear of God. This fear is at once the motive and the limit of our submission. Our submission is a sacrifice for Christ, and offered in the fear of Christ. There can be no submission where His honour is endangered; and then only is submission true when His will is its final object. At last submission will be crowned by sovereignty. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 304. References. V. 21. W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 235. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 107, 118, 123, 134, 140 and 145. V. 22, 23. A. Brown, British Congregationalist, 16th August, 1906, p. 57. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 292. V. 22-25. C. S. Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 121. V. 22-33, B. J. Snell, The All-Enfolding Love, p. 65. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 123. V. 23. E. T. J. Marriner, Sermons Preached at Lyme Regis, p. 123. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 281. V. 25. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2488. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 423. V. 25-27. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 628. V. 27. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 302. V. 28. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 239. The Nourished and Cherished Church Ephesians 5:29 Nothing in St. Paul's conception of the wonderful Church of Christ is more startling than his undoubting faith in the work she was to do, and in the tender, unslumbering love that would for ever guard her. The great Gospel is itself the great paradox, and we need not wonder that it is surrounded by companion paradoxes. Few can be more astonishing than these: the apparent abandonment, which is nevertheless a constant tending of the Church, and the apparent overcoming by world-powers which is nevertheless a victory. I. As to the first, let us remember that the saints have never misdoubted Christ and His promises, nor the interest of the Church in these, however they may have misdoubted their own. Alexander Peden is represented by a poet as taking counsel with God whether he should be able to keep true So I sought the Lord when we met At the black Moffat Water to get Just a blink of light on the way, And to know whether I should play The man in the dark times yet. But He said, 'Content you now, You shall be where I think best;' 'Yea, Lord,' I said, 'but Thou Knowest I never did bow To Baal with the rest, Nor take the black false test;' But He said, 'Content you now'. But even Peden, the gloomiest of all the great witnesses, never feared that the Lord would forsake His Church. 'There shall be brave days such as the Church of Scotland never saw the like; but I shall not see them, though you may.' 'Lord, I die in faith,' said another, 'that Thou wilt not leave Scotland, but that Thou wilt make the blood of Thy witnesses the seed of Thy Church, and return again and be glorious in Thine own land.' Warriston recorded his 'sure hope that the Church would be visited and freed'. In his last moments James Guthrie, too, foresaw the good of God's chosen, the gladness of His nation, the glory of His inheritance. In the very height of their extremity these men never questioned the present nourishing, cherishing love of Christ to His Church and the glory that was to be. If persecution sifted the Church, it was well, for her great danger had ever been that of becoming a bit of the world under another name. An eminent preacher has said, 'I do not myself feel any regret at the departure of monied people. In some places there is such a dependence on a little oligarchy of wealthy people that there seems no alternative for the Lord of the Churches but to send the rich away.' That is pure New Testament doctrine. II. The strength of the Church appears in her persecution as clearly as her faithfulness. When the shock strikes the slumbering land, men discover that they have to reckon with a power which the world did not originate and cannot subdue. In the darkest and weariest hour of overthrow and pain the Church has wings folded at her side. They will unfold, and then she is free. The strength of the Church is altogether supernatural, and she is mighty just as she knows it All the Church's trial is that the word may be fulfilled, 'Thou shalt call thy walls Salvation'. And then the world knows her, and seeks her for what she is. The world has long since discovered that in the natural there is no redemption. No fibre of its heart is stirred by Gospels which cannot promise deliverance from the prison-house of law. When we touch the illimitable world unknown, and yet well known when we tear up our calculations, when we forget the circumstances that are so dead against us, when we regard no more the chains that bind the weakening limbs, the hour of release is at hand. The Church of Christ rises girt for her task, and the world perceives that she is not so weak as she seemed to be. No, nor yet so poor. W. Robertson Nicoll, Ten-Minute Sermons, p. 283. Aspects of the Mystical Union Ephesians 5:30 The depth and intimacy of the mystical union between our Lord and His believers are nowhere more boldly expressed than in the words of the Epistle to the Ephesians, 'We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones'. Let us see how this great and ruling truth helps us to confront the problems of life. I. Consider its relation to the social work of the Church. Many of us remember the time when a very sharp line was drawn between the spiritual and the secular, and the spiritual was exalted. The preacher's business was to work for the salvation of souls. The Church was a building for the worship of God and the preaching of the Gospel. It was occupied two or three times a week, and for the rest quite useless. Philanthropy was held to be distinct from Christianity. It was inspired by Christianity, no doubt, and was good in itself, but it was not allowed to invade the sphere of the Church's true activity. As for recreation, it was thought outside the Church's mission, and was even regarded in some quarters as hostile to the spiritual energies of the faithful. By and by there came menaces and reproaches from the leaders of the working people. Worse than that, we became aware of the fact that the people were drifting away from organised Christianity. Many of us well remember that we were irritated by these challenges. We had been brought up to believe that our business was to bring souls to Christ, and that if we could do that, other problems would gradually solve themselves. We forgot that the Church once made it her special business to care for the poor, and that when this became the function of the State, a true and precious link was broken. Now we perceive that the Christ, Who is Incarnate and Supreme, is united to the bodies and the souls of His people, and we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. So we perceive that His work of redemption has gone wider than we thought, and that it extends to the bodies as well as to the souls of men. What is done merely for the body is a step towards salvation. Looking round his great congregation one Sunday night, Mr. Spurgeon spoke of the extremities to which some were reduced. 'Some of you,' he said, 'are hungry, and do not know where to turn for a morsel of bread. Has it even come to this?' Whoever fed the hungry, worked towards the Christian salvation. All social work takes a new colour and a happy radiance when it is done in the thought of the union in the remembrance that Christ died for the body as well as for the soul, and that He means to have with Him the whole man, body and soul, in the House not made with hands. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ The Canon of Conduct Ephesians 6:1 I. The Standard of Christianity. 'Right' is a law of conduct not based on accident or convenience; it arises out of the depths of eternity, and is comprehended in the depths of our nature. Duty is sublime, founded on eternal relationships; conscience is the index of the Divine and supernatural; right differs essentially from might; justice and convenience are terms wide asunder by the breadth of the heavens; righteousness is the law of the unchanging universe, the will of Him in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. If, then, the rule of right is the declared will of God, where must we look for that declaration? (1) Partially it is expressed in Nature (2) The revelation of the Divine will is further disclosed in the law of Sinai. (3) The rule of conduct finds complete expression in Jesus Christ. The application of the rule of right to individual acts and special situations requires the utmost carefulness. ' This is right.' Miss Martineau has a story of Carlyle setting forth on horseback to seek a fresh house, with a map of the world in his pocket; after this fashion, by reference to universal ideas we consider ourselves competent to resolve our personal, local, current difficulties. Much, however, comes between the general sense of righteousness and any specific act of moral judgment. We must take infinite pains to acquaint ourselves with facts, and to know how the rule of right applies. 'Human progress means, before all things, the education of conscience.' Here, then, is the criterion of conduct 'For this is right.' With a sincere mind, seconded by diligence, determine what is the noblest act or course of conduct in any given circumstances, then adopt it at any cost or hazard. II. The Standards of the World. Here we get into the plural. By what tests, then, do men of the world decide their course of action? (1) For this is customary. Great is the power of tradition. Great is the power of opinion. Great is the power of fashion. (2) For this is popular. (3) For this is profitable. Georges Sand bears this testimony: 'I have witnessed revolutions and closely seen the actors in them: I have fathomed the bottom of their souls I should rather say of their bags'. (4) For this is pleasant. Diderot gave this quaint instruction to artists. 'Be the disciple of the rainbow, do not be its slave.' But is not the epigram of Diderot also an instruction for life? Be the disciple of the pleasant, do not be its slave. (5) For this is clever. If you desire to live in peace and pure felicity, make the text your star. It sounds hard and harsh, it does not seem to contain a grain of poetry or note of music, yet it yields the secret of blessedness, the poetry of life, the flowers of the soul, the music of heaven. W. L. Watkinson, Inspiration in Common Life, p. 92. References. VI. 1. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 238. VI. 1-4. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 118. VI. 1-9. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 155. VI. 4. M. G. Glazebrook, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 28. T. Barker, Plain Sermons, p. 191. VI. 5-8. J. Fleming, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 69. VI. 5-9. C. S. Horne, Relationships of Life, p. 85. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 140. VI. 6. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 218. VI. 7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1484. VI. 8. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 20. The Quiet Mind Ephesians 6:10 Quietness is really an expression of strength. Look into almost all the language of the Scriptures and you find people with secure minds because they were secure in quiet. There is nothing dull about that quietness conducive to sleep. It is not like a stone with moss all over it. It is the grandest feature of the human and spiritual life. It is a sort of quietness, only it takes a lot of learning with many people. It is easy to be busy, and get hot thoughts, and have differences, but the grand word 'quietness' is the best sense of power. It is a mind worth having. It is the grandest mind. I. Why is it many of us cannot have a quiet mind? We say there are so many things to keep us restless. It may be a house to manage, or a difficult bit of work, or the difficulty of getting work things are so hard. My friends, a quiet mind is not built on things. There is no secure mind on a foundation of circumstances. You may drive the circumstances under and try to build it on them, but it will not rest there. It is a world of continuity; a world in which things will keep shifting, in which people keep moving one another along. You cannot fix yourselves in a comfortable income and a snug berth, and say: 'I have a quiet mind because I am safe for ever'. You can't do it. There is no such security to be had. Often people who come to the Church of God ask us to put things right. If you have Christian hearts we shall do our best They are down on their luck, or something disastrous is coming. Not by any amount of skill, of readjustment or warmheartedness, to help your wisdom, can we give to any one of our fellowmen a foundation on which a quiet, strong mind can rest. You can see people shaking with both hands in the park, saying: 'If only we could alter all these things, we should make people happy'. It is a libel on human nature to say happiness can be built on a construction of things. It cannot. There is no rock on which the fabric of man's happiness can rest secure. It is the sand fabric of this world's good things. No life can rest on it. II. What is a secure mind? How do we get it? I am sure many of you have it. It would be music in your ears to be reminded once again what it really is. You may take from the sixth of Ephesians a very good illustration of the secure mind. What is the picture presented to us? There you see an old, not a very old, but he looks an old, man in a narrow Roman lodging. His face is worn with the pain men put upon him, and with the anguish of much physical trouble which has come to him in long travellings among the bandits of Asia Minor, and the storms of the sea, and the scourgings often repeated. There he stands, or sits, in his room. With him is a Roman soldier, to whom he is chained by the wrists. Here in this prison, this lofty spirit, with a life of so severe pain, is writing a letter of cheer, and some of the words of his letter I read as my text. What are his words? 'My brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might; put on the whole armour of God,' and so on. Why did he say that? What was there to make him feel in that courageous mood? Look at the things about him. The thing most obvious was a Roman soldier. If you have read anything about those people, you would know they were a very unpoetical, unsympathetic people indeed. They were cold-blooded; their business was to take the world by force of arms, crush out all finer feeling. That was the person who suggested to him this. Instead of being depressed by that cold, forbidding presence, that spoke of captivity and the death not very far off, he takes that soldier to pieces, he literally takes him to pieces. Crushed by the thought of his unsympathetic presence? No. He can take every bit of that man's armour and treat it as an illustration of something. 'Look at his armour,' he says. 'There is his helmet, look at his sword, his sandals, his breastplate.' Why, every bit of it, instead of being something to crush the mind into coldness, only gives him something to remind him of glorious service for the living Christ. He had the soldier and the Lord Jesus Christ with him as well. So he was strong, not in his circumstances. He had not the good luck to be resting on some social structure. He had not happiness on an economic basis; but he had happiness resting on the living Christ, who was with him in the Roman prison. Presently, when he stood before the Caesar, the Lord stood by. III. The busiest of us can find a little time to lift up our hearts unto the Lord. Those saints were not the people to manage things wonderfully, they were not workers of miracles, or different from you and me. Yet they were saints. Why were they saints? If you were to make this a perfect world you would not make any more saints. Saints cannot be made perfect by things. They are the people who stand up as soldiers I don't believe in any other saints but the soldier-saints. There is no sainthood without fighting a good fight. It cannot be had. They are not fighting in Nebuchadnezzar's strength, or Goliath's, or David's, but in the power and might of the Lord. Let us remember that. We have an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away. This world will take our bodies into its earth some day, but we cannot be held by this world. God has made us. He is our Father, and to Him our spirits shall go at the last, I hope, having been made strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Having fought a good fight and finished our course, we shall hear those words: 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast stood up as a soldier!' A. W. Gough, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXXVI. p. 359. The Power of the Will Ephesians 6:10 I. Let us ask ourselves, why is it that we so often wish to do right and cannot? why is it that we are so frail, feeble, languid, wayward, dim-sighted, fluctuating, perverse? why is it that we cannot 'do the things that we would?' why is it that, day after day, we remain irresolute, that we serve God so poorly, that we govern ourselves so weakly and so variably, that we cannot command our thoughts, that we are so slothful, so cowardly, so discontented, so sensual, so ignorant? Why is it that we, who trust that we are not by wilful sin thrown out of grace (for of such I am all along speaking) why is it that we, who are ruled by no evil masters and bent upon no earthly ends, who are not covetous, or profligate livers, or worldly-minded, or ambitious, or envious, or proud, or unforgiving, or desirous of name why is it that we, in the very kingdom of grace, surrounded by angels, and preceded by saints, nevertheless can do so little, and instead of mounting with wings like eagles, grovel in the dust, and do but sin, and confess sin, alternately? Is it that the power of God is not within us? Is it literally that we are not able to perform God's commandments? God forbid! We are able. We have that given us which makes us able. We are not in a state of nature. We have had the gift of grace implanted in us. We have a power within us to do what we are commanded to do. What is it we lack? The power? No; the will. What we lack is the real, simple, earnest, sincere inclination and aim to use what God has given us, and what we have in us. A man, for instance, cannot attend to his prayers; his mind wanders; other thoughts intrude; time after time passes, and it is the same. Shall we say, this arises from want of power? Of course it may be so; but before he says so, let him consider whether he has ever roused himself, shaken himself, awakened himself, got himself to will, if I may so say, attention. We know the feeling in unpleasant dreams, when we say to ourselves, 'This is a dream,' and yet cannot exert ourselves to will to be free from it; and how at length by an effort we will to move, and the spell at once is broken; we wake. So it is with sloth and indolence; the Evil One lies heavy on us, but he has no power over us except in our unwillingness to get rid of him. He cannot battle with us; he flies; he can do no more, as soon as we propose to fight with him. There is a famous instance of a holy man of old time, who, before his conversion, felt indeed the excellence of purity, but could not get himself to say more in prayer than 'Give me chastity, but not yet. I will not be inconsiderate enough to make light of the power of temptation of any kind, nor will I presume to say that Almighty God will certainly shield a man from temptation for his wishing it; but whenever men complain, as they often do, of the arduous-ness of a high virtue, at least it were well that they should first ask themselves the question, whether they desire to have it. II. I would have every one carefully consider whether he has ever found God fail him in trial, when his own heart had not failed him; and whether he has not found strength greater and greater given him according to his day; whether he has not gained clear proof on trial that he has a Divine power lodged within him, and a certain conviction withal that he has not made the extreme trial of it, or reached its limits. Grace ever outstrips prayer. Abraham ceased interceding ere God stayed from granting. Joash smote upon the ground but thrice, when he might have gained five victories or six. All have the gift, many do not use it at all, none expend it. One wraps it in a napkin, another gains five pounds, another ten. It will bear thirty-fold, or sixty, or a hundred. We know not what we are, or might be. As the seed has a tree within it, so men have within them angels. Hence the great stress laid in Scripture on growing in grace. Seeds are intended to grow into trees. We are regenerated in order that we may be renewed daily after the image of Him who has regenerated us. In the text and verses following, we have our calling set forth, in order to 'stir up our pure minds, by way of remembrance,' to the pursuit of it. 'Be strong in the Lord,' says the Apostle, 'and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God,' with your loins girt about with truth, the breastplate of righteousness, your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit One grace and then another is to be perfected in us. Each day is to bring forth its own treasure, till we stand, like blessed spirits, able and waiting to do the will of God. J. H. Newman. References. VI. 10. T. Parr, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 74. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 570. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 106. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 175. C. Parsons Reichel, Sermons, p. 170. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 119. VI. 10-14. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 169. The Armour of God Ephesians 6:11 In his immortal allegory Bunyan represents Christian as arrived in his pilgrimage at the stately palace Beautiful; and, after rest and refreshment, conversation and devotion, some grave and comely damsels led him into the armoury where they showed him all manner of furniture which the Lord had prepared, sufficient indeed to equip as many pilgrims as there are stars in the firmament. They then harnassed him from head to foot with what was of proof, as he would surely meet with many antagonists on his way to Mount Zion. St Paul desired the Christians at Ephesus to be as perfectly mailed as Christian in the palace Beautiful. So he leads them into the Temple of Divine Truth, and shows them the armour God has prepared for them; but he leaves them to furnish themselves; nevertheless, he repeatedly enjoins them to do so without delay, as their need was great Our need is as great and imperative. I. The Armour to be Worn. There are six pieces; but not one for the back, because we must alway face the foe, and never flee from him. But we must not mistake the figure employed. This armour is for the soul, and not for the body; and it is to defend us from our great spiritual adversary, who, with his legions, would decoy us to slay us. Moreover, it is Divine: it has been thoroughly tested, and never once battered through, but has shielded myriads of souls, till they exchanged the shout of battle for the paean of victory. There is, first, the girdle. The girdle is very strong; it not only binds together what is loose, but, fastened tightly round the loins, it so braces the warrior that he can throw his whole force against his enemy. Even thus the truth of God must girdle our souls, binding well together our wandering thoughts and affections, and so uniting all our inner powers that we can dash against Satan with a might he cannot withstand. There is also the breastplate. This, in armour, is the metal vest which envelops the lungs and other vital parts, reaching from the neck to the thighs. This part is indispensably requisite. So is the Divine breastplate, which is Christ's righteousness upon us, and Christ's righteousness within us. Then there are the sandals. These save the extremities, and are lashed to them with sound thongs. Without them the warrior could neither plant himself firmly, nor fly on a commission received. Thus finely is the Christian pictured as acting alway under the peaceful motives of the Gospel. Furthermore, there is the shield. The ancient champion would ever have his shield, whether made of skin, or steel, or more precious metal; it was a miniature rampart, behind which he cleverly sheltered himself. Our shield is our faith; and, when skilfully used, it quenches the fiery darts of the wicked one, turns to flight the armies of the aliens, and defies the combined powers of death and the grave. Next, there is the helmet. This protects and adorns the head. So does the hope of salvation cover and beautify the Christian champion. Heavy blows may fall upon it, yet he lifts up his head in the day of battle, and cherishes in his heart the hope that will never render him cowardly nor ashamed. And, lastly, there is the sword. The sword is offensive and aggressive. If a Damascus blade, it will not snap, but pierce between the joints of the finest and strongest harness. How like to this is the Word of God! It is verily a keen two-edged weapon. What slaughter it makes of the ignorances and reasonings of the natural mind, and the passion and lusts which war against the soul! Jesus wielded it triumphantly when contending with Satan in the wilderness; and the feeblest saint, with this instrument in his hands, can do exploits. II. The Reason for Wearing this Armour. We have to 'stand against the wiles of the devil'. And who is he that we must be fully equipped to meet him? He is a spirit; hence invisible, and thus the more able to damage us. He once ranked with the princes of heaven; but he fell from his first estate through pride and daring, and dragged down with him a host of celestials. And ever since then long ages ago he has been pursuing the same dreadful course on earth. Now, how shall we stand against his wiles? Not clad in our own armour, or that of others, as was David in that of Saul, but in God's armour, and in the whole of God's armour. And even then we must not face him in our own strength, for that would be to war with him to our own hurt, as in the instance of Eve; but we must meet him as the stripling shepherd met the giant of Gath 'in the name of the Lord'. Defence and Defiance Ephesians 6:11 The motto of our volunteers is 'Defence, not Defiance,' but in the war with evil we must adopt the title 'Defence and Defiance'. 'The whole armour of God,' or what is called elsewhere 'the armour of light,' is the sanctification of our whole nature through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the only panoply invulnerable by evil. I. Defence against the sins which beset us is implied in our text. The faithful disciple of Christ is secure in fidelity to the truth, in the power of purity, in the peace which garrisons his heart, in the love of God and goodness, in his pervasive righteousness, in his fellowship with heaven, in his faith and hope laying hold of eternal life. The grosser temptations fail to deprave one who is clothed in the shining mail of holiness. The more subtle forms of sin are equally innocuous to the pure in heart. There is no gross tangibility in the temptations to which many good people are subject; the enemy attacks with unseen array and smokeless powder. II. The Defiance of Evil. It is not enough to defend ourselves from the assaults of evil; we must challenge and fight it at every step, even when it does not decisively challenge us. To 'let sleeping dogs lie' is not sound policy in the moral life. Our attitude must be aggressive, whether evil is palpable or obscure. We must deal with evil in an uncompromising spirit, allowing no truce, granting no quarter. It is an axiom with the military that a purely defensive war must end in defeat; and certainly we often fail in spiritual warfare because we do not press the battle to the gate, and thoroughly subjugate the enemy when God gives us his neck. We must deal with evil in the spirit of abounding courage and confidence. We must also struggle against evil in the full assurance of final victory. 'When Immanuel,' says John Bunyan, 'had driven Diabolus and all his forces out of the city of Mansoul, Diabolus preferred a petition to Immanuel, that he might have only a small part of the city. When this was rejected, he begged to have only a little room within the walls; but Immanuel answered: 'He should have no place in it at all, no, not to rest the sole of his foot'. To this end and in this confidence we must pursue the struggle. W. L. Watkinson, The Ashes of Roses, p. 93. Reference. VI. 11. W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches for the Christian Year, p. 44. Ephesians 6:12 I love the brave! But it is not enough to be a swordsman, one must also know against whom to use the sword. Nietzsche. The Christian Warfare Ephesians 6:12 As life goes on there comes to most of us a clearer view of its meaning and of its intense importance. The words, 'This is not your rest,' gain fresh meaning as the years go by. And another truth, also, is borne in upon us namely, that we are surrounded by strange, hidden forces, harassed by unseen foes, that the more deliberately we try to live with a high aim in view the more surely are we battered and assaulted; the more we realise that even now we are fellow-citizens with the saints of the household of God the more we find war and strife to be our portion. The life you and I have to live belongs only in part to this visible sphere. 'The things that are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.' And as it is with the spiritual blessing, so it is with the spiritual forces of evil that are against us. In the account of our Lord's temptation we are allowed to see a glimpse of what the battles with those unseen hosts meant to Him, and to learn by His example the methods by which to meet them. And we need to learn them, for if it is true that the battle has to be fought, if our foes are as vigilant as they ever were in the olden days, we must look to our weapons. The important thing is that we should each of us for himself make the warfare a reality; and I would suggest just two practical points. I. First, we must be given to prayer. The conflict, as we have seen, must be waged in the heavenly places, in the world of unseen reality, and so our weapons, if they are to be effective, must penetrate to that hidden sphere, We must push past the visible to the invisible world; we must get through the things of sense to the deeper realities which lie behind; and we shall do this in no other way but by prayer. We should set ourselves quite deliberately and very patiently to find out more fully than before what prayer means, and what it involves. Prayer has been very well and simply defined as the lifting up of the mind and heart to God. Words, you see, are not of the essence of prayer, though of course prayer usually will find its way out on to the lips, because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. II. But prayer in its essence is the contact of the human soul with the living God. We lift up our hearts unto the Lord. Prayer takes us through into the heavenly places; we penetrate to the throne of grace. Now if this is true, we see why prayer needs so great an effort. It is the exercise of the very best and highest powers that God has given to us. It is the putting forth, or it ought to be the putting forth, of the whole inner force of the man. Prayer which makes little or no demands on our energies is not prayer at all in any real sense of the word. It is only playing at prayer. And never was there a day when the effort was more needed than it is now. The world is so full of a number of things the rush and the whirl of life, the eager haste, the keen competition, the absorbing and numberless interests, the fret and anxiety, the wear and tear of an unquiet, busy age. All those things make prayer very difficult. We must learn where we ourselves are to gain the needed strength for our conflict. We shall never learn it in the midst of the full rush of life if we have not first gone quietly into the desert with our Lord. III. And there is one more duty which none of us must dare to neglect if we are to wrestle with any effect against the powers of evil. If it is necessary to lift up our hearts to God, it is necessary also to keep under our bodies. 'The flesh lusteth against the spirit.' To give full licence to the body, even in what is lawful, is fatal to true living. We are not, most of us, I suppose, called to an ascetic life. We are called to live as busy, active men and women in the world. But we cannot ignore facts, and there is no more certain fact than this that owing to the strange enfeeblement of our wills, which is due to sin. we have not any of us that complete control over our bodies that we ought to have. God forbid that we should ever make the mistake of imagining that our bodies are in themselves evil. The essence of sin lies not in the body, but in the weak, disordered will which fails to control it. It is because this is so that the need of fasting in some shape or form has never passed away, and never will so long as man is what he is. Yet fasting, like other spiritual exercises, may be an utter unreality. It may be practised as if it were an end in itself, a thing to be used for its own sake. So used, it will minister to nothing but folly, and pride, and self-will. Used as God means it to be, in a humble spirit, as a means to higher things, it will bring the blessing that always comes to those who obey. By prayer, then, which is prayer indeed, and by self-discipline, we shall be enabled in the power of Christ our Lord effectively to carry on the conflict in the heavenly places that conflict to which we, as Christians, are committed. References. VI. 12. Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, p. 71. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 289. Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 61. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 138; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 212. VI. 12, 13. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 230. The Trinity of Temptation Ephesians 6:13 In dealing with temptation we must remember that a man may be tempted either of God or he may be tempted of Satan. In Hebrews 11:17 we we told that God did 'tempt' or 'try' Abraham. God tries us that we may rise; Satan tries us that we may fall. I. There are three trinities in the world. The trinity in unity above us, the Father, Son, and Spirit one God; the trinity within us, spirit, soul, and body one man; and the trinity beneath us, the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world, the flesh, and the devil are present in every temptation that comes to man. (1) What is the world? In 1 John 2:26 we are told what is in the world: 'The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life'. These were the lines along which Christ's three temptations came. These the Apostle shows are in the world, but he does not give a definition of the world. The world really is the appearance or semblance of things, a mirage! (2) As for the flesh, there is no better definition than that given in Romans 7:18 , where the Apostle says: 'In me, that is, in my flesh'. 'Flesh' is 'me-ism,' egotism. What is the centre letter of the word 'sin'? 'I'; and the centre of egotism is 'I'. (3) The devil. The nearer you live to Christ, the more certain you are there is a personal devil. Of course, I do not think that the devil has the attributes of God. If you say that the devil tempts everybody you make him omnipresent and omniscient, which are attributes of God alone. Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the hosts of spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12 , Revised Version). Why should Satan tempt man to fall? The whole gist of the fall is that Satan should rule, should take from the brow of man the crown that the Creator put there. II. The temptation of our Lord. When Satan had made man his subject, God's plan seemed thwarted; but God, in the person of His Son, became man and encountered Satan, not in the exercise of His Deity, but 'He emptied Himself. III. The succour for tempted souls. We must remember that on the cross Jesus Christ became the representative man, and met the world, the flesh, and the devil in the hour of His weakness. If He could overcome them then, what can He not do now He is strong in resurrection glory? If we are linked to Christ by faith, we shall keep our standing, in spite of temptations, and Christ will bring Satan under our feet. F. B. Meyer, The Soul's Ascent, p. 123. The Armour of God Ephesians 6:13 Preparation that is the first note of Advent preparation for a struggle which must last while life lasts. No thinking man would deny that the be-all and end-all of our early years is preparation for the life that we are to live when we go out into the world. And Christianity advances its claim: What preparation have you made, and what preparation are you now making, for the moral and spiritual struggles of after-life? Let us then speak of what St Paul considers to be the preparation of the Christian warrior. Twice he speaks of the whole armour: 'Put on the whole armour of God'; 'Take up the whole armour'. In the Greek it is one word, the 'panoply' of God. This 'panoply,' or complete equipment, consists of six parts the girdle, the breastplate, the sandals, the shield, the helmet, and the sword. Of these, one only is an offensive weapon; the rest are for the protection of the soldier. But all of them are God's gifts to those who are to fight His battle; all belong to the supernatural order, and they are parts of a whole. I am not speaking to those who, to the best of their natural powers, are fighting on the side of right; I am speaking, as St. Paul is, to those who have been admitted to the supernatural life by the Sacrament of Baptism, and received their armour in Confirmation the 'Sacrament of warriors'. St. Paul speaks of I. The Girdle of Truth About the Loins. Now, we read constantly in the Bible of girding up the loins, and it is always in preparation for some active work. It was the gathering of the long flowing robe close round the body, so as to leave the limbs at liberty. The custom of the Hebrews was to wear the girdle, the sword-belt, round the waist, as our soldiers wear it now. And the Christian's girdle is to be Truth not mere conscientiousness, but Truth. Your loins are to be girt about with Truth. Without that, the 6oldier will be impeded by his flowing robe. And the Truth is the Truth revealed by God, the deposit of the faith committed to the Church, which is the pillar and ground of the Truth. Did you ever see a Christian soldier fight at odds without his girdle? I know few sadder sights. He is fighting against the powers of sin and unbelief; but all his movements are impeded. He is fighting without his girdle. He is a Christian still, a soldier still, but he has given up or lost his rule of faith the Truth of God. Lax-ness of religious belief is as inconsistent with real freedom as a loose ungirdled robe is inconsistent with a soldiers active life. II. The Breastplate. Elsewhere St. Paul calls it the breastplate of faith and love; here he follows Isaiah and speaks of it as the breastplate of righteousness. And righteousness means simply a good life lived in the strength of God. That which belongs to the Christian is the power to do in God's strength that which man by nature longs, yet fails, to do. There have been men who have thought lightly of the holy life, and put a transient emotion in place of the hold on Truth, and lost their hold on that in which a hold on Truth results a holy life. Yet, where sin is present in the life, where the breastplate of righteousness is pierced, though the girdle of Truth be on our loins and the shield of Faith before us, our armour is incomplete. The darts will pierce where they have pierced before. The soul that carries a secret sin will never stand before the assaults of Satan, III. The Sandals: 'Have your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace'. That is, I think, the readiness to proclaim to others, the good news of God. A religion which shows no missionary enthusiasm is a dead or dying religion; a personal faith, which begins at home and stays there, is not a belief in the Gospel of Christ. The sandals of readiness to work for God are part of the equipment of the soldier of Christ. IV. The Shield of Faith. Faith is the correlative of Truth. It is the Divine virtue which corresponds to that which God has told us about Himself. Strictly, all faith has God and the revelation of God for its object. How many forget to hold the shield of Faith over the body armour, to let it meet the first brunt of the enemy's attack! Many an arrow might have been rendered harmless had it been met by the shield of Faith yes, even by a battered shield, like his who cried, 'Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief. V. The Helmet of Salvation; or, as it is called elsewhere, the Hope of Salvation. Hope is not that sanguine disposition which is but little removed from ignorance: it is a grace of God, and yet it becomes more and more a rational power. Faith and hope were the two presuppositions of the early Christian efforts. Six hundred against the world, and the Church went forth conquering and to conquer, because it believed and hoped. If for a moment we lose hope, or if that hope is a mere emotional thing which fails us when all seems dark, then we feel our want of power; the enemy finds us out, and it is a forlorn hope. We are fighting without our helmet; and he who has lost his helmet is ready to throw away his shield, for to lose hope is to lose faith too. VI. The Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. All else is for defence; this is for attack. The Christian cannot win the battle simply by avoiding wounds; he must drive the enemy from the field. The phrase is not necessarily to be restricted to the Holy Bible; and yet, when I look back to that great battle fought and won in the wilderness, I see how the Tempter again and again recoiled from the sword of the Spirit, and shrank away before the invincible answer, 'It is written'. Aubrey Moore. Melanchthon's Last Public Message Ephesians 6:13 In his last public lecture, delivered in the early morning of Good Friday, 1560, Melanchthon used these words, referring to the need for a new obedience in the believer, 'Necessaria est et nostra Panoplia,' with an evident allusion to Ephesians 6:13 , 'Take unto you the whole armour of God'. The Latin narrative adds that these were the last words he uttered in public, as the lecture he desired to give on Easter Sunday morning was omitted on account of his increasing weakness. These words, 'Necessaria est et nostra Panoplia,' were therefore the last public message of the Praeceptor Germanise to his generation. During his illness Melanchthon quoted two verses from Psalm CXX. which to us seem to express the chief sorrow of his life: 'My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am for peace but when I speak they are for war.' Yet the man of peace left behind him a soldier's instruction: Take to arm you for the fight The panoply of God. The old German version translates his words: ' Es ist auch unser vleis und Ritterschaft von nöten ' ['We need also diligence and knightly courage'], and the narrative suggests that these qualities had been conspicuously displayed in Melanchthon's own career. [See the text of the original in Dr. N. Müller's revised and annotated edition (1910), pp. 11 and 62.] Ephesians 6:13 A noble thought is the soul's defensive armour; encased in it a man may suffer bombardment from life's pollution and take no stain. 'The whole armour of God' if in the urgency of battle you forget its details, take it just as the 'pearly shell' of a noble thought. James McKechnie, Meredith's Allegory, The Shaving of Shagpat, p. 124. Ephesians 6:13 Dr. Eugene Stock tells us that as far back as 1833 William Jowett concluded the instructions to John Tucker on his departure for Madras with some words found in the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp on the latter's position in Smyrna, 'Stand steady as an anvil when it is struck'. Tucker in after years often recalled them, saying, 'Be an anvil and not a hammer'. References. VI. 13. R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p. 71. J. Hunter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 42. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons (2nd Series), p. 47. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 337. The Whole Armour of God Ephesians 6:13-18 No man could have invented this expression. It brings with it some sign and token of its Divine origin. The most of things that are in the Scriptures are things that never would have occurred to the mind of man. Hence I stand by the old argument that the Bible is a book which no man could have written if he would, or would have written if he could. The uniqueness is part of the argument. 'The whole armour of God.' Is there any mere poetry in the word whole? Is it employed or introduced in order to perfect a rhetorical climax? or is there great weight of meaning in the word whole? Is it the emphatic word in the exhortation? or are all the words on one high level? the monotony not of weakness or weariness, but of completeness. We must revert to our own spiritual experience if we would receive a sufficing answer to these inquiries. Could we do without the word whole? What does the word whole stand for in this connection? It stands for completeness; there must not be one piece of the panoply overlooked, nor must the places and arrangements of the armour be for a moment changed or otherwise related. The provision of the Divine grace is complete; we are armed from the head to the foot, there is no unprovided place or spot in all this Divine clothing with spiritual steel. I. Many persons are armed in places. If nine points out of ten are attended to, these people suppose that they are very well provided for, but they are not. You have shut up all your castle, every window, every door, except the postern gate, the little gate behind, the small door that a small burglar may pass through. All that is wanted is not an army of burglars, but one little child-burglar that can creep through an unguarded pane of glass. Enough! the castle is in the hands of the thief. How noticeable it is that people are very fond of pet graces and favourite virtues, and how they dangle these before the eyes of these poor creatures who are not similarly created or provided for at those special points. Do not let us who are not tempted in some directions hold ourselves up as stupendous models of behaviour in some other direction. A man may not be drunk, but his soul may be steeped in covetousness, which is worse than drunkenness. A man may not be led away by his passions, but he may be greedy, selfish, self-considering, proud, and pride is worse than any sin that stalks about the city in the night-time. We condemn sin at wrong points, or we exaggerate some sins and practise others. Hence the beauty, the force, the necessity, of the expression or commandment, 'Put on the whole armour'. Every inch of it, be equally strong at every point; ay, and it will take thee all thy time to panoply thyself in the steel of God. II. It is wonderful in reading over this panoply to discover how much of it is meant for defensive purposes. It is not all meant for aggression. Christianity is both aggressive and defensive. It is astonishing, I repeat, how much of the Christian armour is for purposes defensive. The helmet does not fight, it protects; the shield does not aggress, it secures, defends, protects the very heart of the warrior. We need a great deal of defensive armour. The devil is wily. If there is one little heel-spot missed in the Christian Achilles that little vulnerable heel will be found out, and some great assault will be made upon it; mayhap the injection of some deadly poison; and injections are not accompanied with noise or with an uproar that is supposed to betoken heroism and angry strife; injection may be silent. The morphia is inserted with hardly any sense of pain, the digitalis makes no noise when it gets into the life and helps the poor labouring breath. So there are many noiseless temptations, there are many assaults that are not suspected; and therefore this saying is true. What I say unto one I say unto all. Watch; resist the devil, and he will flee from you. But to be called to all this arming and watching and fighting and agonising expectancy, is this the way to life eternal? Yes, and other way there is none. III. It is very noticeable that a great deal of this combat is what may be called hand-to-hand strife. It is not a discharge of ball and other missile over a space of miles; it is wrestling. Two men do not wrestle when they are standing five miles apart, nor a mile apart, nor a yard apart. It is when they are grappling, one with the other, seeking for the tightest place, watching every movement of the antagonist, anticipating and discounting it; the uplifting that there may be the downcasting. Sometimes the Christian warfare is just as hand-to-hand and arm-to-arm as this. Jacob wrestled; we speak and sing of wrestling Jacob. The record says, 'Now there wrestled with him,' and the wrestlers were so near to one another that the one touched the thigh of the other, and it shrank, and the muscle shrunken abides there till this day to tell what angel tussles there have been in the dark nights of spiritual experience. IV. Is this armour all to be turned against the enemy? No; it is to be turned, so to say, but to say it with tenderest reverence, sometimes against God. How so? The proof is here: Having equipped yourselves, then follows the command or exhortation, 'Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints'. Does the Lord make an armoury that can be employed against Himself? Yes, in a certain sense, but that sense must be very carefully and even tenderly distinguished and discriminated. The action is this: 'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force'. And God, having armed the men, says, Now come and take My kingdom. God is willing to be overthrown. The angel was willing that Jacob should throw him as it were in some great struggle. No man can ever take the celestial fort; it must be surrendered by God in answer to prayer. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. III. p. 22. Ephesians 6:14 Let us keep a brave heart and clear armour. What beautiful armour for a Christian lady that 'armour of light,' 'having on the breastplate of righteousness'. I was talking of that at our prayer meeting an hour since. It was suggested by going into my study late last night. The windows were open shutters not to; but as I looked out into the moonlight I saw there was a fine defence of snow round the house; for no robber would venture to come and leave his footmarks there. Think of the angel of snow defending our homes, i.e. pure, white, new-fallen snow, for if the snow is trampled on and turned into slush, it is no longer of use that way. It is only in its purity that it is a guard and a defence. Dr. Robertson of Irvine, to Mrs. Maxwell. References. VI. 14. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 180. T. S. Herrick, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 168. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 68. Expositor (6th Series'), vol. xi. p. 362. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 343; ibid. p. 350. The Readiness of the Gospel of Peace Ephesians 6:15 The great Apostle was much given to the use of illustrations. Like his Divine Master, he clearly saw the analogy between things external and things internal and spiritual, and employed the one for the purpose of making the other more easily intelligible. I. We must be ready for service. The believer is not saved by his works: but he is saved that he may work, and the genuineness of his new life is to be manifested by service. Now the possession of peace with God, much more the assurance of the possession of the peace of God within us, will give us readiness for the performance of the service which is required of us by the will of God, and defined for us by the necessities of our own generation. For where there is peace there is whole-souledness: there is nothing to disturb the attention, divide the heart, or divert the mind; and so he who possesses it can give himself wholly to that to which he gives himself at all. The possession of this peace will keep him also from being fastidious about the place in which he serves. II. But in the second place the Christian must be always ready for sacrifice, and the possession of the peace of God will give him that readiness. He is not to go out of his way seeking for a cross, for that would be to make himself a 'martyr by mistake'; but if, while moving on his appointed path of duty, he is confronted with a cross, then he is to take up that and humbly and bravely bear the suffering and sacrifice which it imposes, for Christ's sake. Then, as he never can tell when precisely he will be met by such a cross, he must hold himself always in readiness for it. III. The Christian should be always ready for sorrow, and the gospel of peace will give him that readiness. The believer does not escape sorrow in the world, and he ought to be ready for its coming. But where shall he get that readiness? Not from philosophy: that may make a Stoic of him, and lead him to submit, somewhat haughtily, to the inevitable, but it will give him neither the resignation nor the consolation of the Christian. Pride will not give it to him, for that will only wrap him in the mantle of seclusion, and make him discontented and irritable with God and all around him. But the Gospel of peace will give it to him, for that assures him that everything that comes to him is under the supervision and control of God. IV. The Christian should be ready for death, and the gospel of peace will give him that readiness. That which we most of all need in the prospect of our leaving the world is readiness to go. Nay, that readiness, rightly understood, is all we need. And in what does that readiness consist? Not in any special occupation at the moment, but in the habitual character of the soul; not in the performance of any rite, such as the observance of the supper, or the reception of extreme unction; no, but in the faith which rests on Jesus Christ, and in the possession of that peace which He bestows. References. VI. 15. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 192. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 353. VI. 16. Ibid. p. 361. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 416. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 204. VI. 17. H. Allen, Penny Pulpit, No. 1577, Phi 1:21 . E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, pp. 216, 229. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvii. No. 2201. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 367. Intercession Ephesians 6:18 Intercession is the characteristic of Christian worship, the privilege of the heavenly adoption, the exercise of the perfect and spiritual mind. I. First, let us turn to the express injunctions of Scripture. For instance, the text itself: 'Praying in every season with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and abstaining from sleep for the purpose, with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.' Observe the earnestness of the intercession here inculcated; 'in every season,' 'with all supplication,' and 'to the loss of sleep'. Again, in the Epistle to the Colossians; 'Persevere in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving, withal praying for us also'. Again, 'Brethren, pray for us'. And again in detail; 'I exhort that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and all that are in authority. I will therefore that men pray in every place.' On the other hand, go through the Epistles, and reckon up how many exhortations occur therein to pray merely for self. You will find there are few, or rather none at all. Even those which seem at first sight to be such, will be found really to have in view the good of the Church. II. Such is the lesson taught us by the words and deeds of the Apostles and their brethren. Nor could it be otherwise, if Christianity be a social religion, as it is pre-eminently. If Christians are to live together, they will pray together; and united prayer is necessarily of an intercessory character, as being offered for each other and for the whole, and for self as one of the whole. In proportion, then, as unity is an especial Gospel-duty, so does Gospel-prayer partake of a social character; and intercession becomes a token of the existence of a Church Catholic. III. Intercession is the especial observance of the Christian, because he alone is in a condition to offer it. It is the function of the justified and obedient, of the sons of God, 'who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit;' not of the carnal and unregenerate. This is plain even to natural reason. The blind man, who was cured, said of Christ, 'We know that God heareth not sinners; but, if any man be a worshipper of God and doeth His will, him He heareth'. Saul the persecutor obviously could not intercede like St. Paul the Apostle. Our first prayers ever must be for ourselves. Our own salvation is our personal concern; till we labour to secure it, till we try to live religiously, and pray to be enabled to do so, nay, and have made progress, it is but hyprocrisy, or at best it is overbold, to busy ourselves with others. I do not mean that prayer for self always comes first in order of time, and intercession second. Blessed be God, we were all made His children before we had actually sinned; we began life in purity and innocence. Intercession is never more appropriate than when sin had been utterly abolished, and the heart was most affectionate and least selfish. Nor would I deny, that a care for the souls of other men may be the first symptom of a man's beginning to think about his own; or that persons, who are conscious to themselves of much guilt, often pray for those whom they revere and love, when under the influence of fear, or in agony, or other strong emotion, and, perhaps, at other times. Still it is true, that there is something incongruous and inconsistent in a man's presuming to intercede, who is an habitual and deliberate sinner. Also it is true, that most men do, more or less, fall away from God, sully their baptismal robe, need the grace of repentance, and have to be awakened to the necessity of prayer for self, as the first step in observing prayer of any kind. The privilege of intercession is a trust committed to all Christians who have a clear conscience and are in full communion with the Church. We leave secret things to God what each man's real advancement is in holy things, and what his real power in the unseen world. Two things alone concern us, to exercise our gift and make ourselves more and more worthy of it. J. H. Newman. References. VI. 18. S. G. Maclennan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 170. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 1. J. Chambers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 158. H. Melville, Penny Pulpit, No. 1622, p. 25. VI. 18-24. E. J. Kennedy, Old Theology Restated, p. 242. VI. 19. Archbishop Magee, Christ the Light of all Scripture, p. 129. VI. 19, 20. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 207. VI. 23. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 881. VI. 23 and 24. J. H. Holford, Memorial Sermons, p. 114. VI. 24. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, p. 391.