The Secret of His Purpose

Chapter 5: Corporate Unity

The fusion of chosen and prepared persons into the one body, the church, is implicit in the thought of the last two verses of chapter one. Now, in chapter two, Paul goes on to explain the unifying process in greater detail and to show that this sense of corporate oneness is in the very essence of salvation. The whole force of the contrast between past and present, the old life and the new, the life in the flesh and the life in Christ, is the contrast between crass individuality and fellowship. The change wrought in Christ is no mere superficial adjustment to a more spiritual way of thinking. It is a radical upheaval of which there can be no other suitable parallel than the one Paul draws, that of life and death. "And you did He quicken, who were dead through your trespasses and sins" (v. 1).

The principle of life contains a mystery which has baffled the mind of man for millenniums and still remains unsolved. It can be said, however, that life consists of the capacity of animated things to respond to one another. Life in the human body consists of a series of mutual responses and reactions to the functions of the various members. Social life likewise consists of the response of individuals one to another. Death, the cessation of life, is the opposite. It is complete passivity, the inability to communicate or receive, the locking up of a living thing in its own individuality. This, says Paul, is precisely the result of sin. The ability to respond to the spiritual has been killed. Man has been trapped in the circle of his own little mind to be a blind slave to his own will. God created him for much more than this. "God created man in His own image" (Genesis 1:27), with a capacity like His own, to receive from God and to give unto God, to be loved and to love, to know the fullness of fellowship. That is life.

But all that remains in the world is but a travesty of that great purpose. Relationships in modern society are scarcely ever other than a problem. Even the relationship of the family, the most sacred that this world knows, outside of Christ is but a mockery of all that God intended. The reason is, of course, that man is spiritually dead, that capacity for vital and spontaneous response has gone. He is capable only of reacting to the reflection of his own selfish desires. Self has become the great motivating force in human existence. This is the course of the world. It is to this community of death that the people of God once belonged. In verses two and three Paul describes the whole sordid, selfish circle that is their pitiful prison of a home. What can God do but judge the whole thing? His love demands it. What love is there that wants to preserve a slum and all it contains? "By nature children of wrath" (v. 3). Yet let us never forget the reason for it all. 'Sons of disobedience' (v. 2), Paul describes this fallen race. The heart of the matter is rebellion, a denial of the rights of God and an exaltation of the will of man, the self that dominates and must disavow everything that cannot be drawn into its own orbit. This is the basic sin, the death that afflicts mankind.

What is the answer? The answer is the mercy and the love of God (v. 4); there can be no other. Man has neither the ability to seek Him nor the desire to do so. He is engrossed in his own way, and knows nothing else. The love of God will ever remain unfathomable. 'When we were dead through our trespasses' (v. 5), it was showered upon us. Can man love a stone? Yet God loved a dead thing, not simply to forgive it the reason for its being a stone, but to change the stone into flesh. "You, I say, did He quicken together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses," writes Paul to the Colossians (ch. 2 v. 13). Scripture never disparages the grace of divine forgiveness, but the emphasis is always upon life to which forgiveness is but the prelude. Eternal life is that sphere of spiritual response into which we are born through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. The bounds of the old self-circle are shattered on the entrance to a new and heavenly plane. "Dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus," says Paul to the Romans (ch. 6 v. 11). "Whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world," says John (I John 5:4). Since the crux of the world is self (v. 2) and in self lies the basic sin, it follows that life and victory over the world must be the negation of self, which is fellowship and fusion with the people of God. The church then is the inevitable corollary to regeneration. In the light of what has already been said regarding the identification of self with sin, a so-called salvation which leaves people at one and the same time their own masters and their own slaves is meaningless. Nor does the Scripture teach that they are delivered from this bondage to be lost in a 'nirvana' of nothingness. Deliverance is to a life of quickening in Christ, a life of resurrection, a new and heavenly order of things. The centre of that heavenly relationship on earth, as we have already seen in the first chapter, is the church. Where else can the judgement on self and the triumph of the divine nature be evidenced if it is to be revealed on earth at all, as surely it is? If bonds of blood are to be superseded in eternity by bonds of the Spirit, is not our part in the establishment of that spiritual relationship upon the earth of all things most important? What is salvation without it? Relationship is life, and divine relationship is divine life in the church.

The pattern of this new life is resurrection. The Lord demonstrated the victory over sin and death by taking upon Himself the limitations of flesh and blood. "Since the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in the same manner partook of the same; that through death He might bring to nought him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15). He laid His life down of Himself. His earthly life was not conditioned by spiritual death which alone causes the human vitality of this physical body to peter out, but of His own love and grace He identified Himself with fallen mankind in this ultimate penalty of bodily extinction to show that His own life is new, and different and triumphant over it all. By faith He takes us with Him through the cross into resurrection. It is of this tremendous experience that Paul speaks in Romans 6:5-9. "For if we have become united with Him by the likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection: knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin: for he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." The old things of self and the world have no legitimate place in the life of the regenerate person. He has been born into a new capacity to adjust to God and all that is of God, and it is that capacity that God is going to foster and develop in the church.

We have been made 'to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ' (v. 6), says Paul. Here is our new place of power, privilege and authority, where first and foremost there is victory over self and we can see things from the vantage point of Christ. Everything of the world is subject to this heavenly position, and all is the object of the grace of God, that 'in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace' (v. 7), in that chosen and separated company which has tasted of His grace, the church.

Lest any should be tempted to pride through the magnitude of this purpose, Paul reminds us in vs. 8-10 that all we have is of God. Grace, salvation, and faith are all alike His free gifts. For reasons implicit in His own nature and unfathomable to man, He poured out Himself in the gift of grace; when man was bereft of any capacity whatsoever to respond to Him, He freely gave that capacity in the gift of faith; He led those who would follow in faith through the cross into the gift of salvation. Works have no part whatever to play. From start to finish 'we are His workmanship,' and only when He has made us are we fit for anything in which He can have pleasure. David aptly expresses this fact in his prayer of dedication for the materials contributed for the building of the temple. "But who am I and what is this my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of Thee and of Thine own have we given Thee" (I Chronicles 29:14).

This great relationship, however, has a very practical outworking. 'Good works' must obviously be an inherent part of the new life, for God Himself is good. So Paul says, "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them" (v. 10). Then follows an exhortation to 'remember' coupled with a very down-to-earth explanation of the association of the people of God in the assembly, and illustrated by four most illuminating pictures of the church: the new man, the heavenly citizenship, the household of God, and God's house.

The Ephesians are straitly reminded never to forget the pitiful and hopeless condition from which they had been rescued. They certainly had possessed no spiritual advantages any more than the rest of mankind, but neither had they so much as possessed a merely temporal gain in belonging to the people of Israel who were the subject of God's direct revelation. Nevertheless, God has delivered them out of it all and they have entered a new relationship with Him. We need to remind ourselves continually, however, that this regenerate life, this capacity to respond to the divine, must be the subject of constant development. For a person born and bred in one country to go and live in another requires radical adjustment. Some people simply do not have that capacity of adjustment, everything to them in a foreign land is wrong, or senseless, or both; but for those who do there is required, particularly in the initial stages, a period of constant effort to understand and to conform to new patterns and new standards. Sometimes it may be easy, sometimes it may be difficult. Often there may be questionings of 'why' and 'to what purpose,' and with these also may be the temptation to abandon the whole effort and go back to the old ways which are familiar even if they be inferior in every respect. There must be a constant awareness of the superiority of the new over the old, a resolute choice to pursue it, and the purpose to attain it. The will which is now bent in God's direction must be maintained in that attitude by the power of deliberate choice. This power of choice is a faculty which God will never remove. Fellowship is dependent upon it. Love, likewise, is dependent upon it, and can never be mechanical. The willingness to respond in fellowship and love is the very root of their existence. Yet where there is freedom to choose the good there is freedom also to deny it. Where there is freedom to choose the way of life there is also temptation to slip back into the way of death.

One of our safeguards against the tragic return to the old death is in a constant remembrance of the magnitude of the grace of God. When people forget the kindness of the Lord in the past, they are in grave danger of slipping back into the lethargy of self-sufficiency. The need to keep in mind the lessons of the past is one of the reasons for the importance of giving testimony in the assembly or in informal exhortation. Our human memories are very short. The deep spiritual experiences which form the foundation of our Christian lives are too quickly relegated to the past; the invaluable lessons we ourselves once learned are forgotten and are lost to the generation that follows. While too much emphasis cannot be laid on the progressive nature of spiritual experience, we yet need to make sure that the blessings of the past are conserved and the principles which we learned never cease to become part of our daily walk. A student of mathematics may, through the years, progress in various branches of his subject, but he can never afford to forget the simple laws of addition and subtraction, multiplication and division which he learned as a child, for it is upon these things alone that the whole structure of mathematics can be developed.

If we look back into the Old Testament Scriptures we find that a very important place was given by God to the recounting of His dealings through successive generations. The classic example of this is, of course, the Passover. In Exodus 12:14 we read, "And this day shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever." The people of Israel were never to forget the mighty hand of God which had redeemed them from the slavery of Egypt. Even today wherever one finds orthodox Jews, the great day of the year is the day of the Passover. The observance of this feast has been kept intact down through the centuries.

On the crossing of Jordan into the land of promise we find another remembrance set up. Twelve stones taken from the midst of the river were set up as a pillar in Gilgal to be a specific reminder to generations to come of a divine power and victory which they had not personally experienced. In the life of the assembly, as well as in our individual experiences, we cannot under-rate the value of recounting the stories of battles fought and victories won in the power of the invincible God. Sooner than we realise, a generation will have arisen whose only incentive to continue in the spiritual warfare is our recounting of the promises of the past and our pointing steadfastly to the goal which lies ahead. The basic things must never be forgotten. The promise of the inheritance must ever be held fast and pursued. This is God's order. "The things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also" (II Timothy 2:2).

Not only the blessings of the past, but the disciplines and defeats can be salutary reminders of our dependence upon the Lord. Our testimonies of how the Lord has triumphed would often do well to be seasoned with the admission of how man has failed, and thus provide a not infrequently necessary discouragement to our innate self-confidence. It was to this end that the people of Israel were warned, "And thou shalt remember all the way that the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no" (Deuteronomy 8:2). "Hold fast that which thou hast" (Revelation 3:11) is a key exhortation to the people of God not only to ensure their spiritual progress, but also to maintain their strength knit together in the unity of the Spirit.

Verses thirteen to eighteen now deal more explicitly with this unity, Paul showing how that unbridgeable gulf between Jew and Gentile has been bridged in Christ. We can hardly over-emphasise the magnitude of the gap that existed between these two peoples. We may think of many factors which divide humanity today, factors of race, class, language, creed, and community, but all these are weak and insignificant when compared with the reasons which arrayed Jew and Gentile in implacable opposition one to another. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament will at once make this evident: the strict injunctions imposed by God against any association whatsoever with the heathen, and the severity of the penalties often meted out to those who disobeyed. And this, mark you, was imposed by God, not by some class-conscious human leader seeking to enforce the supremacy of a particular race. This separation, we might say, was innate in the birth of Israel as a nation, and has characterised the Jew down to the present day. Lapses there have been, and grievous ones at that, but few more miraculous things can be shown than the preserved identity of the Jewish people. Dispersed among the nations, and at times hounded into the caves and holes of the earth, they have yet maintained their identity as a separate race. Wherever you may go throughout the world, there is no mistaking a Jew.

No wonder the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. No wonder the Gentiles were 'unclean.' A 'wall' existed between them, says Paul (v. 14), an 'enmity' (v. 15). But that wall has been broken down (v. 14), that enmity has been slain (vs. 16-17),and peace reigns in the cross of Christ. God through His Son has preached the tidings of peace both to them 'that were far off,' the Gentiles, and to 'them that were nigh,' the Jews (v. 17)--nigh to God, of course, through the unquestionable superiority of the revelation which had been entrusted to them as a nation. "Through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father" (v. 18). The life of the Spirit is one, and in the power of that common life we have been reconciled unto God in one body. What could be closer than this? If God could thus fuse Jew and Gentile into one, there is not a barrier on earth that can stand against the power of the life of the resurrected Christ.

In the past in India, so-called 'churches' have been raised up on the basis of old caste distinctions. Whether or not this was done with a good motive is not our concern here, but such a practice is certainly a denial of the very work of the cross of Christ. It may be true that these distinctions die hard, but they can never live in the light of Calvary. To the natural man who clings to every puny distinction that might act as a fillip to his pride, that all this must and can be broken down may seem incredible, but the gospel, the power of God, can do no less than bring the pride of man crashing to the ground. That is the miracle of God's grace, the grace which saves through faith and reconciles the irreconcilable.

The miracle of the church was something which never became ordinary or commonplace to Paul. Again and again at the beginning of his epistles he thanks God for the very existence of the church. "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all," he writes to the Romans (Romans 1:8). That in any place there should be, gathered in from the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, the religious and the blasphemer, the Jew and the Gentile, a company of people united at the feet of Christ, was a fact Paul could never get over. The wonder of it filled his soul, and it cast him and the church alike in ever-deepening dependence upon the grace to which they owed their very existence. The church is a miracle of the grace of God.

Next: Chapter 6: Sons of the Kingdom