CHAPS. 4.-5:21.―CHRIST THE VICTORIOUS CAPTAIN OF GOD’S HOST, AND HEAD OF HIS BODY.
HAVING surveyed in the Spirit the whole new-creation blessing, affording as it does the knowledge of the unknowable love of Christ which delights to share with its objects these infinite glories — a love which not only gave all for the saints, but also gives everything to them — the apostle again turns his thoughts, as in chap. 3:1, to exhorting the believers to walk worthy of their calling. This calling we have already considered, as, according to the counsels of God before the worlds, effectuated by His divine and immediate power which wrought in raising from among the dead and setting down His beloved Son at His right hand, the object of His ineffable delight―the perfect manifestation in manhood of all His heart had designed to have, and that answers to His own nature. But inasmuch as we are included in these counsels, the administration to usward is committed to the apostle in the gospel.
A walk in consonance with this calling is therefore of the deepest importance, as realizing in a practical manner already in the creature, i.e., responsibly in man morally and spiritually, that which is manifested in divine perfection in a risen and glorified Christ. The glory, as well as the eternal state, is thereby anticipated in a moral way.
The apostle then proceeds in chap. 4. to unfold this highest expression of the Christian walk in its appropriate manner, sphere, and nature. It is well to observe at the outset that power is not in question here. Christ is viewed as having vanquished every opposing power wholly and forever. To us, therefore, not power but grace is given according to the measure of His gift. He is for us what the captain of the Lord’s host was for Joshua and Israel, differing, however, in that for them the victory had yet to be won.
But as to the manner of our walk, in view of the powerful accomplishment, in a heavenly Christ, of God’s purposes respecting us, we clearly discern the qualities which marked the rejected Christ on earth (ver. 2) — lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, love, peace. The sphere in which these qualities are expressed is the unity of the Spirit, which is to be kept with diligence.
Now this sphere embracing the operations of the one Spirit is developed in three distinct forms, as to which every saint needs to be instructed, for his walk bears a relation to each. The closest or most intimate is that of the one body, purely spiritual, as it is the one Spirit alone forming and energizing it, as well as accomplishing in power the one hope of the calling. Until this is recognized, and the saint is conscious of the consequent relations common to the members, there is failure to enter so far into the mind of the Head, and corresponding defect in the walk of the Christian. Individually he may be most devoted and irreproachable, but yet lack the intelligence of the Spirit in his associations corporately.
The second great circle formed by the Spirit’s power for Christian walk is connected with and characterized by the Lordship of Christ — not here His headship. Headship necessarily implies a divinely powerful and living organization in the body, which depends wholly on the Head, in whom its perfection resides, and by whom it is uninterruptedly maintained. But “one faith, one baptism,” though due to the grace and energy of the Spirit, forms a sphere of privilege and authority, in which the matter is man’s responsibility to the Lord, whom the faith reveals, and who gave the ordinance. We must walk in recognition of the Lord’s authority, tether with all those who profess His name. It is not the body here, and life and union by the Spirit, but the far wider if less intimate relation of the rights of Christ over all those who confess His name.
The third and last form in which the unity of the Spirit must be kept is connected with the universe which He has created. The saint has in this his place, which, while in one sense common to all, is his in a special and peculiarly precious way. The one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, is “in us all.” He is in us by the indwelling Spirit no doubt, but the effect here is not that of the sealing or anointing or the earnest which refer to different relations, but of the God and Father of all being in us, placing us amid His universe as the vessel morally of His thoughts who is its Creator and Sustainer. Each believing heart should well weigh the practical consequences of this far-reaching truth, for a walk corresponding to and worthy of these divine facts is the especial point of these exhortations. We are in nature and, indeed, a part of it, but the God of nature is in us.
In view of the Christian walk characterized in this threefold way, there are two great capacitating provisions, namely, grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ, and His gifts to men after having led captivity captive. The first forms the true Christian state of soul which benefits by the ministry of the latter, who are not merely spiritual powers but gifted persons. They are the fruits of Christ’s victory, His gifts of love to the Church or assembly, in order that the saints may fully participate in its results now.
The victory indeed is absolute and perfect, but the saints individually need perfecting, and the work of the ministry and the edifying of the body of Christ must still be carried on. For this the gifts are necessary, and Christ provides them until all is accomplished — that is, until all saints recognize by the Spirit the great facts of Christian doctrine in their proper and mutual relations, and until their knowledge of the Blessed One, to whom these facts refer, be according to His divine relationship and character as the Son of God. This is to be the full-grown man; this is the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ; for what He is with God must comprehend all, leaving nothing else beyond. It is perfection — Christian perfection, objective and subjective; and Christ’s ministry, by means of the gifts, secures it. Then do we intelligently by the Spirit grow up to Him in all things who is the Head, the Christ, and the whole body drawing, as it necessarily does, its character and constitution from Him, works, in the measure of each part, the increase of the body to its self-building up in love.
Thus do we realize as a present thing our association with that victorious Christ in a walk which excludes the thought of any opposing power from without, and is filled with love, that pure nature of God alone.
Having thus considered the manner and the sphere of Christian responsibility, let us now finally note the nature of it. This develops itself in two forms, namely, according as the truth is in Jesus and according to God, being created in righteousness and holiness of truth. In a word, having put off the old man, it is the new man put on, the spirit of our mind being thus renewed unfailingly in communion with its divine source. The motives for the new man are therefore drawn from the living membership of love expressed in the body and from the activities of grace. The powerful Source of that grace, God’s Holy Spirit, who seals us in view of the day when all that grieves shall cease forever, must control every expression of our life, producing towards each other the same exercise of grace which in Christ God has shown to us.
To be imitators of God, therefore, sums up the whole responsibility of the saints in its principle, He being light and love, and Christ the full, perfect expression of this in manhood. Of this divine love in relation to man, Christ is the one divine example in delivering Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. In us, therefore, all selfishness and lust of having, which is the opposite of self-surrender in love, is to be absolutely denied.
We are not love, which is sovereign in God, and absolutely free, but we are to walk in it obediently as beloved children. On the other hand, we are light in the Lord, and are to walk as children of it, proving what is agreeable to the Lord, and reproving what is exposed by it. Christ alone indeed is the active source of light, and where a soul is asleep among the dead it must be aroused to benefit by the beams of it and understand the will of the Lord. Moreover, filled with the Spirit, the heart pours itself out in praise and thanksgiving to God and the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, being alone subject to the claims of love and the fear of Christ, and free from every foe as well as the motives of the flesh. In this way it is that membership of the body and full practical association in walk with our ascended and victorious Christ, heavenly and supreme, and who fills all things, is now manifested in the saints, while we yet await the glorious display of this association.
In conclusion, let us note that the one body, the truth of which penetrates all the teaching of this epistle, is not understood intellectually; but, to the spiritual apprehension, is of the simplest, as seen by faith in an exalted Christ. Paul himself seized this glorious and living fact in the vision of that Blessed One, who, speaking in heavenly glory, identified Himself as one with His persecuted saints on earth. What was true of them is true of us, and Paul learned it by vision and revelation to teach it us that we might know it.