J. Alfred Trench
Conclusion
In our study of the unfolding of the Mystery in the Epistle to the Ephesians we have arrived now at the middle of the third chapter; and here we cannot but notice how perfectly in place it is that before the apostle leads us on to the practical carrying out of these great truths in our walk (chapter 4.) he is led to bow his knees in prayer (verse 14): not now for that which is indeed the first need of souls, that we should be brought in the full knowledge of Him into the intelligence of these truths, as in chapter 1., but for that which is far deeper, communion with Him in what we know, without which the most precious truth is inoperative. And so he prays the Father of our Lord Jesus, of whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, “that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His [the Father’s] Spirit in the inner man.”
What infinite resources of power and glory are here to be made available, that in effect Christ, who dwells in the Father’s heart as the center of all His counsels, may also dwell in our hearts by faith, that, being at the center, we may look out upon the illimitable expanse of these counsels for His glory, and that we may know that which is just as illimitable and un-definable — the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and thus be filled into all the fullness of God, for it is contained and revealed in that love.
Power too is ready to answer to all that the apostle seeks for us: power that works in us, and is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think, that there may be glory to Him in the Assembly in Christ Jesus “unto all generations of the age of ages” — the strongest expression for eternity of which the language was capable. There will be no failure there, blessed be God!
The Walk Worthy of the Calling
In the presence then of such divine resources how great are the possibilities opened out to faith for our path through this world, as with subdued hearts we follow the apostle, who proceeds in chapter 4. to trace out a walk worthy of such a calling — first in the corporate and then the individual aspects of it. Deeply important as it is for us to do so, the attempt would lead too far away from the subject of this paper. Only let us note and hold firmly in our souls, that what Ephesians 1 and 2 have brought out as to our relationships, individually with God the Father, and corporately with Christ as His body and with the Holy Spirit by whom God dwells in His house — these precious relationships form immutably the calling of the Assembly. No failure of ours to walk worthy of that calling affects the great foundation principles of it. God does not lower the standard of it to suit our fallen condition: faith and obedience seek to maintain it at its full height unto the end, even if the path has to become more and more individual.
What then is the great leading principle of a walk worthy of our wonderful calling? The place this has in our hearts and lives will serve to test how far we are in unison with the mind of God for the glory of Christ in the Assembly. It is seen in Ephesians 4:33Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:3) which literally translated reads: “using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond [sundesmos] of peace”: But we must not overlook the moral conditions in which alone, even in the brightest days of the Assembly, such a path could be maintained — conditions more necessary than ever now — namely, with all “lowliness” as before God, “meekness” in relation to each other: “longsuffering, and forbearing one another in love” (ver. 2).
The gathering together in ‘ one of God’s children, for which Christ died, had a wonderful realization before God when, besides their family relationship with the Father and with Christ as His brethren, they were formed by one Spirit into one body, the body of which Christ is the Head in heavenly glory, and which is maintained in the unity of it on earth by the Holy Spirit. Oh I do we know anything of the faith which with every energy of our whole being would seek to own and realize by the Holy Spirit this unit in which we have been formed with all who belong to Christ? For “there is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.”
Do any object that the failure of ages has made it impossible now to walk according to such a unity? Scripture has anticipated the difficulty: for in the wisdom of God the apostles were not withdrawn before the ruin of the Assembly began, and we have inspired instructions to suit the changed conditions in which the great principles of our calling have to be carried out; as in 2 Timothy. But I must not further pursue the wide theme of the responsible walk of the Christian in the last days, but revert to the light of the positive truth that forms it.
The Church As the Bride
Nothing can be more blessed than to find that the Lord is not satisfied yet, even with all the wealth of divine relationships that have been unfolded to us in the epistle. For when (chapter 5:22-23) the apostle is led to take up the relationships that belong to our natural condition, and begins with the source of all others, that of husband and wife, the Spirit at once seizes the opportunity to bring out what the. Assembly is to Christ, as proved in the immeasurable love that gave Himself for it, and which engages Him, with the love that ever delights to serve its object in just that service needed to extricate it from all that is unsuited to His heart, and form it like Himself, till He shall be able to present it to Himself such as He can delight in forever — “a glorious Assembly not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.”
Not that this is some new relationship, but that when the truth of the Body was not sufficient to express the place of the Assembly in the affections of Christ, the Spirit finds the occasion to bring this out in speaking of what marriage was as God first instituted it. Eve was given to Adam to be his wife, and she was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh: she could be recognized to be himself. “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever yet hated his own flesh.” And this is applied to Christ and the Assembly though the mystery be great (verse 32). Neither is any detail of tender care wanting to it on His part “for we are members of His body.”
It is given to John to carry out the precious truth of the relationship to the full. In Revelation 19 he writes of a day for which we wait, when the “marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.” In chapter 21 from verse 9 she comes out as the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, displayed in all the glory of the Kingdom. Then when the thousand years are over, she is seen in the eternal state (verses 1-8) in the unchanging affections of Christ, as a Bride still, only now adorned for His own eye and heart alone. How blessed for us that even now, before the day of our heavenly espousals, being made conscious by the indwelling Spirit of our relationship, and with hearts formed by it, we may be able to respond when He presents Himself to us, so that “the Spirit and the Bride say, Come” (Rev. 22:1717And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. (Revelation 22:17)); and thus is drawn out the expression of out’ love which is so precious to Him. Oh, for hearts more deeply responsive to His great love!
Christ in the Saints
But there is one more aspect of this Mystery needed to complete the glorious revelation. It is found in the Epistle to the Colossians. Once more the double ministry of the apostle comes before us: the ministry of the gospel to every creature (Col. 1:2323If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister; (Colossians 1:23)) and that of the Mystery, whereby it was given him to complete the Word of God. For it is the center-piece of the whole. Without the apprehension of it many precious truths may be known, but detached from one another like pearls on a string. By the Mystery they are found to be coordinated in one perfect whole of the truth. It had been “hid from ages and generations, but now is made manifest to His saints” (for God would touch this chord in our hearts again and again), “to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you the hope of glory.” Thus, by the way the Mystery is presented here, Colossians becomes the counterpart of Ephesians in the truth. In Ephesians it is the richest unfolding of the place of the saints and the assembly in Christ: here it is the wonderful answer to this, namely, Christ in the saints. Christ among Jews would have been the long promised glory come. But “the Mystery” involved Christ coming out among and in Gentiles as their life; this had never been heard of before.
In Ephesians, our identification with Christ as quickened together with Him was carried out to its full consequence as seated in Him in the heavenlies. In Colossians, it is arrested at the point of our being risen with Christ, that the mind might be directed to heaven to find not only its life but its object there in Christ, who had been presented in such a concentration of the glories of His person in chapter 1 of that epistle. Christ becomes all things as Object (Eph. 3:1111According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: (Ephesians 3:11)), to the one in whom He is life (Eph. 3:3-43How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, 4Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) (Ephesians 3:3‑4)), so that being formed by that glorious Object, the traits of that life may be reproduced in us down here, of which the beautiful detail is given in verses 12-17. Thus in unspeakable privilege the Assembly — in the walk of the saints that compose it, for all is individual here — has been set to be descriptive of Christ in the scene of His rejection, in word or deed alike representing Him, doing all in His name with thanksgiving welling up out of full hearts to God the Father by Him.
But where is there to be found such an answer to the place in which we have been set according to the counsels of God for the glory of Christ? It must have been the thought of this that affected the apostle so deeply, when he tells us (ch. 2:1) of the “great conflict” he had for them of Colosse and Laodicea, and wherever he had not been able to reach in his wonderful ministry. He uses the strongest terms. Where he had labored he “agonized” for the saints according to His working which worked in him in power (1:29, lit.). He would have those whom he had not seen know the “agony” he had for them.
But what moved him so powerfully? Nothing can be more solemnly suggestive for us, my beloved brethren. There was no lack of godly order, nor of steadfastness of faith in Christ amongst those addressed. At Colosse both could be owned to the apostle’s joy. What they lacked, and what he sought so earnestly for them, was the full knowledge of “the mystery of God, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” For this is the connection of verse 3 (the intervening words are not rightly there).
To how many does this apply now? Let us put it to ourselves; do we, do I enter into what the apostle felt to be of such incomparable importance for Christians? Has it ever come home to the soul in power, in the light that streams upon us from those heavens opened to faith, that the Christian is “one Spirit” with that blessed Lord, united to Him, in the glory of God, by the Spirit of God dwelling in him; and if so, that all who are His are similarly united, now to hold Him as the Head from whom the whole body derives all, for its nourishment and increase according to God? And that we have been left here that He, who is our life, by the power of Christ known as our all as Object, may come out displayed in the characteristic traits of that blessed life once seen in all its perfection in Him here! If we have none to labor among us, like Paul, to this end, or even few like Epaphras who “agonized” for the saints in prayer that they might “stand perfect and complete in all the will of God” (ch. 4:12), does it not behoove us all the more earnestly to seek from Him the knowledge of what He has fully revealed. Serious indeed must be the lack of this knowledge when we hear the apostle speak as he does.
I only note in conclusion, that, as ever when truth from God is in question, there must be first a state produced in us by His grace suitable to its reception. And hence the apostle’s desire for them, and us, “that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment [“ full knowledge “] of the mystery of God.” In such a soil alone the truth of it could be looked for. Only as hearts were comforted and knit together in love, could it flourish. Are we not too sadly conscious that there has been a hindrance? Let us each be exercised and humbled before God as to anything that may have obstructed the truth laying hold of us in power, when He who had hid it in His counsels from eternity, has been pleased to bring it all out so fully for the riches of the full assurance of the understanding of it in our souls.
Then may we not look for a renewed ministry of the Mystery in the power of the Spirit: to be answered by a widespread revival of heart-attachment to Christ, and with this an increased appreciation of what the Assembly is to Him? Then lifted into the light of this, above the mists of earth and all the confusion brought in by our failure, we shall see clearly to discern the path of it, still marked out for us by the unchanging principles of our calling, even if were it to come to this that but two or three were found to be gathered to His Name in the faith of it. But there will He be in the midst of them: and the Assembly had nothing beyond that Presence in its brightest day. It is secured to the faith that counts Him all its sufficiency to the end.
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Look at Mary at the sepulcher in John 20. “The disciples went away again unto their own home,” but Mary had no home for her heart where Jesus was not. “She stood without at the sepulcher weeping.” She wept because she could not find the dead body of her Lord. Your intelligence might readily rebuke her tears; but there is something more precious to Christ than intelligence, and that is a heart that loves Him. Her tears told that she had loved Him on earth, and missed Him now that He had died. Bright heavenly “Visions were seen, angels were at the tomb, but she turns from them, for what were they to one who had known Christ?
The loveless theory of the survival of the fittest has no place in true Christianity, for the greatest must serve the least, and the strong bear the infirmities of the weak, and so carry out the principles of Christ.
Let us be careful that we do not diminish the authority of the Bible by misunderstanding the purpose of the Bible itself. How did the Lord Jesus use the Bible? By the Bible I mean the Old Testament. His way will surely be the right one. What did He go to the Old Testament for? For Himself.’ This is the whole necessity: to find the Son of God should be the object of every Bible student and reader.
Our feelings are like the waves which dance and sparkle, but are ever fluctuating, changing, and when the breeze subsides are wholly gone. God’s truth and faithfulness are a “great deep.” They resemble the ocean itself: always there — vast, fathomless, sublime, the same in its majesty, its inexhaustible fullness, yesterday, today, and forever: the same in calm and in storm, by day and by night: changeless while generations come and pass: everlasting while ages are rolling away.