What Can We Know About God? Ephesians 1:3-14

A Pocket Guide to New Testament Theology

by I. Howard Marshall

Chapter 3: What can we know about God?

A well-known hymn of praise, found in many hymnbooks, opens with the words:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes.

The rather negative tone with its stress on God’s invisibility and unknowability typifies many people’s conception of God. Certainly there is a sense in which God is incomprehensible and beyond our understanding, and it would be wrong for us to think of him as an “object” that we can grasp and comprehend like any other object in the universe. But the theme of our previous chapter was that, although man cannot by searching find out God, yet God has revealed himself to us in ways that we can understand. Since man is a creature made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), it is possible for him to have some understanding of the God who made him. God has revealed himself by means of human language, and so long as we realize that human language is a true, but inadequate, vehicle for communicating the reality of God, we can make some progress in understanding. God has graciously accommodated himself to our feeble and sinful minds by speaking to us in a personal revelation, and so we must remember that the person himself is greater than the revelation. In Jesus we see, as Charles Wesley put it,

Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.

Provided we remember that he is greater than our understanding, and that human words cannot do justice to him, we can still say much about him.

God in three Persons (Ephesians 1:3-14)

The Bible reveals God to us in three ways. In the Old Testament, particularly, we read about God the Creator and Lord of the universe. He alone is God, for the idols of the heathen are in no sense real gods (Psalm 96:5; Isaiah 45:12-18). On the basis of the teaching in the Old Testament the Jews became convinced monotheists, i.e. believers that there is only one God (Mark 12:28-34; cf. Deuteronomy 6:4).

It was against this background that the early Christians came to believe that Jesus shared the nature of God, and we can see that it was a remarkable step for them to take. Jesus himself claimed to come from God and spoke of him in a unique personal sense as his Father (Matthew 11:25-27). When he rose from the dead, Christians saw in this a confirmation of the status which he had claimed for himself, and they said that God had given him the title of “Lord” (Acts 2:36). The writer of one of the Gospels described him as the Logos (Greek “word”), a being separate from God and yet called God (John 1:1; cf. 20:28). The church knew him as the Son of God (Acts 9:20; Romans 1:3f.: Galatians 2:20; Hebrews 1:1f.); it prayed to him (Acts 7:59; 1 Thessalonians 3:11ff.); it worshipped him as Lord (Romans 10:9-13; cf. Philippians 2:9-11); and it applied to him titles used of God in the Old Testament (Philippians 2:10f.; cf. Romans 14:10-12 and Isaiah 45:23; 1 Peter 2:3; cf. Psalm 34:8).

The Old Testament contained references to the Spirit of God as one of the means by which God spoke and acted in the world. This Being was more fully revealed in New Testament times. He was spoken of as “another comforter” (i.e. “strengthener” or “advocate”) sent from God to take the place of Jesus with his followers after the ascension (John 14:16f., 26; 16:7-11, 13-15, 26). He was described in personal terms (Romans 8:26f; 15:30; 1 Corinthians 12:11; Ephesians 4:30; 1 Timothy 4:1) and regarded as divine (2 Corinthians 3:17f.).

The striking thing is the way in which the earliest Christian writings name God the Father and Jesus his Son alongside each other (Galatians 1:3; 1 Thessalonians 1:1) in a way that must have shocked the Jews with their belief in the uniqueness of God the Father. The Holy Spirit too was linked with the Father and Son in a way which suggests irresistibly that all three Beings stood on the same level (Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 2:18; 4:4-6; 2 Thessalonians 2:13f.; 1 Peter 1:1f.). The actual term “God”, however, is rarely used directly of Jesus and never of the Spirit.

This understanding of the Father, Son and Spirit arose out of Christian experience as God revealed himself in Jesus and then in the life of the church, and the New Testament writers seem to have accepted it without thinking too deeply about its implications. But the problem was inevitable: how could this belief in three divine Persons be reconciled with the Old Testament idea of only one God? During the first two or three centuries of Christian history many attempts were made to solve this problem. Various solutions were tried which proved inadequate. One solution was to suggest that the Father alone was God and that the Son and Spirit were lesser, created beings, superior-quality angels, so to speak. Another suggestion was that “Father”, “Son” and “Spirit” were three roles played by God, rather like one actor appearing in three different parts in a play. Neither of these solutions did justice, however, to the plain facts revealed in the New Testament, namely that the three Persons were each fully God, and that God was at one and the same time existent as three Persons.

It is doubtful whether the problem of the being of God can be solved in the sense of giving an explanation of it. Christians have been content to affirm the doctrine in a form which takes account of all the facts and to try to find human analogies which may throw some light on it.

Some people find these analogies helpful, although obviously none of them must be pressed too far. All of them start from the point that the biblical teaching reveals one God (the basic Old Testament doctrine) who is nevertheless revealed in a threefold way (the New Testament revelation). The problem is then to state how one God can combine unity and diversity. At an impersonal level we may think of how an atom is a unity composed of various kinds of particles. A biological organism consists of a unity of different indispensable parts. The human personality unites intelligence, feeling and will in such a way that we can hardly conceive of the whole without its parts or the parts without the whole. Other analogies have been drawn from personal relationships. Thus a husband and wife who are bound together by the closest ties of love can be one in thought and purpose and yet are clearly capable of independent action, which is nevertheless in harmony with the wills of both of them. In the same way, Jesus spoke of his relationship as a Son to the Father in terms of mutual knowledge and a common purpose (John 5:19f.; 17:21, 23).

These two types of analogy may be of some help. The former emphasizes the unity and the latter the distinctness of the parts of the whole. Together they point to the need to stress the oneness of God and the distinctness of the Father, Son and Spirit. The term which has come to be used for the three members of the Godhead is “Persons.” Whatever its original meaning — which was more that of the “roles” played by actors — it inevitably conveys to modern readers all that is meant by human personality. This development in usage is understandable and legitimate. Father, Son and Spirit do each show the characteristics which we associate with human person-hood, and in particular the capacity to enter into relationships with other persons. It may be most helpful to think of the Trinity as a unity of three Persons, joined by the closest ties of love and common purpose, so that they appear as one God. This is certainly suggested by the way in which Jesus is regarded as the Son of the Father. This way of speaking was misunderstood in the early church to mean that the Son was “begotten” by the Father at some remote point in time past, but it was generally realized that to say this was to press the metaphor of human fatherhood further than was legitimate; what it means is that the Son stands in a perpetual relation of sonship to the Father. The Bible does not offer any comparable way of speaking about the relation of the Spirit to the Father, but the early church developed the thought that the Spirit “proceeded” from the Father and the Son (cf. John 15:26). This manner of speaking states the relationship without explaining it.

To speak of God as the Trinity is to affirm that he exists as one God and yet in three Persons, all equally divine.

God is spirit (John 4:24)

The basis of the biblical understanding of God is the doctrine of the Trinity. Our next step must be to consider the character of the God who is revealed to us in this threefold manner. We shall base our discussion on a series of affirmations made by John in his Gospel and First Epistle. These affirmations were not meant as a systematic and comprehensive summary of the nature of God, but nevertheless they do offer a very handy summary of the biblical teaching.

The first, and most difficult, of these affirmations is that God is spirit. The difficulty is obviously that we have just spoken of one particular Person of the Trinity as “the Spirit” and now we have to affirm that this word applies to the Father also. At the same time the word is popularly used of the soul of a man as distinct from his body, or of the life-breath which animates his body, or of superhuman beings. In general, the word is used of non-material beings, and it is this idea that is present when we speak of God as spirit. His manner of existence is basically different from our human bodily existence (cf. Isaiah 31:3).

On a negative side, this warns us against thinking falsely of God as having a human or material body like the superhuman figures of Greek gods. He is not to be confused in any way with man-made idols, and the Bible strongly forbids any attempt to make material representations of him (Exodus 20:4-6). Any such representations are bound to be crude and misleading. Our normal physical and material ways of thinking completely break down when they are applied to God.

On the positive side, the term “spirit” implies that God’s existence is on a higher level than ours. It is true, real existence, free from the limitations and corruption associated with bodily existence. The idea that God is free from physical limitations, and so is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-present, is bound up with the thought that he is spirit. In John 4:24 spirit and truth are closely associated. What is spiritual is therefore ultimately real and lasting. God is eternal spirit.

God is love (1 John 4:8)

God as spirit is the basis of reality and truth. These qualities come into clearer focus when we consider the biblical revelation of his character as loving. Love involves at least two people, the lover and the beloved. The Bible makes it clear that the Father and Son are bound together by mutual love (John 5:20; Colossians 1:13), and it is reasonable to conclude that the Holy Spirit shares in this loving activity although the Bible does not explicitly state this. God’s love for the world is then an extension of this eternal loving relationship within the Trinity so as to include the world, and human love is meant to be a copy of this love (1 John 4:11).

But love is a word with several different meanings, and it is important to understand what the term means when it is used of God. There are at least two Greek words translated into English as love. One is the word erōs which often expresses the desire to have or possess the object which one loves and so to obtain pleasure and satisfaction. Such love is called forth by the sheer desirableness of its object, and its aim is essentially selfish, it aims primarily at its own good, and its watchword is “get”. This word is not used in the Bible. The other word is agapē;. The kind of love often expressed by this word aims to give pleasure and satisfaction to the object of its affection, rather than to the lover. It does not simply love the lovable but it reaches out to the unlovely and unlovable and makes it lovable. It is fundamentally unselfish and altruistic, it aims at the good of the beloved, and its watchword is “give”. Naturally this does not mean that the lover himself gets no satisfaction or pleasure out of his love. His satisfaction is that which comes from giving to others and sharing their joy, and of course the agapē of one person can be matched by the answering agapē of another.

There are other concepts of love as well as these (see C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves), but this comparison of the two concepts of love which have come to be broadly associated with these two Greek words will suffice to make our point. The kind of love which is shown by God is agapē. It is this word that is used in the Bible for his love, and it is fair to say that the concept of giving love largely developed from the use of this word in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to describe the love of God. We might go so far as to say that men arrived at this concept of love only from seeing what love meant in the case of God. The idea of love as giving, in distinction from desire or friendship, is bound up with the revelation of God’s character. “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). These two verses sum up the matter. God’s love is concerned with the welfare of the undeserving and confers benefit on those who have no title to it nor show any love to him. Human love is possibly never free from self-seeking. God’s love is given freely to all men without discrimination and seeks only their highest good. Here is the pattern for a human love which cares for all men regardless of their race, colour, language or place in society.

This, then, is the kind of love which is shown in the fellowship of the three Persons of the Godhead. It led to the creation of the universe, and it brought the Son of God to earth to win back rebellious mankind into joyful fellowship with God. It is this love which lies behind the ascription of the title of Father to God. He is Father primarily of Jesus as his Son (John 5:20). It is very significant that the Bible scarcely ever uses the term “father” of God’s relationship to mankind in general. It is only when men respond to his redeeming love and become his spiritual children (Matthew 6:9, 15) that they enter into a family relationship with him; only then are they entitled to call him their Father. The popular modern idea that God is the Father of all men and that they can expect all the privileges of his fatherly goodness without undertaking any filial responsibilities has not basis in biblical teaching and needs to be clearly exposed as an error. If God’s love is available for all mankind, it remains true that entry into a relationship in which he is known as Father is reserved for those who are prepared to respond positively and wholeheartedly to his invitation.

God is light (1 John 1:5)

In the Bible light is a symbol of various ideas, such as holiness, goodness, truth, knowledge and salvation. It is thus a natural symbol for God, who is the supreme embodiment of these qualities (Psalm 27:1; Malachi 4:2; John 3:19; 8:12: 2 Corinthians 6:14; Ephesians 5:8f.; Revelation 22:5).

God’s character as light can express his separateness from men (1 Timothy 6:16), but it can also signify that he gives guidance and direction to men in the darkness of this world (1 John 2:8-11). Above all the symbolism of light in its purity speaks of the holiness of God. We should not distinguish this attribute of God too sharply from his love, as if these were two different aspects of his character. The temptation for some thinkers has been to regard holiness as almost the opposite of love, if not actually incompatible with it. It makes better sense to say that holiness and love are like the obverse and reverse sides of the same coin. They are two complementary, personal aspects of the character of God.

It has been said that holiness is what makes God different from man, and certainly something of the mystery and majesty of God is summed up in this word. But at the heart of God’s holiness there lies the moral quality of righteousness. He is just in all his ways. Justice can be understood negatively in terms of treating people as they deserve, and, in particular, of meting out the appropriate punishment to a wrong-doer. God’s justice, however, is predominantly positive, for it expresses itself primarily in love and mercy even to the undeserving. Justice means seeing that people get what they deserve when good things are being handed out, as well as that penalties are given to those who deserve them. The gospel itself can be regarded as a revelation of the righteousness of God (Romans 1:17). It is precisely because he is faithful and just that he forgives the penitent sinner (1 John 1:9). He is a righteous God and therefore a Saviour (Isaiah 45:21). God’s love is righteous love, so that it is not a matter of arbitrary sentiment; his righteousness is loving righteousness, so that it is not a matter of austere payment of what is owed. True love is seen in justice, and true justice in love.

The concrete expression of God’s holiness and righteousness is the moral law, which he has given to men as the way of life they must follow. Love is meant to express itself in harmonious relationships. Just as the life of the triune God is marked by perfect harmony, so the life of man in his relationships with his fellow men and with God should be marked by harmony. This means that there must be some rules regarding the expression of love in human relationships. The essence of God’s law is accordingly that men ought to love God and one another (Mark 12:29-31). This basic law, however, needs to be expanded into a great number of commandments which express the obligations of love in different circumstances.

These commandments are given to men in the context of God’s love and concern for them. In the Old Testament they mostly appear as part of the covenant made by God with the people of Israel. They were spoken in the context of God’s love for the people, expressed in his deliverance of them from their slavery in Egypt. He summoned them to be his people and promised them his fatherly care, on condition that they would obey his commands. Similarly, in the New Testament the concrete instructions for daily life appear in the form of an explanation of what it means to respond to the love of God revealed in Jesus. This does not mean, however, that God’s commands are binding solely on those who agree to accept his covenant and grace. Ultimately they express his will as the creator of mankind, and they are rooted in the moral law which finds its source in him. If this way of life is not followed by men, the consequence is the breakdown of life itself; human relationships become destroyed and the life of men together fails to achieve its purpose. The tragedy is that men have refused to acknowledge the demands of God’s love expressed in his law. They would prefer to be free from it, and they imagine that their way is better. When love is thus denied the possibility of existence, God’s holiness is felt as an alien force, and it cannot be experienced in any other way than in wrath and judgment.

When men refuse to accept God’s way, they become the objects of his wrath. This is the inevitable consequence of their attitude, since there can be no room in a moral universe governed by the law of love for those who live for themselves and refuse to submit to the law which structures the universe. If a man rejects the holy demands and the loving offers of God, he himself must be rejected and suffer exclusion from the presence and life-giving power of God, as the penalty of his rebellion (Matthew 23:31ff.; 2 Thessalonians 1:3-12).

This is why God’s holiness symbolizes his separation from men. It is not because of their finiteness that men are separated from God. It is because of their sin that they exclude themselves from him, for no sinner can stand in the presence of God (Malachi 3:1f.). The Bible implies that if it were not for their sinfulness, men could enjoy fellowship with their Creator (cf. Genesis 2:8; 5:22-24; Exodus 33:11). This fellowship has been destroyed by sin, and God’s holiness is now a barrier to the approach of sinners into his presence. But God himself has taken the initiative in reopening a way to fellowship through the gospel (1 John 1:3, 7). He wants men to come back into fellowship with him and to share his holy nature (2 Peter 1:3-11), and so he gives himself freely in love, bearing their sin and taking its evil effects upon himself in order that they might be freed from it and be fit to come into his presence. It is the very greatness of this holy love which makes the sin of men in rejecting them all the more heinous and culpable.

Questions for study and discussion

1. On the basis of such a passage as Ephesians 1:3-14, what would you say is the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity for the Christian in his spiritual life?
2. Do you think that it is fitting to address prayers to the Son or the Spirit as well as to the Father?
3. With the aid of a concordance examine the teaching of the New Testament about God as Father: what evidence, if any, is there that he is the Father of all mankind?
4. “The divine attributes of justice and mercy … do not need to be reconciled, for they are never at war” (J. Denney): discuss.
5. Make a list of the different kinds of human love. What light do they throw on the nature of God’s love?

* * * * * * * * * * *

Used by permission: © 2000 I. Howard Marshall. Website: www.BiblicalTraining.org.

Comparison of the Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians

Comparison of the Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians

by J. N. Darby.

An attentive consideration of the Epistle to the Romans and that to the Ephesians, will afford us some interesting light on the question of the position of the believer in Christ. The whole question of our place in Christ is viewed under a different aspect in the two epistles. I would briefly consider this. The doctrine of redeeming grace may be viewed in two ways. God’s own purposes as to His children in glory may be developed on the one hand; or the condition of man portrayed, and met by grace visiting them in mercy to deliver them on the other. The Epistle to the Ephesians follows the first of these methods; the Epistle to the Romans, the second.

In Ephesians we have at once the saints blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ – placed in the blessed image of God before Him, and adopted to be His children. Redemption itself comes as a means in the second place. The knowledge of the mystery – the gathering together in one all things in Christ, and our sealing as heirs till the redemption of the purchased possession follow. The Romans, after some introductory verses, commences by the description of the dreadful state in which fallen man was, unfolding the depravity of the Gentiles, the hypocrisy of those who pretended to moralise and yet were personally no better, and finally the sad condition of the Jews, who, if they had the law, broke it. In chapter 3, at the close, grace meets this state. But this leads to the consideration of the work of grace, in each epistle, in a different way.

To speak first of the Ephesians, the sinner is seen dead in trespasses and sins – walking, doubtless, in them, but, before God, wholly dead. But even here this is not the first object presented. As chapter 1 presents the position in which the saint is placed, so the second the work which brings him into it. With this view, what is first brought before us is God’s power towards us manifested in what was wrought in Christ. God had raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His right hand, far above all principality and power, above and beyond all created glory, not only in this age, but in that to come, where all hierarchies will be in their true glory and unclouded elevation, but He above and out of them all. Divine power in its exceeding greatness had brought Him from death up there.

As the origin of our life is before all worlds (John 1; 1 John 1), so our place before God is out of and above all worlds and creature powers. It is to be remarked here, however, that Christ Himself is looked at as already dead. The whole work is thus of God; for Christ being dead, is looked at, of course, as Man, and this wondrous power is exerted, and He, as Man, is at God’s right hand. Then the saints are brought before us, Gentiles or Jews, as alike children of wrath by nature, and are seen once utterly dead in trespasses and sins, quickened together with Him, and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ. The whole is entirely God’s work. We are created again. It is not living men who have to be dealt with, who are without law and under law, must die with Christ, and are set free by death. They are found dead in sins, and we get the perfect full blessing of the work, because it is entirely God’s. Man is for nothing therein, for what has he to do with creation? He is created; all that man (that is, the believer) is is God’s work. Hence, also, remark, we have peace, making nigh, reconciling, exalting to sit in heavenly places in Christ, but not justifying; because it is a living, responsible, existing man who has to be justified before God. But we have Christ exalted, and ourselves exalted in Him. It is God’s work in Christ and in us, not our being justified before God.

If I turn now to the Romans, it is otherwise. I get Christ alive on the earth, come of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared Son of God with power by resurrection. Still flesh could not live unto God, nor they that are in it please Him. Hence we find Christ as come in grace for them, not dead but dying, and then alive to God. I get the condition and quality of man, not simply the work of God as to one dead. So as to men; I get the means of standing in righteousness before God, and not an absolute work. Nor is this all. In the Romans the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God is not contemplated, nor the union of the church with Him. Hence we are not said to be quickened together with Him, nor made to sit in heavenly places in Him. His exaltation is just mentioned in chapter 8, with “who even is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” – which last thought does not, of course, contemplate union. In chapter 12 the practical effect of union among ourselves is spoken of; but, in general, these topics form no part of the instruction of the epistle. Men are living, guilty beings, the whole world guilty before God; and to learn that, in the remediless state of their nature, death is the only remedy; in itself fatal, doubtless, but perfectly saving when in Christ. It is atonement for all sin, and deliverance from the position in which we were: for death is evidently the end of that, and our life thus wholly new, Christ being risen from the dead, and we are to walk as alive to God through Him. We are justified by His blood; and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

But the Romans, as teaching the justification of a sinner, necessarily first views him as a sinner to be justified. Hence it goes through the whole question of law; and we have the experiences of the man not justified, though convinced of sin, and then justified from the sin – alive in conscience without law, dying under law, and alive in Christ, where there is no condemnation. The practical process is gone through. The effect is this, that he is brought up to the point where the Epistle to the Ephesians begins with him. He finds that there is no escape from the condition he is in, as a child of Adam, or a Jew, but by death. Yet, were it his own, it would of course, lead him to judgment, not to justification, but where all guilt is proved. It is Christ who dies, and is set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood; so that God is just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. That meets the case of guilt, but is not life; for so Christ would be dead, and we brought in Him into death. This could not in any way be. For not only would there be no life, but it would even prove, as the apostle shews in 1 Corinthians 15, that there was no remedy. Our faith would be vain; we should be yet in our sins. But we believe that God has raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.

The consequence of this different view of things is seen in the practical result in man under the operation of God’s Spirit.

In the Romans we have experiences flowing from the conflict of the newly introduced principle of life with flesh, or the effect of deliverance from it, by the knowledge of the power of deliverance in Christ. The former we find in chapter 7, where the conflict of the new nature with the lusts and will of the old under law are depicted; and the second in chapter 8, where the spiritual blessings of one who is made free from the law of sin and death, by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, are drawn out before us in a way to produce the profoundest interest in the soul that enters into it.

In the Ephesians the man is dead in sins, and transported into heavenly places by the operation of God; being created anew in Christ Jesus, unto good works, which God has afore prepared, that we might walk in them. The works belong to the new place and condition in which alone we are known in the Ephesians. God has afore prepared works for His new created ones. Hence, we have no experience of passing through conflict, and deliverance, and its results; but there is a demand to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, and a desire that the saints, being rooted and grounded in love, may realise in their hearts, by Christ’s dwelling in them by faith, the full effect, even to filling to all the fulness of God, the greatness of the infinite scene of glory into which they are brought, and know that love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

In result the general principle of the difference is this. In the Romans, the man is found alive in sin, is convicted of it, and has (Christ having died for him to put it away) to come, in the conviction of the hopeless badness of his nature, to death, and then rising again, alive through Jesus Christ, be thus justified before God, and by God, on the one hand, and alive in a new life on the other; then nothing shall separate him from the love of Christ. In the Ephesians the man is found dead in sins; but then he is raised up, and set in heavenly places in Christ (according to the power in which Christ, when dead, was raised of God, and set in the heavenly places, far above principalities and powers, and every name that is named), and brought as a new creation, children withal, and heirs into immediate nearness to God. The additional truth is brought out, that we are united to Christ in this place, as members of His body, and His heavenly bride.

I cannot here – time does not allow it – do more than draw out the great general principles of the different aspects of truth presented by the two epistles. He who searches as a devout learner into the truth of God, will, I am sure, find (in what I here notice in these epistles) elements of deep and profitable instruction, as to his own relationship with God, the Christianity of his soul and of the word, and of his soul according to the word. Perhaps some one, for his own and our edification, may furnish us with further results which flow from it.

Comparison of Epistles

The comparison of certain epistles illustrates with much interest and instruction the path of the Christian. I send you the thoughts which have suggested the remark. I refer particularly to the Epistle of Peter, Colossians, and Ephesians.

In Peter we have Christ risen, having accomplished redemption; then His own actings, in that resurrection, of that power of life which is the spring of all our hope, and sets it in lively exercise towards its end, which is in heaven, and hence makes a man, and even a Jew (who once had other thoughts), a stranger and a pilgrim here. We will examine this in the statements of the epistles.

But to make my meaning more clear, I will first refer to the Ephesians. There the saints are seen sitting in heaven – there already – not on the way there; their conflicts and position in general flow from this. Hence they are seen risen with Christ, seated in heavenly places in Him, and this, through union with their Head, by the Holy Ghost sent down; on which last great fact their earthly position also depends.

The Epistle to the Colossians is based indeed on the same principle; but there they were in danger of not holding the Head. Hence they are addressed on somewhat lower ground, and urged up to the point which should have been the spring from which their thoughts and feelings flowed.

To turn now to the epistles themselves, remark, in Peter, the ground on which the Spirit of God places the saints, the sojourners of the dispersion, that is, the believing Jews scattered through the provinces. They are “begotten again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” It is not that they are not risen with Him. Of course they were; yet they are not viewed under this aspect, but as redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; travelling through the wilderness towards Canaan – not seated in the land eating of the old corn of it (whatever conflicts were before them there), but through the efficacy of redemption made strangers and pilgrims in the desert. It is the Christian’s place here below – not the privilege and joy of faith, but the life of faith; and hence, all through which he passes here become not distractions for his heart, whether painful or pleasant, but trials of his faith. This is exceedingly gracious and loving of our God (and what is not?), and the consequences in many respects exceedingly precious.

In the Ephesians we have, however, the Christian in another point of view. Heaven is not presented as a hope; the Christian is there. It is not that the resurrection of Christ has begotten him to such a hope; the same power which raised Christ, and set Him at the right hand of God, far above all principality and power, has wrought in him; and he is raised up together with Him, quickened together, and sitting in heavenly places in Him. Thus he is viewed as in heaven in Christ the Head, not as hoping to arrive there. Peter views him as toiling along the road, being redeemed by the precious blood of Christ – as Israel in the desert, with Canaan before them; the Ephesians, as sitting there in his Head, Christ. Hence neither is the coming of Christ presented as a hope in the Ephesians. What is set before us in the way of hope, in the form of intelligence communicated of God, is the gathering together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth – in Him in whom we have received an inheritance. The power which has wrought in Christ has wrought in the believer, God having given Christ to be “the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” God, of His great love wherewith He has loved us, has, when we were all together children of wrath, quickened us together with Him, and made us sit, raised up together, in heavenly places in Him.

In Colossians, at first sight, we seem to have lost this position. But the epistle does but serve to bring out more distinctly the great and precious truth. The apostle is obliged to bring out heaven prominently before them. They needed this; and we have, as in Peter, “the hope which is laid* up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before.” Why this difference where, nevertheless, Christ is put forward as the Head of the body? They were beginning alas! to be beguiled, and to be subject to ordinances, not holding the Head. But the apostle urges them, as it were, back to the point from which they were slipping away. He presses on them their resurrection with Christ; once dead in trespasses and sins, but buried in baptism with Him, and raised through faith in the operation of God who hath raised Him. If dead with Christ, how could they, as alive, be subject to what related to flesh and perished with it? And then he draws the conclusion, which associates the two practically: “If then ye be risen with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” This was their real position. They were indeed in danger of slipping away from it; but he urges them upward to their privilege and place in Christ.

{*The word is different from the one Peter uses.}

As regards the coming of the Lord, it is also introduced in a way which remarkably confirms this character of instruction. They were not taught to wait for Him as if they were on earth, and He to appear. Nor is it omitted in order to contemplate their association with Him in heaven. His appearance is spoken of; but then their association with Him, in a life which is with Him now hidden in God, is pressed upon them, by this remarkable truth, that when He appears, so identified were they with Him that they would appear with Him. Their hearts and affections, then, are urged upwards, but it was to lay hold on the consciousness that they were one with Him that was there. Their life was hid with Him there, but they were not holding the Head as they ought. I do not go farther here; perhaps I may, at another time, notice the different way the Lord’s coming is spoken of connected with this.

What God is to us in Christ

Ephesians 1.

There are two ways in which we may look at our relationship to God, and rightly: first, our coming to Him; and secondly, our souls looking at the dealings of God towards us.

Of Abel, it is said, by the Holy Spirit, God had respect unto his gifts – he came with his needed offering. We are looked at in the Epistle to the Hebrews as drawing near to God. Who could draw near unless he could bring Christ as an offering? We must have that sacrifice in order to bring us near, consequently in that case our relationship to God is measured by our need. We come near because we find we cannot do without it, and we accept that offering as needed to accomplish it.

In another way, the measure of God’s blessing we never know until we look on our relationship as measured by God’s thoughts of us – by all that which He loves to display when He satisfies His own heart of grace with His ways of shewing it out. We never enjoy our true blessing unless we see how He thus feels and acts. My mind must rise above what I am, to what God is; then it is my mind is formed by the revelation of what God is. To this we are called.

We must come in by our need, as the prodigal did. Man cannot by searching find out God. There cannot be any knowledge of God in grace by man’s competency to know Him. There would be no need of grace if he could know God without it. If I can claim this grace, I do not need grace at all. The way a sinner must come in must be by his need; in that way he learns grace, learns love. But when I have got to God, it is another thing. Then He would form our minds and hearts by what He is Himself. I come as a sinner, because I need it – just as a hungry man needs food; but when brought, I have fellowship with the God who has brought me to Himself. The measure is given in this epistle – “growing up into Christ, in all things.” It is a wonderful thing that God has called us into fellowship with Himself – to have the same thoughts, the same feelings as God, and to have them together. All flows down from Him and we are brought into it by grace, and we enjoy it just so far as we are emptied of self.

First, He makes us partakers of the divine nature – the same nature as Himself. This gives the capacity – I do not say power. The new nature is capacity; the Holy Ghost is power. The new nature is entirely dependent and obedient. The Holy Ghost being there gives me power. In the first Epistle of John this capacity is brought out in a remarkable manner (chap. 4). Every one that loveth is born of God – has this nature; and he that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Then being partakers of His nature, we, by virtue of the blood being sprinkled on us, have received the Holy Ghost which gives power. In order to communion there must be perfect peace as regards the conscience. There is no communion in conscience. I am alone as to my conscience, and so are you. In order to communion, I must have nothing to settle with conscience: a perfectly purged conscience is the basis of communion. We must know that God has settled the whole question of sin. The moment a child of God fails, communion ceases. The Spirit then becomes a reprover to bring him back; but there is no communion. Communion is the full enjoyment of God and of divine things; when there is nothing to think of as regards oneself. God can now let flow into his heart who has a conscience purged, all that He delights in. He loves to communicate what He Himself has joy in. All that Christ is is for us to enjoy. You are called into this place of Christ Himself – He, the Head of the body; and that the delight God has in Christ should flow down into your heart. How rich then the saint must be! but he is entirely dependent on the Spirit of God for power. There is no power to enjoy anything without Him. There must be an emptying from self to enjoy what He gives. The Spirit of God has no place to act where self and imagination are in exercise. It is not the glory at the end that is so much the object of the believer’s thoughts, as the source of it – God Himself. There is more happiness in the fact of being in communion with Him than in the things He communicates: and I say again, because of its importance, a soul cannot have the enjoyment of the things of God without having peace, which is connected with the conscience.

The beginning of this chapter shews how we are presented to God. It is a test, whether the judgment-seat brings any terror to your minds. Does it give you any uneasiness? How does the saint get there? Christ comes to fetch him. He said, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself.” Do you ever think of your coming before the judgment-seat being the effect of His having come to fetch you? Not sending or you, but coming Himself for you, because of His desire to have you with Him where He is, to be fashioned into the same image. You are to bear the image of the heavenly, as you have borne the image of the earthy. When you are there before the judgment-seat, you will be with Him, and like Him: every trace of God’s unwearied hand, all His patience, here brought out. We shall be like the One who is the Judge. You will never (I speak, of course, to saints now) be before the judgment-seat of Christ without His coming to fetch you into the same glory in which you are to be. It is the knowledge of grace, or redemption, that leaves me at perfect liberty; and all my life should be a witness to the enjoyment of this blessedness into which we are being brought. The whole of this is through looking at Christ. He is the Firstborn among many brethren in the Father’s house. We shall be with Christ and like Christ before God the Father. There will be the blessedness of being with Christ, in the presence of the Father, loved as He is loved. This is what we have in this chapter – set in the presence of God.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are blessed in Christ, and God is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is “my God and your God,” Christ said. There is no measure of any relationship out of Christ – nothing but condemnation out of Christ. If I have known what it is to be condemned, if I have known what sin is, and how God hates sin, I know there can be no hope for me out of Christ. But God has put away sin. God does not look at my sin, but on Christ. Just as I know my condition in Adam as ruined and condemned, so I know my place in Christ – accepted. How it throws us out of self-importance, self-dependence, self-glorying! We enter into the presence of God in Him who has perfectly glorified God. He is the God as well as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is that wrought in Christ which was hidden from ages and from generations, and He has gone back in virtue of what He has done to vindicate the character of God. We enter into the blessing in Him who has done all. We shall know God in virtue of what the Father bestows upon us. The Father brings many sons unto glory, and brings them back perfect through the work of Christ – “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ”: none can be wanting; not an affection of God’s delight is wanting. He brings us into His presence without one reserve of the affection that Christ has. We are brought back in Christ. Therefore all that Christ has we have.

How he goes on to unfold it! “That we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” He is not content with a mere general account, but brings it out in detail that we may know it. Suppose I saw a person with an excellent character, and I felt I could never be like that person, I should not be happy. The fact of the excellency of the person, without the possibility of being like him, would make me miserable; and to have him always before me would be all the worse. But in heaven I shall be with Christ, and see Him, without the possibility of being unlike Him. What divine inventiveness of love to make us happy, infinitely happy! What God does, and is, is infinite; and it is so much the better that He will be always above us.

We shall have perfect freedom of intercourse with Him. Moses and Elias were speaking with Him of His death (it may not be then so much of His death), but there will be communion with Him of all that He has.

“Without blame.” Released from all that which would hinder my loving Him; therefore I am made “holy and without blame.” There is the proper joy of the heart – “before him in love,” but no thought of equality; “wherein he hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence.” Then there is another fact – “Chosen in him before the foundation of the world.” Thus we have His heart set upon us in eternity. The soul knows there is a personal love from God towards himself, and the heart delights in that. So with Christ. In Revelation 2 there is the white stone He will give – proof of personal delight. There is the individual rejoicing in the love of Christ.

How the Spirit seeks to draw out our affections by all this! He tells it all, and would have us know and enjoy it. He would have us know that we are going to heaven, and why He would form our hearts by what He is doing, while bringing us in, “having predestinated us unto the adoption of children” – still in Christ and with Christ – “by Jesus Christ unto himself.” It is through Him, and in Him, and with Him I find it. It is having my heart fixed on God and the Father, that my affections may be drawn out to Him, and all is because “accepted in the beloved.” God has not blessed angels like this. We are not servants only (we should be servants, to be sure), but we are brought into the confidence of children. Ought not a child to have confidence? We have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry “Abba Father.” Our heart should answer to God’s outgoings of heart in grace, and reflect this grace, “to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” He has done it all.

Remark here, that there is not as yet a word about the inheritance. I dwell on that, as shewing how the affections of the saint are formed. If I speak of the inheritance, it is something below me. All prophecy concerns the inheritance. But I am looking at what is above me, and my own blessedness is in what is above me. Subjects connected with the church, blessed as they are, as prophecy, etc., are below. He will exercise us about these things, but let me first get my relationship with my Father known. Do not talk of me, what I have, but of what Christ is, and what He has. My soul must enjoy the love that has given it all. The love that has saved is more than the things given. It is of importance to the saints to feel this in the presence of God. It is not mental power, but the heart right – a single eye – that is the great thing. Unless a soul gets its intelligence and direction from God, it never understands the ways and affections of God. His own affections must be known and valued. If I have not known my place in the affections of my Father, I am not in a position to have the communion of His thoughts and purposes. When we were dead in sins, His heart was exercised for us. The sinner is here looked at as dead, not “living” in sins (as in Colossians) and chastening, etc., for that, but in Ephesians “dead,” not a movement of life, when God comes and creates and blesses according to His own will. When our souls have known the value of Christ’s sacrifice bringing us to God, we are seen not in ourselves at all, but only in Christ. Then there is perfect rest.

But afterwards he can tell us of the inheritance; and then the prayer is that we may know the hope of His calling (which calling is not the inheritance). He has called us to be “before him in love” (v. 3-6); then verse 11 begins about the inheritance. Now I will shew you what Christ’s inheritance is, and you are to have it too. I must know I am a child and have the thoughts and affections of the child before I can have to do with the inheritance. The end of the matter is that we are brought in to share the inheritance.

How far are your hearts confiding in God’s rest only for your wants, etc.? Rather how far is your confidence and delight in Him for Himself? The heart of the child will delight in the affections of the father. Do your thoughts about God flow from what God has revealed to you of Himself? or are you reasoning about God – will He, or will He not, do it? When it is a settled thing with me that I am a sinner, what have I to reason about? We want to be brought to this simple conviction: I am a sinner; and if I am a sinner, what am I to do? Can I look for anything from God on the ground of righteousness? No. When brought to God I am brought to grace. What He is is the spring and source of the whole matter. We are in Christ. It could not be otherwise. We stand there now, by virtue of the atonement, in that position which makes the sin the very occasion for God to bless. Christ died for my sins, and God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”

God is going to take us to heaven, to be happy with Christ there; but He makes us happy out of heaven too. It is a difficult thing, but He does; and He would have the saints living up there where God is, and where we are going, and free from this present evil world.

The Prayers in Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Ephesians 3: 14-21

One prayer is attached to the name of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He is looked at as Man; the other to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He is looked at as Son. The beginning of chapter I gave us God’s calling, that we should be “holy and without blame before him in love,” that we might receive “the adoption of sons.” After stating His purpose concerning Christ Himself, that all things are to be gathered together in one in Him, the apostle goes on to the inheritance of which the Holy Ghost is the earnest, and then to the prayer for them on this ground. At the very close of the chapter he adds our relationship to Christ Himself, “the church which is his body.” It is always well for us to remember that Christ has purified to Himself a peculiar people, a people of possession, and we cannot rise up to the counsels of God and mind of Christ unless we be brought into these intentions of God. The most immediate and closest object of His thoughts is His saints. I necessarily take in all saints if I am in His thoughts; I cannot have the mind of Christ without taking in all of them; it is the very spirit of Christ Himself.

There are two parts in this prayer of the apostle. The first is, that they might know the place itself; the second, that they should know the power that brought them there. The very fulness of the blessing we have got is that we are blessed with Him. As we were associated with the first Adam in ruin, so we are associated with the second Man in glory. There is nothing He has that He does not bring us into. This is the character of perfect love. Christ gives “not as the world giveth.” The world may give generously sometimes, but it has done with what it gives; Christ gives by introducing His own into what He is enjoying Himself. Take glory: “the glory which thou gavest me I have given them.” Take joy: “that my joy might remain in you.” Take peace: “peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” Take love: “that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” Having become man and accomplished perfect redemption, He would not take the inheritance without His joint-heirs. He is the source and head of all the glory that is given. “What is the hope of His calling?” Not of your calling – this would not do at all. Here it has the fullest and highest character. He takes the heart up to these thoughts and counsels of God. We are called to be before God holy and without blame; we are called to be in Christ’s place before God, before the Father, perfectly answering to His love. He does not pray that they may have it, but that they may know it.

As to His inheritance in the saints, if our minds took in the Jewish place compared with our own, this would be extremely simple. Whose land was Israel’s? It was God’s inheritance; and those in whom He inherited it were Israel. We are not an inheritance, but we are heirs of God. We have nothing below what God would have in His mind here.

Observe the prayer is, “that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened.” We must not think that we ought not to know these things. The New Testament carefully tells us that we have them laid open to us expressly. “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.” “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” – such was the state of the Jews; but it is not our state. These things are not only given to us, but we are given to understand them; we are not in the condition of the Old Testament at all. In 1 Corinthians 2 we have the three steps; revelation by the Holy Ghost; communication of the word given by the Holy Ghost; and the reception of the word by the Holy Ghost.

Take the account of the heavenly city in the Apocalypse – it means something. All those images are characteristic in Scripture; I quite admit they are only figures, but they convey thoughts. The more we live in the mind of God, the more intelligent we are. The same things I see through a glass darkly, I shall see more clearly, but not differently. Thus the “white stone” is a symbol full of power. We have common joys, but there is the immediate approbation of Christ to the individual. “Gold” is always the sign of divine righteousness in itself. In the laver the priests were to wash and be clean; but with the sea of glass like crystal I walk upon purity. So “fire” is judgment, as “a sea of glass mingled with fire”; it is perfect purity as the result of judgment. “The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” Instead of walking through the dirt of this world, I am to walk in holiness and righteousness according to God. In the Apocalypse we do not go beyond the idea of God in government.

Now we come to the power that brings us into these things. “According to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” What an immense truth there is in connection with this! The Messiah was not merely the promised Son of David, but the One in whom all God’s counsels would be accomplished. He went down below all things, and then goes far above all heavens. This dead Man is raised above all principality and power. He had gone down into the place of death, and men are consequently looked at as dead in sins, not as living in them.

It is well to note here that to look at the sinner as alive in sins, or as dead in them, is just the same state, but a different aspect of it. In Romans man is seen alive in sins, and Christ meeting that state. There is nothing of justification in Ephesians, not a single stir of life there; we were dead in the sins, and Christ died for the sins. God comes in and takes us all up together, looked at as in the mind and counsels of God. God quickens us together with Him. Christ comes down to this place of death, having cleansed our sins on the road, and God raises Him. Man is looked at consequently as united to Christ. This you do not find in the other epistles. The same power has wrought in every individual who believes in Christ that wrought in Him. Christ had gone into death for us, entering into the whole thing in grace and finding us where we were, and, He having wrought the work that entitles Him to take us out of it, we are raised with Him, seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This is your place; He does not ask you what you think about it! There is no person who has the Spirit of Christ without this as his place. We are waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body, but one must be either in Christ or out of Christ. There are never two places for the Christian.

All things are to be put under Christ’s feet as Man, for God “gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body” – a short sentence, but the whole mystery is in it. It is a quotation of Psalm 8, “all things are put under his feet.” In Psalm 2 He is seen as Son of David, King of Zion, Son of God. Nathanael refers to this psalm; and Jesus says to him, “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.” He is rejected, and then comes out Psalm 8. Now He is crowned with glory and honour, but we do not see all things put under His feet yet. He is now sitting on the Father’s throne. “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.” “Sit thou on my right hand,” says Jehovah, “till I make thine enemies thy footstool.” The day of grace is before that “till.” There is our comfort and blessing, that He has finished the work for His friends. “By one offering he hath perfected for ever them which are sanctified.” We stand therefore between the work which He perfected at His first coming, and His second coming. We are not, like the Jews, waiting to see that His offering is accepted, because the Holy Ghost is come out meanwhile and seals those who believe in Christ. I know the acceptance; I know that He is our forerunner. Then He deals with His enemies. When thus set over all things, the Son Himself will be subject to Him who put all things under Him – a most blessed truth for us. He will reign while He brings all into absolute order for God; when this has been done, He will take His place as Man and never give it up. He is the first-born among many brethren. Over everything He created, He is set as Man: but a head without a body would not be complete. The supplement is wanting; the church is His body.

No one ever mentions the church but Paul. Others may speak of a local church; and Christ said, “On this rock I will build my church”; but I am not speaking of this either. If the church had been revealed before the cross, you must make every Jew who was in it break the law. The essence of the church is that all are one, Jew and Gentile.

The prayer in chapter 3 is addressed to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There the apostle does not ask that they may know all these thoughts and counsels of God, but that Christ may dwell in their hearts. He is not now looking at them objectively, but at Christ in them. He desires that they should have Christ actually, consciously, by faith dwelling in their hearts, settled in the perfectness of divine love, that they may be able to comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height – he does not say of what – while putting Christ in the centre of all that glory. If I look at the breadth and length and depth and height, it is dazzling. If I found my closest friend the centre of the Queen’s court, I should be at home there at once. Is it that I have lost anything by this, that it is the humble lowly One who is dwelling in my heart? Not a bit.

Thus, if in chapter 1 we have exterior power bringing up Christ, or ourselves by grace, into a position of glory at God’s right hand, in chapter 3 we find divine power in us as in the position, and we sought to be strengthened and filled accordingly, in order to realise what it and God Himself is in the fulness of it. It is not God dealing with man, but Christ’s relation as Son and dwelling in us by faith – He, the centre and divinely entitled light of the fulness and display, dwelling in us to give competency to enter into all the scene. Rooted and grounded in love we are at the centre thus in its moral or rather divine springs, and so embrace all that partake of the divine nature, because it is the action of that nature. Thus we look out into the wide extended scene of glory, whose limit none can tell; yet still this is a display, not a source, a scene, not Himself. In love we are at the source of all. We know the love of Christ that passes knowledge. What I know it in has made it wholly and peculiarly mine, yes, mine as being nothing in it. Christ is divine, infinite in nature. It is so proved in the way it adapts itself to all my wants and weakness, known in adapting itself to them, yet known in itself. As Christ’s love it is for man, is manifested in man, and adapts itself to man; yet therein as divine it passes knowledge and brings man, as spiritual (he can feel, think, and apprehend as man), into the enjoyment of the scene, in which God is displayed, and to God Himself according to His own fulness, and this filled with love as in the centre of it consciously. It is we, not brought into a scene by power, but filled up to the measure of the fulness of God, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith. Thus love is the spring of power in us, so that we estimate the scene of that fulness according to the title, character, and nature of God in it, He Himself being the ultimate blessedness of which we are conscious. What makes us familiar there is, that that which is in us, and which is the central light of all, is One we know, who dwells in us by faith, the nearest and most confided in of all, yet the fulness of Deity is in Him. Compare Rev. 21: 23.

God “is able to do exceeding abundantly according to the power that worketh in us.” This is what we are to look for now: has your heart got hold of this? There is a power that works in us, and He can do exceeding abundantly above all we ask and think according to it. How little faith there is in the power of God!

I believe everything is in ruin or confusion; but there is no ruin or confusion in the power of Christ. I never can think of a power of evil that is not below His power.

“Not of the world”

Ephesians 1

We get here the whole scope of God’s thoughts and purposes. The Epistle to the Ephesians takes in two things: the presence and power of the Holy Ghost on earth, and the condition that we are in as the result of it; and what this is founded on, the exaltation of Christ at God’s right hand. Ephesians does not speak of the coming of the Lord, because the way our glory is brought about is not its subject, but the present blessing of the saints. There is a distinct part at the end where our conflict with Satan comes in, but the general scope is what I have said: the basis, the exaltation of Christ; then purpose, what is in God’s mind; and then the knowledge of it, by the Holy Ghost come down. “He raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand”; this was needed for us to know our place and the most important consequences flowing from it down here. The presence of the Holy Ghost who has come down from heaven, the seal of our being heirs, and the earnest of the inheritance, is our present condition, based upon Christ raised to the right hand of God. A Man is sitting at the right hand of God: a wonderful truth for us. His “delights are with the sons of men.” Being a Man, and having died and therein perfectly glorified God, God has raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand; and thereupon the Holy Ghost is come down here, so that we are associated with Him and the things that are on high, in heart and mind, though not yet there as to our bodies. This is where the heart has to be; our conversation is in heaven, for the Lord is there, not here; He is coming to make our bodies like unto His glorious body, but at present we have the Holy Ghost associating us with the place where He is.

God has “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” That is God’s mind. We are not yet there in fact, but it is the thought of God about us, and we ought to have it always before us. Blessings of the Jews in earthly places under Christ will be fulfilled in time, but for us it is “spiritual blessings,” and “in heavenly places,” and “in Christ” Himself; and our present connection with it all comes through the Holy Ghost.

We next get, in verses 4 and 5, two aspects of these spiritual blessings: they are brought before us in connection with the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, Christ is looked at as Son and looked at as Man. The Father owned Him in manhood as the Son in Matthew 3, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God is called the God of our Lord Jesus Christ as Man; He is called His Father as Son.

This is the great basis of the wonderful place in which we are. It is man that God has in His mind put in this place of glory in His own Son. And this is not without its consequences, and those of the very highest nature.

God’s choosing us before the foundation of the world is not what affirms in the time of choosing the sovereignty of grace, for, supposing for a moment that God were to choose us now, it would be just as sovereign an act as doing it then. The practical truth brought out in His choosing us before the foundation of the world is, that it proves that we have nothing whatever to do with the world; before its very foundation we were chosen; we have nothing to do with it but to get through it. God would bring us into this blessedness with Himself which has nothing to do with the world. We have just to go through it “unspotted”; that is all we have to do with it. Our living place was settled with God before ever it existed. God had this thought to have a people in Christ, “holy and without blame before him in love.” This is what God Himself is. He thus brings us to be according to His own nature – “holy and without blame” before Himself. We have an infinite object before whom we are, and having the divine nature we can enjoy that object. We are not taken out of the world yet, nor are meant to be; but we are to pass through it as Christ did. If one look at it in another point of view, it is just what Christ was Himself, and that before God. This is the thought of God.

Then (v. 5) I get the Father. He might have had servants like the angels, but this was not His thought: “He predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.” He insists on that, it is the blessed part of it – that it is before God, and to Himself as Father. If it be a relationship, it is to Himself.

Thus we have the nature, “holy and without blame.” It does not say there “according to the good pleasure of his will,” for God could not have beings in His presence in a sinful state. But when it is relationship, it is “according to the good pleasure of his will”: He chooses to have us as sons. I get love, the nature of God – “in love” – and love of predilection too. The place we get into is one that is according to the good pleasure of His will, and He brings us according to His own nature before Himself; there is not a cloud because He has “made us accepted in the beloved” – Christ assuredly; but He gives that name to Him to mark the full character of the blessedness, and thus brings us into His own presence.

This is the purpose; it does not say here how much of it is accomplished: it will not be fully until we are in the glory. Only in the end of the chapter we get what is accomplished in fact, as the groundwork of all our present enjoyment of it in spirit. God takes Christ out of death and sets Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places. This is an accomplished thing; it is “wrought in Christ”: Christ as Man is in the glory of God.

And then we get the third thing: the Holy Ghost has come down meanwhile. Before the purpose is accomplished, but when the work in Christ is accomplished, the Holy Ghost comes down, the seal with which God has sealed those here who have part in His purpose, and the earnest of their inheritance. We are then competent to see God’s plans about Christ Himself, His purpose “to gather together in one all things in him, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.” Then it is glory.

The first verses were our calling; now it is our inheritance. And this inheritance is “after the counsel of his own will.” It is sovereign grace to poor sinners that brings us into this place. It will not be accomplished until He come; it is in Him we have obtained it, being “predestinated according to his purpose.” That which is believed in order to our being sealed is “the gospel of our salvation.” John the Baptist was the forerunner of Him who was to accomplish it; but now we have the glad tidings of it consequent on the actual exaltation of Christ, and the seal of the Holy Ghost as the earnest of what is to come.

This is where we are whilst still in the world which is no part of the purpose of God, but in which, passing through discipline, we learn the difference between flesh and spirit; it is His ways, but not part of His purpose. The Holy Ghost comes down from heaven, gives us to know Christ, reveals to us our inheritance, bears witness to us that we are “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” He makes us know where we are; that we belong to heaven and not to this earth at all. As we read in Proverbs: “In the beginning of his way, before his works of old, from the beginning or ever the earth was, then I was by him, as one brought up with him, and my delights were with the sons of men,” so Christ became Man, and is gone into glory as our forerunner.

I desire that our hearts may feel that in God’s thoughts and purposes He has given us a place that is not of the world at all, and that all our business in this world is to keep ourselves unspotted from it. I do not belong to this world; before the foundation of it I was chosen. It is not thus simply the sovereignty that does what it pleases, but that we, as Christians, do not belong to earth at all. Epistle of Christ is what we are; we may not live up to it, but it is what we are called to: to manifest the second Man in the midst of the world that has rejected Him.

Elect of God, Holy and Beloved

Ephesians 1: 4-14

God has purposed in Himself to have before Himself that which shall reflect His own blessedness – He taking pleasure in us, and we taking pleasure in Him; as it is said here, “that we should be holy, and without blame before Him in love.” He will have His people of the same nature as Himself, gathered around Himself, happy here, and for Himself. His thought is not merely that we should have an inheritance; as we read of “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” He “hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved.”

And this is just the character of this Epistle; the apostle, in speaking of redemption, does so, not so much as of something needed by us, in order to appear before God, as of these purposes of God concerning us. We may look at God as a Judge; but, more than this, God is working for the display of the riches of the glory of His grace.

This lifts up the soul. God has thoughts and intentions about us. As in the case of a young man, whom, a person has (in ordinary language) “taken up,” and is about to provide for, it is not a question of what the one was, but of the thoughts and intentions of the other – of what, in a word, he is, and will do, for the young man; so, though in a much more blessed sense, has God “taken up” poor sinners, that He might act towards them worthily of Himself, to the praise of the glory of His grace. The other thing remains true: God is a Judge, and “we have redemption, forgiveness of sins, through his blood” (Christ’s); and we must understand this before we can enjoy our privileges in Christ.

God has “taken us up.” Our very existence in the new creation, is the fruit of His purpose and thoughts about us. This has a double bearing. It shews how we are to measure what God is doing for us, as a question of God’s purpose; and, besides being this measure, it makes us understand the source of it all. And this has a most happy effect: instead of looking at ourselves, and judging from ourselves, we look at God. Nothing but life-giving power could ever have wrought this. Our thoughts about God are, that He is the source of all our blessing. As the young man, before alluded to, would have pleasure in thinking about the friend who had “taken him up,” so this thought about God is a happy thought, and, moreover, one of great sanctifying power.

God has “predestinated us unto the adoption of children.” It is not here, simply, a question of purpose (of God’s counsel, and, therefore, sure): that to which He has predestinated us, is the present adoption of children. A poor sinner, a sinner of the Gentiles, having no title whatever to blessing, I trace all my title to God’s purpose, which He has purposed in Himself. This is true also of the Jews, though, in a certain sense, they stood on different ground; Christ was “a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers”; but of the Gentiles it is said, “and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” It is of grace, of God’s free thought about us. He has taken pleasure in us, as Joshua said to Israel: “If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it unto us, a land which floweth with milk and honey.” We cannot boast in anything; for we have not anything whatever wherein to boast, except in this, that God has taken delight in us to give us the adoption. The effect is most blessed; we know Himself – “after ye have known God, or rather are known of God.” What He has predestinated us unto, is not a distant thing, nor yet merely salvation (in the sense of escape from the wrath of God); it is the nearest place He could have put us into, not as with the Jews, “I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn”: we are adopted with the “adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” Here we get not only the source but the manner – the source, God’s love; the manner, in Christ.

“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” – the Word that was in the beginning with God, and was God. But the light shone in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. It is not said that there was want of power, but that men’s deeds were evil, and that, therefore, they would not come unto the light. A Christian who is walking carelessly does not like a godly Christian to come into contact with him, he feels condemned; whenever the heart is not with God, light makes it uneasy. But besides being light, “In him was life,” and that is what we needed; while He shews us our evil, He is the good we need. Predestinated unto the adoption of children, it is in Him. Called according to God’s purpose, we are to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Of His fulness, have all we received, and grace for grace. We are brought into the presence of God in Jesus Christ. Therefore, when Jesus goes away, He says, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, unto my God and your God.” He has Himself met all our responsibility, otherwise the light would have been terrible. There are two things, substitution, and communication of life. In substitution, He stood alone. But guilt being taken away, we quickened together with Him, He presents us in the Father’s presence, as He is.

“In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” But not merely has the Son of God visited us when we were in our sins, nor merely, either, been delivered for our offences. “Herein is our love [love with us] made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” We have no life except in Christ; we have no acceptance apart from Christ. He has made us accepted in the Beloved – the measure is just that. It is God’s delight to bring us, in Christ, and by Christ, into His own presence. We can go no farther; “truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ,” writes John. We may enjoy it more and more, we may delight in it in deepened measure, but we cannot have anything beyond. When God speaks of glorifying Himself, or of our glorifying Him, it means through the display of what He is; it is God’s glory to display Himself; therefore, in this, which is to the glory of His grace, we have the display of Himself.

And do not let us suppose that this goes beyond what we may think about (a very natural thought): the apostle says further on, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith: being rooted and grounded in love, that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God,” chap. 3: 14-19. It is not a matter of human wisdom, learning, or attainment; in proportion as we become simple as little children, we shall understand these things, through the Holy Ghost. “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” It has nothing to do with human learning, except to set it aside; lowliness of mind is what is needed.

“The good pleasure of his will” is not, simply, sovereignty – it is the good pleasure of His will. God is acting in His love, displaying the will of His grace, “taking up” poor, wretched, vile sinners, and unfolding on these objects of His mercy, all the riches of His own goodness. The “good pleasure of his will,” that which God takes delight in, is the ministering of the fulness of His blessing to us. Here the soul gets established. It is quite evident, that the measure of His goodness cannot be, in any sense, the measure of what we are, as deserving at His hands; while it is His good pleasure, it is the good pleasure of His grace. And further, whilst I have need, for the establishment of my soul, to learn what He is, to be delighting in the goodness of God, it is this too which sanctifies. If I could be always thinking of what He is, I should be perfectly happy, and there would be the reflection in me of that with which my soul was occupied.

We begin, often, at the wrong end. On what are we resting our acceptance? It is not anything in ourselves that will do. Or, it is a question of sanctification? “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (that is, I look at the Lord, and, as a consequence of my looking at the Lord, I reveal to men what He is). Moses, on coming down from the mount, was not inquiring whether his face shone, in order to know if he had been with God; others saw this.

It is such a comfort, to get to God and feel, that it is in Him, and from Him.

Where, naturally, would our souls rest? It is quite a natural feeling, if we have been convinced of sin, that we should want to get at peace to know there is nothing against us, but the apostle here, is looking at those whom God has “taken up,” and He has “made us accepted in the Beloved.” That is God’s thought about us; He has shewn us this grace in a particular way, and in a particular person – Christ. It is not merely a negative thing; He takes as positive delight in us, as He does in Jesus. He is no double-measure God.

“Put on as the elect of God,” Paul writes to the Colossians, “holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness,” etc., saints, and beloved ones of God, objects of God’s love, God’s delight (the measure of which is Christ), thus He addresses them. If I am beloved of a person, this draws out love. So the consciousness of God’s love, God’s delight produces links in affection, that exist not without it. My thought of being accepted is not merely, that my sins are put away, so that I could stand before Him – I am the object of His delight; holy affections are drawn out, and I pass through the world as a beloved one of God. We cannot suppose, in Christ’s going through this world (and this shews us our deficiency as Christians), one single thing of it, that acts on our hearts, acting on His; He was the beloved One of God – “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” and He was going through the world as such. Thus, too, should the Christian walk through the world with the consciousness of being beloved of God; with this, we do not want the world – without it, we are obliged to turn to something that makes self the centre.

Young or old, that is what we are – beloved of God. Perhaps, you will say, “Ah, but I am very proud, very worldly, I do not give up the things of the world.” Very likely not, and that is a reason for your being reminded of this, that you may.

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” This is the leading thought in the apostle’s mind. And remark, he speaks of that which is positively possessed, not of something we are hoping for, or expecting; He “hath made us accepted in the Beloved,” we “have redemption through his blood,” etc. This grace of God, this “good pleasure of his will” has planted and set us in it all. We may be practically destitute of the joy of these things, but that is where we are. And He has given to those whom He has set in this place, the knowledge of His purpose as to the glory of Christ, as it goes on to say, “wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence”; the apostle explains it, “having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself”; here again it comes from the good pleasure of His will, “that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth.” Having placed the saints in all this fellowship and blessing, He imparts (as with Abraham – “Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I am about to do?”) unto them His thoughts. Not only has He accepted us in Christ, but He will have everything brought under Christ’s dominion and power. He is to gather together in one, all things in Christ – “even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.” We are joint-heirs with Christ. Hence the prayer at the end of the chapter.

We cannot deny, we do not deny (whatever man’s efforts to make the best of the world), that sin is in the world; there is not a single thing (take dress for instance) that does not tell us that. There is not a single thing we are buying or selling, a single thing we are looking upon, that is not, in some sort, a proof of sin. All that man does for pleasure, is necessitated by sin; Adam in Paradise had no need of it. What makes the world get on without God? The principle of sin; this is running through everything, it has got, so to speak, into the vital blood, and (though it be God’s creation through which it runs) it runs through everything. Man builds his city, invents his instruments of music (Gen. 4), and strives to make the world happy without God. Introduce God, and His amazing work, where men are occupied with gain or with pleasure, it is all wrong and out of place. Whether for pleasure, or for gain, God must be excluded. That is the character of the whole world, and to tack on the name of Christ does not mend it; an avaricious Christian (nominally such) is in nothing better than an avaricious heathen. God is lingering over it, but the existence of the gospel in the world is proof that the world is lost. “We know,” says John, “that the whole world lieth in the wicked one”; and again, “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” As it is, as a plain matter of fact, it is not God’s inheritance. Who is called its god? Satan. God’s title cast away, through the lust of men, and the pride and power of Satan, whom they follow, God has designated Satan “the god of this world,” and made known to us (those who are of faith) the mystery of His will. The apostle speaks here of hope (v. 18). We have obtained an inheritance in Christ, and all things are going to be put under Christ; meanwhile (like Abraham, who had not so much as whereon to set his foot) “having nothing and yet possessing all things,” the Christian walks through the world, as one beloved of God, in the consciousness that he is the object of God’s purposes, and of God’s delight. But what do we see in the Lord Jesus? Not merely that He has been designated the heir of all things; “the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.” So too our proper delight is in knowing that we are beloved of God, and that God will have us before Himself, and for Himself – His delight in us, and our delight in Him. It is as a consequence of this love, that we shall have the glory of the inheritance. Where are our hearts? what is our joy? are we journeying, aye journeying, through the world in the blessed, joyful confidence of this secret of God? Then will the world be to us a “dry and thirsty land”; instead of finding delight in things around, we shall have to guard against them as against that which would bring us down to Satan’s ground. Are we taking the world, with its pleasures and its gain? If so, we are entering into Cain’s portion, and not into that of Abel or Abraham: we are “enemies of the cross of Christ.” Through these things Satan is deceiving the world. Are we taking the position (not of Adam before he sinned, not of Christ when He was in the world, neither of Christ in the glory, but) of the “men of the earth?”

The Lord give us to see, and so to estimate that which is God’s object, that we may have done with this present evil world.

Paul: Missionary of Jesus

Paul: Missionary of Jesus, by Paul Barnett

“This wonderful book puts together Acts and Paul’s own writings in a fashion that is believable, attentive to the texts themselves, and full of life and vitality. …Insights into the biblical material leap from many pages. I hope this volume will circulate widely.”
~ D.A. Carson, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

The Library of Celsus

Theater in Ephesus