It must be manifest to the most casual reader of the epistle that we are upon very high and holy ground here. Let none suppose that this is to impeach other portions of the inspired scriptures. But who can deny that in revealing His mind, God has been pleased to employ different instruments and with various measures? He could, if He pleased, have written all by one; He could have revealed Himself by all according to the full height of His own glory and nothing else. But we may be quite sure that the ways of God are as admirable in the forms which His revelation takes, as in all other things which He has made for His praise. These diverse manners of developing His nature and character, His counsels and ways, display His glory in an infinitely more blessed light than if there had been one unvarying blaze of brightness. And the same wisdom, which works best for His majesty and praise, is precisely that which is suited to the wants, and efficacious for the blessing of His children. Need I say, that a revelation, while it is from God, is for His people? No doubt, it does glorify Himself; but God, when He speaks, has an object in view, and provides graciously for those to whom He addresses Himself. The revelations of God, therefore, necessarily, while they flow from God, and are worthy of God, presuppose, and are adapted to, the condition of man. Now this, far from, in the smallest degree, lessening the divine glory which manifests itself in the successive parts of God's word, on the contrary, enhances it infinitely, and proves that it is His, by nothing more than its wonderful suitability to poor sinners, brought out of their low estate, in His rich mercy, and adopted into His family by faith in Christ Jesus.
Now, of all the epistles of Paul, I am not aware of any one which rises so high as this to the Ephesians; and one cannot doubt that there was a harmony between the condition of these saints themselves, and the manner and measure of the Spirit's communications to them. We find it so elsewhere. In addressing the saints at Rome, they were not called a church; they were in a very infantine state. There were blessed saints of God there, but the assembly was not founded by an apostle. Years passed before ever an apostle went to Rome. God saw well that this very city of Rome would arrogate to itself enormous claims of a spiritual character. Therefore He took care that in more inconsiderable places, such as Corinth, He should have an apostle to found churches and labor there for a considerable time; while the great center of the world's glory was unvisited by an apostle till there were many assembled there, through persons going there from one cause and another. When we consider the circumstances of the Roman saints, we can understand the propriety of an epistle addressed to them which most strongly resembles a comprehensive scheme of Christian doctrine from the very A B C. And hence the very first thing that we have proved there, after the introduction, is the total ruin of man, and of man looked at in every point of view—man examined and weighed in the balances of God, from the flood downwards. After man had possessed a knowledge of God of an outward sort, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. In fact, we have the origin of idolatry shown; and also the time after the flood before idolatry came in. The verses that I have referred to in Romans 1, bear upon the time when there was simply man possessing the knowledge of God. But man departed from it, corrupting himself; and we have the awful picture of human depravity traced in the early chapters. Next, we have philosophic man, and then man under the law: man in every point of view, before the subject of redemption is treated of; or anything is said of the way to be justified. The reason is this: the apostle never having been there, the saints at Rome were comparatively ignorant, and required to be instructed in the nature and completeness of the fall. They needed to learn what the history of man was, as God looks at and thinks of it. Therefore we have him seen as ruined in every way, and no help for him in the creature, the law, or anything else. The result of it is, that all are gone out of the way “there is none righteous, no, not one.” In a word, every mouth is stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God. Then, and not till then, we have the provision God has made in His righteous mercy for man, in chapter 3 and 4; and from chapter 5, consequences shown and difficulties met, winding up with the triumphant conclusion of chapter 8. Thus we have a weighty summary of Christian doctrine, beginning with the actual condition of man, Jew or Gentle, and leading up to the firm footing God has given in Christ, dead and risen, to him that believes. But in all this you have, most important as it is, only the individual. It may be man lost or man saved; but you have nothing about the Church. It is what pertains to those who are members of the Church, but no such thing appears as the assembly treated as an assembly. Man's ruin and redemption is the theme, with the effects of redemption, and the order of the dispensations, and the practical duties flowing from all. But in Ephesians how totally different! Here, comparatively speaking, man disappears, and God is viewed as acting from Himself.
Hence there is no preface nor proof of what man's state is. This is not necessary, nor is it the starting point of his teaching there. In Romans it is; and nothing can be more simple. But in Ephesians, instead of our being raised up from the pit of corruption, in which man lay buried, the very first thing the apostle does is to speak of God in heaven. It is God showering blessing upon man, and not man brought up to God. It is God shown in the ways of His grace and the thoughts of His heart before even there was a world at all, entirely apart from all questions of Jews or Gentiles. It is God forming a scheme of glory and blessedness for His own praise. God delights in the display of His goodness, and this for the purpose of blessing, and the very highest, fullest character of blessing. Hence you will find that it is not simply God as God acting towards man, but He has Christ before Him, and hence there is no limit to the blessing. He would have some channel of grace toward us to the full content of His own heart. Now there is no object that could draw out and sustain the delight of God, none that could be in itself an adequate object to look upon with complacency but one, even Christ. As for the angels, He charges them with folly, and yet were they holy. If He scanned lower than the angels, what is there but a world lost in sin? Thus there is but one capable of satisfying the heart and affections of God — Christ Himself.
Having therefore introduced this great truth — God blessing, and Christ the object before God, through whom God is going to bless according to all that is in His heart, now we find that He names Himself as a Blesser in a twofold way. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” These two titles are the key to the epistle. And I must be permitted to press strongly the importance of weighing words in Scripture. When we have to do with mankind, we must not make man an offender for a word. But God needs no excuses for His word. Whatever allowance we might make for the slips of one another, with Scripture the occasion can never arise. When we draw near and listen to Him, the only proper attitude is to bow and worship. And therefore in this epistle, which is so full an expression of His love, the apostle opens it thus, “Blessed be the God and Father.” He could not write to the Ephesians without breaking out into the praise and Worship of God. Elsewhere you will find him blessing God, but where he does so, as in 2 Corinthians 2:1414Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. (2 Corinthians 2:14), there were special circumstances that called it out. But not so here. At Corinth there was a blessed intervention of God's grace, breaking down the proud hearts of those wayward disciples, making them ashamed of themselves. But in Ephesians it was apart from passing circumstances, save that he saw them in such a condition of soul that they were capable of going on with God, entering into His thoughts and counsels. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” was not because of some special mercy or comfort; but it flows from what He always is to us. For this very reason many saints may be unable to enter in. Some are apt to be particularly alive to, and touched by, sensible tokens from day to day, and now and then peculiar providential interventions of God. Perhaps they are in great trial, and God brings them a fresh blessing too out of it. But here the Ephesians were so simple and willing to go on with God that the apostle, instead of being detained by their state, could but speak in praise and thanksgiving. It is very blessed when there is such happy communion given in having to do with one another.
It is true, again, that before he enters upon what I shall endeavor to develop, he introduces himself as an apostle. He does not say “servant” here; in writing to the Romans he does. “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.” He was indeed Christ's bondman. Why should Paul be writing to them? He was His servant. Did not they belong to Jesus? There was no such thought as “independency” sanctioned in those days — no, such practice as little districts or assemblies belonging to this man or that; but the Church committed everywhere to the Lord's servants. He is a true servant who is able to realize that he is the servant of Jesus Christ; and he will serve Him best who most realizes what it is to serve the Lord. “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called [to be] an apostle.” He was an apostle by the calling of God. At this time there was no such thing as a congregation giving a candidate “a call.” Paul was an apostle called of God, and they were saints, called of God, and they knew it. It was very sweet for them to think they had been thus called. They were in their measure treading the path of Christ, and the apostle was His servant and an apostle also. His object was to bring his apostleship into relief. But they at Corinth were in danger of beginning to stand in doubt of him, and of thinking that to Jerusalem they ought to look. He thoroughly owns the common place of a brother; but if persons like the Corinthians were raising their heads too high, he says, “An apostle” simply, without adding “servant.” If a dispute arose about the point, he shows the reality of his call. In addressing the Galatians I have shown elsewhere that there is peculiar force in his introduction of himself— “Paul, an apostle (not of men, neither by man).” Here you have controversy at once, but of divine temper and strength. There were false principles in Galatia, and therefore he uses energetic, urgent language in writing to the saints. They were adopting Jewish notions about earthly succession. The apostle therefore takes the very highest ground, and shows that while he fully acknowledged the twelve in their place, he would not, in what touched the truth of the gospel, give place by subjection — no, not for an hour; so that the whole Epistle bears the stamp of the unqualified reassertion of the call of grace and its heavenly character, founded upon the death and resurrection of Christ.
In Ephesians he has no object of a controversial kind, nor of laying down the Christian foundations of truth, as in the case of the Roman saints. But he does put forward his apostolic function — “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” He shows fully out of what it sprang — that same “will of God,” out of which flowed their own blessing. He is about to trace, first the individual blessing, and then the corporate. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the former is a deeper thing than the latter. On the contrary, our highest blessings are connected with what we have as individuals. Fully acknowledging the blessedness of what is corporate, what we have individually is higher still; and it is the way of God's Spirit to begin with this before entering upon what is common. Hence I think he here addresses “the saints which were at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus,” as such. They were the Church there, not only gathered formally, but intelligently so. They had had the Apostle Paul there, who had been God's instrument in that work. There were twelve men who believed before Paul went there; but they never received the Holy Spirit after the Pentecostal sort till Paul's visit. It is the personal presence of the Holy Spirit, founded upon our faith in Christ dead and risen, that brings us into this church character. But the Holy Spirit, besides making us members of Christ's body, the Church, also gives us the consciousness of our relationship as sons with His God and Father. He addresses “the Church of God at Corinth” as such, when he is speaking of points that concern order and discipline. Here he is going to look at Church in a far higher point of view; yet he begins with what is individual: “To the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” Then he introduces the twofold title of God already referred to — the same that our Lord announced when He rose from the dead, and sent the first message given to His disciples, by Mary Magdalene: “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” — not “to the Almighty God,” or “to Jehovah.” Our Lord stood in a twofold relation to God; He was Son of God, not only as a divine person, but as man in the world (Luke 1); besides His highest personal glory which shines through John's Gospel, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” This last title refers to Christ, viewed in humanity in this world; and it is therefore stated only in the Gospel of Luke, which is pre-eminently the human biography, if I may so speak, of Christ. But it might not have been known, unless God had told us, that He carried that same relationship as man into His resurrection. He teaches us that death and resurrection gave Him title in God's righteousness to put us in His position. So that He could for the first time say, in the fullness of meaning which those words convey, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” He is now not merely “my Father” and “my God,” but “your Father” and “your God.” The death of Christ had completely obliterated all that was against the children of God; the resurrection of Christ, after redemption was accomplished, enabled Him to give them His place of resurrection and sonship before God. And what a wonderful place is this! To think that now, even while we are in this world, our Lord would have us to know that we are sons, in and through Him, before our God, and that we are instinct with resurrection life— “alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord;” that we stand before God without a single charge or condemnation, and this, because He had taken by grace the “same condemnation” with the guilty on the cross. He was the “holy thing” —we unholy, altogether undone. But on the cross He was made sin for us, and entered the same condemnation—made it His own on the cross; and now there is none for me. I am brought into the same place that He had as the risen one before God. Of course I am not speaking now of His divine glory. The notion of the creature, no matter how blest, being in any other position than that of looking up to God and worshipping Him, could not enter a renewed mind. The Lord Jesus was Son in His divine nature from all eternity; but as man, too. He was Son; and also as risen from the dead. And by His death and resurrection He brings us in before God and His Father, having the same position as Himself, so far as to be sons, absolutely without sin in our new nature, and freed from condemnation before God because of the old nature already judged. The new nature requires none to die for it, but the old did, and all is done. In Christ crucified, God condemned sin in the flesh, and to faith all the evil is gone; the blessedness of Christ is now made ours, and we can look up and say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” One great mischief that is done to the practical power of Christianity is the putting off the blessing, which the Holy Spirit attaches to us now, till we leave this world and get to heaven. Suppose you were to tell the great mass of God's children on the earth, You are “blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,” they would think it enthusiastic or mysticism. They are not prepared for such truth, and, in general, either do not inquire what the verse is, or evacuate it into some mere emotional sentiment. They have no notion that it is a present fact, true of all Christians. We are not displayed in it yet, nor is it a question of feeling. May we believe it! Feelings may deceive me, but faith never can. If I see a thing, it is merely my eye that sees. If I believe a truth on God's word, I am looking at it, in a measure, so to speak, with God's eyes. The world has a notion that faith only implies confidence as to a thing which is not sure. This is not the meaning of “I believe” in the things of God. My own vision is a poor range of sight; but what of God's eye! The believer stands upon the highest ground; he rests upon the certainty of what God says. Happiness, too, is the result; for when you believe, you soon begin to feel. If you believe that God has blotted out your sins, you before long, if not at once, begin to enjoy it. If I look at myself, I shall always see something wrong. How is this? My sins all gone, and yet, if looking within, I see so much that is painful, loathsome, humiliating. The putting away of sin is not a thing that goes on in my heart, but a mighty work that God wrought in the cross of His beloved Son, on which He calls me to rest, because on it He rests. Am I looking for its sign and token in myself? If so, I shall never have an assurance of it on the right ground. If I think that my sins must be forgiven because I am a changed character (as men speak), can I ever have an hour's real peace. The result must be, that the more one judges himself, the less happy he will be. What God puts before His children is this—that they should be thoroughly happy in the certainty that their sins are gone, through the blood-shedding of Christ, and yet that they should spare nothing they find within them; judging themselves day by day, because Christ has been judged for them, and God has blotted out their sins, and they cannot endure trifling with that which cost the blood of His son.
Here, however, the first great thought is this: “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” It is not redemption, though of course based upon it. I am here upon the earth, and yet I know that I am blest there where Christ is at the right hand of God. Not only have I blessings there, but I am blessed “with all spiritual blessings.” The highest blessing God can confer is that which He gives every child of His in heavenly places in Christ. In these few words you stand at the height of God's wonderful counsel about us and love for us. He has thus blessed us according to the fullness of His value for Christ. The expression “heavenly places” is in contrast with the portion of the Jews, who were blessed in earthly places. Looking at Ezekiel 36, that is seen which brings out more distinctly the character of our blessing in contradistinction to theirs. “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.” Thus, there are spiritual mercies mingled with their blessings; but they will be in the land of their fathers, which God is to make good to the generation to come. It is chiefly learned but unspiritual men who make confusion about these matters. If people were only simple about Scripture, they would not fall into such mistakes. The prophet says, “Ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers.” Nothing can be plainer than this. He is to bless Israel on the earth—in their soul too, no doubt: but the sphere of this blessing is the Holy Land. It is His earthly people, not the Church, as we shall see lower down. “I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen.” Evidently the blessing is in earthly places. I should not find fault with good men trying to give this a spiritual turn, and to preach the gospel from it, provided they do not blot out from it the hopes of Israel by and by. Primarily the people there are Israel, and they are to be blessed in this manner. We see the land of Palestine now, desolate like a wilderness; but “the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose” in that day. There are certain blessings that apply to the believer now, it is true. To the “water” and “Spirits” in a wonderfully enlarged and deepened scope, our Lord alludes thus in John 3, but I object to the inference that God has abandoned His people, and that this prophecy about the earthly places should be confounded with our heavenly title: The earth and earthly blessings are here dwelt upon by the Spirit of God. Why should we be jealous about the Jews or the earth either? God has shown us such overflowing and surpassing favor, that we may well delight and thank Him that the earth is reserved for His ancient nation.
Now, if we turn from this—the predicted blessing of Israel upon the earth—to our own proper blessing in Ephesians, how totally different it is! “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” It is God revealing Himself in the fullest manner conceivable. Who was it that knew God, and who was the object of God's love as none had ever known Him or had been before? If ever there was one who knew the full meaning of the word, “My Father,” it was the Lord Jesus. And who but He knew the depths of “My God?” Now, that Blessed One, by redemption and the gift of the Spirit, has capacitated the believer in Himself to enjoy the same privilege with Himself. Just in proportion as we receive it with simplicity and judge the old nature (which never enters into it, but only comes as a thick cloud over our blessing), shall we enter into the realization of our blessing. Israel's hope is not inward only but outward, in earthly places to be made the most exalted people here below. The scene of our blessing, on the contrary, is in heavenly places, and we are blessed there now in Christ. In a word, a Christian is as one who belongs to the family of the sovereign. There might be reasons of state to make it desirable for the Queen's heir to pass as a stranger through a foreign land, unknown and unregarded. So with the Christian. He is not of the world nor of the age. His body is of the earth, but that which makes him to be what he is as a son of God, has nothing to do with the present scene or circumstances. He belongs to a glorified Christ altogether. When God begins to deal with Israel, it will be another thing. The attention of the whole world will be directed towards them. There was a time when, even in the midst of all their sin, the people of Israel exercised an enormous influence in the world, spite of their being a small nation, and having only a narrow slip of land to dwell on. Their priests and kings gave up the true God, and God has made them to be the witnesses of His judgments. But the day is fast coming when they that smote will acknowledge their rejected Messiah, and then will shine the real splendor to which Israel is destined of God. He will fill them with blessing of every kind here below. All the nations of the earth will bow down to Israel; kings and queens will be their nursing fathers and mothers. Christendom, despised as a proud and effete political engine, and more and more degenerating into apostasy, will be set aside like Vashti; God will bless His people of Israel, the Esther of the great King, with all outward blessings in earthly places, not revealing Himself as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, but as the Lord God Jehovah, Most High, identified at length with the lowly Jesus of Nazareth. Is that the way in which we are spoken of here? Not at all. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. A Jew could not understand what it would be to be blessed in their Messiah. But to be joint heirs with Christ, not only blessed by Christ, but in Christ, is an idea that could not possibly enter the most intelligent Israelite's mind. In a word, their portion will always be under their Messiah, to be blessed by Him as an earthly people. But ours, who believe in Christ now, will be to have the same blessing which God the Father confers upon Christ risen from the dead. What has He done for Christ? He has raised Him up, and put all things under His feet. But all this He will not take alone. He is waiting for His bride—for those that are now being called out of Jews and Gentiles to the knowledge of His name. So that our Lord, while personally exalted, holds it in abeyance because He is waiting for the companions to share it with Him; heirs by His grace, not merely of the fathers, but of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.
Nothing can be larger or higher than the blessing spoken of here. Christ will have His heavenly ones above, and His earthly ones below; each fully blest though in different spheres. May I commend the truth brought out in Ephesians 1 to the serious study of God's children? While it becomes us to hear the word of God, it claims from us earnestness of purpose and searching into it as for hidden treasure. We must not expect to be really and fully blessed through the word of God, unless there be diligence of soul.