St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition

But in any case it is certain that the developement of the ministry occurred on the principle of the apostolic succession. Those who were to be ministers were the elect of the church in which they were to minister: but they were authoritatively ordained to their office from above, and by succession from the apostolic men. And such a principle of ministerial authority appears to be not only historical, but also most rational. For a continuous corporate unity was to be maintained in a society which, as being catholic, must lack all such natural links of connexion as are afforded by a common language or common race. And how could such continuous corporate unity have been so well secured as by a succession of persons whose function should be to maintain a tradition, and whose ministerial authority should make them necessary centres of the unity?

DIVISION II. CHAPTERS IV. 17-VI. 24

Doctrine and conduct

Doctrine and conduct

Here the apostle, with a final 'therefore,' resuming the 'therefore' of IV. i, passes without further delay to the entirely practical portion of the epistle.

These 'therefores' are characteristic of St. Paul. They indicate his deep sense of the vital and necessary connexion between the Christian mode of living and the doctrines of Christian belief. Christian belief is a mould fashioning human conduct by a constant and uniform pressure into a characteristic type, or a set of forces urging it along certain lines of movement. Thus when some point of Christian belief has been expounded there follows a 'therefore' indicating the inevitable moral consequence of such belief where it is intelligently and voluntarily held. Of course the consequence does not follow of mechanical necessity. The doctrine acts by an appeal to the will. 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God' – so St. Paul makes his appeal to the Romans, when he had given them his great exposition of the doctrines of grace and justification[[151 - Rom. xii. 1.]]. When he has expounded the doctrine of the resurrection to the Corinthians[[152 - 1 Cor. xv. 58.]], he concludes – 'Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast,' &c. The doctrine of the Epistle to the Colossians leads to two conclusions: 'mortify therefore' and 'put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion[[153 - Col. iii. 5, 12.]].' The Epistle to the Hebrews contains similar moral appeals based on dogmatic statements. 'Therefore let us give the more earnest heed.' 'Having therefore, brethren, boldness by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near with a true heart.' 'Therefore let us lay aside every weight[[154 - Heb. ii. 1; x. 19; xii. 1.]].' These 'therefores,' I say, indicate a fundamental characteristic of Christianity: it is a manner of living based upon a disclosure of divine truth about God and His will, about man's nature and his sin, about God's redemptive action and its methods and intentions.

Among ourselves to-day we hear frequently enough disparaging reference to theological doctrine whether as a subject for study or for definite instruction. Theological dogmas are alluded to as things remote from the ordinary concerns of men and associated with the jarring interests of different religious bodies or of their clergy, with 'denominationalism' or 'sacerdotalism[[155 - An interesting expression of this sort of feeling is to be found in George Crabbe's poem, The Library. On the whole we must have improved since his day in our perception of the connexion of Christian doctrine with Christian practice.]].' This idea has been due in great measure no doubt to faults in theologians and priests. But it is none the less absurd, when it is seriously considered. If those whose lives have given the most shining examples of practical Christianity in all ages were cross-questioned, it would be found that the overwhelming majority would, in all simplicity, attribute what was good in their life to their definite beliefs. Indeed, it is self evident that it must have a practically vast effect on a man's conduct whether, for instance, he really believes that his own and other men's lives, after some seventy years of probation in this world, pass under divine judgement, only to enter into new and eternal conditions where they will inevitably reap the fruits of their previous careers. It must make a vital difference whether he believes that the world is the expression of blind force or of the will of a living, loving, God; whether or no he believes that God personally cares for each individual: whether or no he believes that God's interest in the world was such as to move Him to redeem it, by the sacrifice of Himself, from the tyranny of sin: whether he believes in divine forgiveness and God's indwelling by His Spirit: whether he believes in a divine brotherhood and divine means of grace in a household of God in the world. In fact, if the practical ethics of India and China, or the Turkish Empire and Morocco, are considered side by side with those of Christian Europe, it is impossible to resist the conviction that men's behaviour depends in the long run on what they believe about God.

This obvious conclusion is, in part, veiled from our eyes by two facts. One is that logic works slowly in human life. Take a transverse section of humanity at any particular moment, and it appears a mass of inconsistencies. It might almost suggest that there is no connexion at all between belief and practice. But the same appearance is not presented by human life in its long reaches. There you see how, in the slow result, an alteration of belief involves an alteration of practice. Thus to take an example: at present our social conscience about the obligations of marriage, or about personal purity, or about suicide, unsatisfactory as it may appear to be to an earnest Christian, is still saturated with Christian sentiment which is the result of a prolonged impression left by Christian doctrine. If the doctrine were to pass out of the minds of Englishmen in general, after a generation or two there would be a weakening or destruction of the corresponding sentiment, and an abolition of what is at present an obstacle to the reign of sensual or selfish desires. But it takes some generations for the effect of any weakening of belief to make itself felt.

There is another fact which veils from the eyes of people in general the real connexion between morals and doctrine. It is that it is largely mediate or indirect. The moral standard of the 'average man' is, unconsciously, kept up by the morals of the best men and women. For social opinion is with the majority the force which mainly influences their practice, and social opinion depends largely on leaders. 'It is when the best men cease trying that the world sinks back like lead.' Let anything happen which should silence the moral effort of the best individuals, and disaster would be imminent. But this is exactly what would be the result if the best men and women were to cease to be Christian believers. It is the highest level of our common life that would be depressed. The result all round would be indirect, but it would be widespread and disastrous.

I do not mean, or think, that this weakening of religious belief in the best men and women is occurring. I only instance its morally certain results to make apparent how the general bearing of religious beliefs on social practice is, in one way, veiled by its indirectness.

But to St. Paul all this is self-evident. He sees quite clearly that Christianity is to be a new life, a new social and ethical manifestation in the world, because Christians believe that God has made plain to them in Jesus Christ His character, nature, and redemptive purposes, and has given, by His Spirit, a practical power to their wills to correspond with the truth revealed to their intelligences and hearts.

So he proceeds from his exposition of the great doctrines of the Church of the Redemption to its practical moral consequences.

DIVISION II. § 1. CHAPTER IV. 17-24

Christianity a new life

New life in Christ

The characteristic words of St. Paul's gospel – grace, forgiveness, mercy, liberty, justification by faith not by works – may naturally, when taken by themselves and isolated from their context, lead to a false thought of God as morally 'easy going,' and to a corrupt laxity of conduct. Such a result has shown itself within the area of modern history in the antinomianism of some Protestant bodies. But long before the Reformation St. Paul's words were 'wrested by the ignorant and unstedfast to their own destruction[[156 - 2 Pet. iii. 16.]].' It was probably a misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in St. Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[[157 - Rom. vi. 1 ff.]], that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing, and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics – newly-made Christians, who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in self-restraint – to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian privileges and Christian liberty.

To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly from the old life.

What was the old life? In writing to the Romans St. Paul describes the life of the contemporary heathen world as having its origin in a refusal of the will to acknowledge God. 'They glorified Him not as God.' 'They refused to have God in their knowledge.' Hence a darkening of the understanding. 'They became vain in their reasonings; their senseless hearts were darkened; professing themselves to be wise they became fools.' This explains the origin and possibility of so foolish a worship as that of men and beasts. Further, with the obscuring of the intelligence there was a perversion and emancipation of the passions, resulting in all forms of lawlessness and unnatural vice. A similar description of the 'old life' St. Paul gives here. The root of evil here also appears to be in the 'heart' (or will) – 'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a 'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is the true goal of human life, fellowship in 'the life of God.' Instead of that a life of uncleanness has prevailed, made into a regular business[[158 - 'To work all uncleanness.' Marg. 'to make a trade of.']], and pursued with 'greediness,' i.e. an entire disregard for others' rights – such a life as is only possible where all true human feeling and good taste has been quenched. Men have become 'past feeling.'

As regards the relation of this black picture to the actual facts, enough has perhaps been said above. At least St. Paul's picture is given as a direct challenge to the experience of those to whom he writes; and it is not blacker, at any rate, than the picture given by a philosophic contemporary at Ephesus, who calls himself Heracleitus. And on the black background of this 'former manner of life,' this 'old man' or old manhood – a life ruled by lusts which are not only morally evil but deceive and mock those who yield to them, leading, in fact, to nothing but corruption and death, a 'waxing corrupt after the lusts of deceit' – St. Paul sketches in the new life in Christ. To become a believer is to submit one's intelligence to learn a new lesson, to study Christ; it is to yield one's self to a 'form of teaching[[159 - Rom. vi. 17.]]' in order to have one's life refashioned in marked contrast to old and abandoned ways of life; it is to imbibe a new principle in the heart of one's rational being, 'to be renewed in the spirit of one's mind'; it is to put on deliberately, as a man puts on clothing, a new manhood, Christ's manhood, which is 'according to God[[160 - Eph. iv. 24, R. V. Marg. 'the new man which is after God, created,' &c.]],' that is, is based on His own life, and is His 'new creation' in righteousness and holiness. And this righteousness and holiness can never deceive us by false promises, because they are rooted in 'truth' or reality.

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.

There is one phrase in this passage which may need some further comment – 'The life of God.' Into God's own eternal life, as He lives it in Himself, we are given but glimpses. But God is also living in the world as its inherent life, and each form of creation participates in its measure, even if unconsciously, in the life of God. Consciously and intelligently man was intended to participate in it, but he 'alienated' himself from it by sin; and, while he was physically sustained in life by God, morally and mentally he was an exile. But Christ embodies the divine life anew in human form, and by His Spirit imparts it as a new life to men. Once more in Christ men live both 'in God' and 'according to God.'

This thought of our relation to the life of God is, in part, expressed in the Latin original of the Collect for the ninth Sunday after Trinity, in which we pray 'that we who cannot exist without Thee, may be enabled to live according to Thee.'

DIVISION II. § 2. CHAPTER IV. 25-32

The new life a corporate life

Corporate duties

The first characteristic of the new life dwelt upon is its corporate character, as a life lived by those who are 'members one of another,' and have therefore a common aim. In a body of people working with a common aim there may be a healthy rivalry and competition in doing good work, a manifold spirit of initiation and inventiveness, and there may be rewards of labour, proportioned not merely to needs but to these personal excellences. But what there cannot be is a competition which runs to the point of mutual destructiveness, or such accumulation of the fruits of skill and labour in a few hands as maims or starves the life of the majority. The common interest prevents this. 'The members must have the same care one of another,' so that 'when one member suffers all the members suffer with it[[161 - 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26.]].' The life is the life of a body, and the general well-being is therefore the common interest of all the members, for the weakening or decay of one is the weakening and decay of a more or less valuable part of a connected life. This is the general principle on which the Church is based. This is the moral meaning of churchmanship. 'Ye are members one of another.'

Various specific obligations follow from this general principle.

(a) Truthfulness and openness; for falsehood and concealment belong to a life of separated and conflicting interests. The prophetic ideal for the restored Israel is to be realized among Christians. 'Speak ye every man truth with his neighbour: execute the judgement of truth and peace in your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour: and love no false oath[[162 - Zech. viii. 16, 17.]].'

(b) Self-restraint in temper. We must not injure one another in life and limb, or wound one another in feelings. Therefore we must watch the first beginnings of anger, as the Psalmist[[163 - Ps. iv. 4, according to the LXX. But the English version 'Stand in awe and sin not' is probably correct.]] warns us, lest they lead to sin and give the devil, i.e. the slanderer of his brethren, the inspirer of all mutual recriminations, room and scope to work in.

(c) Labour for the purpose of mutual beneficence. Under the old covenant God had contented Himself with forbidding stealing. Under the new covenant the prohibition of what is wrong passes into the injunction of what is right. Labour of whatever kind, labour directed to produce something good, is required of all. 'If any man will not work, neither let him eat[[164 - 2 Thess. iii. 10.]].' The idle man in fact violates the fundamental conditions of the Christian covenant as truly as if he were denying the rudiments of the Christian faith. Now the object of labouring is to acquire 'property,' which is in one sense 'private,' and in another sense is not. The labourer may have, under his own free administration, the fruits of his labour, but he is to administer his property with the motive, not only of supporting himself, but of helping his weaker and more needy brethren.

(d) Profitable speech. Here again the Christian is not to be content with avoiding noxious conversation. His talk is to be, not indeed 'edifying' in the narrowest sense, but such as 'builds up what is lacking' in life, or supplies a need, whether by counselling, or informing, or refreshing, or cheering; so that it may 'give grace[[165 - Cf. Col. iv. 6: 'Let your speech be always with grace' or 'graciousness'; Luke iv. 22: 'gracious words'; Ps. xlv. 2: 'Grace is poured into thy lips'; Eccles. x. 12: 'The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious'; Ecclus. xxi. 16: 'Grace shall be found in the lips of the wise.']],' that is, afford pleasure and, in the widest sense, bring a blessing to the hearers.

In all their conduct Christians are to have two masterful thoughts. (1) They are to think of the divine purpose of the Holy Ghost who has entered into the Church to 'seal' or mark it as an elect body destined for full redemption from all evil, in body and soul, at the climax of God's dealings, the last day. The Holy Ghost, with all His personal love, will be grieved if we thwart His rich purpose for the whole body by anything which is contrary to brotherhood in the thoughts of our hearts, or the words of our lips, or our outward conduct.

(2) They are to remember the divine pattern of life. God has shown His own heart to us in the free forgiveness which He has given us in Christ. Being in constant receipt of that forgiveness, we must not prove ourselves hard and unforgiving towards one another.

Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need. Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you.

Here, then, St. Paul sketches catholicity in practice. The very idea of the Church is that of a fellowship of naturally unlike individuals, harmonized into unity by the new 'truth and grace' of God, which has been made theirs in their regenerate life. It is this endowment of the regenerate life that is to enable them to transcend, and overstep, and defeat natural incompatibilities of temper, and to be one body in Christ. The practical meaning of catholicity is brotherhood. It is love, as St. Augustine says, grown as wide as the world[[166 - See app. note F (#pgepubid00076), p. 271, The Ethics of Catholicism.]].

Why has the world lost this sense of the moral meaning of catholic churchmanship? Why has 'ecclesiastical' come to mean something quite different to 'brotherly'? Or it is a more profitable question to ask, How shall we make it mean the same thing again? There are many who would give up the very effort after recovering the church principle, the obligation of the 'one body.' But this, as has been said, is to abandon the ultimate catholic principle of Christianity. For the very purpose of the one church for all the men of faith in Jesus, is that the necessity for belonging to one body – a necessity grounded on divine appointment – shall force together into a unity men of all sorts and different kinds; and the forces of the new life which they share in common are to overcome their natural repugnance and antipathies, and to make the forbearance and love and mutual helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, at least possible for them.

This is the principle which must not be abandoned. We must assert the theological principle of the Church because it is that and that alone which can impress on men practically the obligation and possibility of a catholic brotherhood.

But it is folly to assert the theological truth of churchmanship, and neglect its moral meaning. Quite recently the bishops of the Lambeth Conference have striven to impress anew the ethics of churchmanship upon the conscience of the faithful[[167 - See Report of Lambeth Conference, 1897. S.P.C.K., pp. 136 ff.; and app. note G (#pgepubid00078), p. 274.]]. The principle of brotherhood must act as a constant counterpoise to the instinct of competition. The principle of labour shows that the idle and selfish are 'out of place' in a Christian community. The principle of justice forces us to recognize that the true interest of each member of the body politic must be consulted. The principle of public responsibility reminds us that each one is his brother's keeper. Once more the Church has been aroused to its prophetic task of 'binding' and 'loosing' the consciences of men in regard specially to those matters which concern the corporate life and the relations of classes to one another. And we pray God that the work of our bishops may not be in vain. What we want is not more Christians, but, much rather, better Christians – that is to say, Christians who have more perception of what the moral effort required for membership in the catholic brotherhood really is.

No doubt the needed social reformation is of vast difficulty. For instance, one who contemplates our commercial relations in the world may indeed be tempted to despair of the possibility of recovering the practical application to 'business' of the law of truthfulness; and many a one who is practically engaged in commerce, in higher or lower station, finds that to act upon the law may involve something like martyrdom. But the very meaning of divine faith is that we do, in spite of all discouragements, hold that to be practicable which is the will of God; and it is nothing new in the history of Christianity if at a crisis we need 'the blood of martyrs' – or something morally equivalent to their blood – for 'a seed,' the seed of a fresh growth of Christian corporate life. No fresh start worth making is possible without personal sacrifices; and to recover anything resembling St. Paul's ethical standard for Christian society we need indeed a fresh start. But the few Tractarians of sixty years ago by industry, patience and prayer effected a kind of revolution in the Church as a whole; and reformers of Christian social relations may with the same weapons – and with no other – do the like.

DIVISION II. § 3. CHAPTER V. 1-14

The Christian life an imitation of God and

a life in the light

The imitation of God

St. Paul has just suggested the thought of imitating God by ready forgiveness. And in fact here – in the imitation of God – is one of the greatest of the new ideas and motives which Christianity supplies. God has manifested Himself in Christ under human conditions. He has translated the unimaginable Godhead into terms of our own well-known human nature. For Christ is very man, yet He is the Son of God, truly God, and His character is God's character. For the Christian henceforth in a quite new sense God is imitable: He can become a pattern for actual human life. As children partly consciously and partly unconsciously imitate their parents, so we Christians as 'beloved children' are to 'become imitators of God.'

And it is quite plain what the character of God as manifested in Christ is. It is love; and to imitate God is therefore to 'walk in love,' that is, to conduct one's life with love as its conscious motive and atmosphere. Moreover, the love of Christ is a love which shows itself in self-sacrifice. 'He offered himself as an offering and sacrifice to God on our behalf; and God, who had of old made it plain by His prophets that He could find no satisfaction in animal victims, accepted 'as a sweet savour' this free-will offering of self-sacrificing love. In the self-sacrifice of Christ, therefore, we have the clear disclosure both of what God is and of what God will accept from man.

But this ideal of life as lying in love and in the deliberate self-sacrifice of one for another is the plain negation of some maxims for life generally accepted in heathen society. It is the plain negation of sensual self-indulgence at the expense of others, or at the expense of our spiritual nature, of 'fornication and uncleanness of all kinds,' of filthy conduct, of the sort of jesting or wit which ignores all moral restraints. It is the plain negation again of selfish greed or the unlimited desire to get – 'covetousness.' These things are out of the question for a body of saints, that is, men dedicated to a holy God.

Life in the light

The tone and language which befits such a dedicated life is the tone and language of thanksgiving. But clearly Asiatic Christians were only too ready to forget the essential incompatibility of their new profession with the old sinful habits around them. So St. Paul emphasizes 'This ye know for certain that fornication or unclean living on the one hand, or the turning of gain into a god on the other, surely excludes a man from the kingdom of Christ and God[[168 - Possibly this expression means 'the kingdom of Him who is at once Christ and God.']].' And he reiterates 'let no man deceive you with empty words.' Such vices, being in plain contradiction to the divine will, make men subjects of the divine wrath, and for you this should be startlingly plain. You have been brought out of the realm of darkness of which once you formed a part, into the realm of light, of which you now form a part, the realm whose light is Christ. There is no fellowship between the light and the darkness[[169 - 2 Cor. vi. 14.]]. To live in the light means to bring forth fruit of goodness and righteousness and truth, the fruit of a character like Christ's. For you have in Christ a definite standard by which you can test what is well pleasing to the Lord. It is your business, therefore, to keep yourselves altogether separate from the works of darkness which bear no fruit. Not only so, but it is your business to 'reprove' or convict the dark world of sin; not, of course, by making the works of darkness the subjects of your curiosity and conversation – that indeed must not be – but simply by the contrast which your own lives present. In the light of your lives the secret shame of the heathen life will be unmasked. And in being unmasked even the works of darkness will themselves become part of the light. To make such ways of living attractive they must be cloaked up in a deceitful glamour. Once stripped bare and shown in their true character they teach their true lesson. Thus, the one duty of a man is to awake from the old sleep of death; to separate himself from the morally dead world and stand clear in the light of Christ. And that is what the early Christian hymn, which St. Paul cites, was continually impressing upon the Christian conscience. We may attempt to reproduce it in something like its original rhythm thus: —

'Be awakened, thou that sleepest;
Rise alive from out the dead world;
Christ, the Light, shall shine upon thee.'