There are two characters in which the church is looked at in the end of the second chapter of Ephesians. It groweth up unto an holy temple in the Lord, and it is the habitation of God through the Spirit. The third chapter unfolds the mystery of the body of Christ, and in the fourth it is spoken of as down here upon earth. It takes up our blessed privileges, and exhorts that we may walk according to them.
He begins by speaking of the unity we are in, and here it is a question of the church’s vocation and calling. This is a different thing from the Christian walking individually with Christ. Here it is what belongs to the Church of God, and not what the individual ought to be. Here we get church vocation, and the Holy Ghost dwells in the Church of God. The effect of God’s presence is to destroy self, and make us feel our own nothingness, to fix the mind on God and His presence; and to give us a distinct sense of what we are. If I am thoroughly lowly in my own mind, self never comes out.
This wonderful vocation wherewith we are called, and of which we are exhorted to walk worthy, is that the church is the habitation of God through the Spirit, and the body of aria. What an immense privilege it is, that the church of God in His thought is, that He should have a dwelling-place down here. The effect of a complete redemption is made good on earth before the result is. There was no dwelling-place on earth before redemption. He could and did walk with Adam in the garden, but He did not dwell with him. He could meet with Abraham, and in gracious condescension sit at the table with him, but He did not dwell with him. The moment He brings Israel out of Egypt, He will make them know that He has brought them out that He may dwell amongst them. (Ex. 29:4646And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them: I am the Lord their God. (Exodus 29:46).) He will bless His children, He will guide them, sit at the table with them-anything that can testify of His grace and love; but till He has taken out a people for Himself, He never dwells there. He cannot dwell unless the place is fitted for Him who dwells. How complete and blessed is redemption, the people are so suited to His presence that He can come down and dwell amongst them. Now the Holy Ghost has come down, and is a witness that there is not a thing that does not suit the presence of God. It was not sufficient for the priests to be washed with water-they must be sprinkled with blood before they were anointed with oil—God by reason of the value of the work of Christ can come and dwell here. It is this that brings His church into this responsible place. The question at once comes, Are we honoring the presence of God the Holy Ghost? If we get the ground on which it is, we get the completeness and absoluteness of what redemption is; and then He puts us on the responsibility of walking as such. The moment we get hold of this truth, that it is the dwelling-place of God, by virtue of redemption, we see how it has failed. Where do we see any likeness at all of the very thing that gives it its character? What a solemn thing it is when that is spoiled and corrupted! Notwithstanding, God will make good all His promises, and have the church as His dwelling-place in heaven. We have all but got into this condition, “We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost” what John the Baptist had promised as distinctive of Christ, they did not as yet know. None would now deny the fact of the day of Pentecost, but the distinct, definite reality that the Holy Ghost is here—how little believed
There is but “one body” and “one spirit”—and He is looking that they should maintain the perfect manifestation of it, in the unity of the Spirit. Christ can have but one body. Then there is “one hope”— “I will come again and receive you unto myself.” (v. 4.)
The uniform way of God is to set up blessing on man’s responsibility, which has always failed, and then to set it up in the second Adam who never fails. Adam failed—Israel failed. We get the same thing with the Priesthood—they offered strange fire, the sin offering was not offered and eaten within the holy place; and Aaron never went into the holiest of all in his robes of glory and beauty; again Christ the High Priest never fails. So David, so Solomon, so Nebuchadnezzar. Christ will be the true son of David. Nebuchadnezzar had power put into his hands, and he turns the power given him to evil—he sets up an image, and puts the children into the fire. So the church—it has been set up to be the habitation of God, and it has failed. Paul tells us that the mystery of lawlessness was already working—that as soon as he was gone, grievous wolves would enter in—that evil would come in like a flood.
Put upon man’s responsibility and called to keep this unity of the Spirit, to maintain it practically in the bond of peace, the church-has totally failed. In it we find all kinds of oppositions and divisions, totally contrary to the unity of the Spirit. Where is the practical unity in the power of the Holy Ghost overcoming and binding the saints together, so that God’s presence being there, there is nothing that is unsuitable to His presence? Look at it in practice, it has failed. Individuals may crave after it; a remnant may seek in weakness to observe it; but this is the general state of things.
The Lord Jesus Christ has given Himself to redeem us— He died, “that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad,” and it ought to be on our hearts that that is scattered which Christ died to gather. He will gather them in heaven, but He gave Himself to gather the children of God in one when here-the children of God who were scattered. I must have it so in the unity of the Spirit, or nothing else.
There is a unity connected with the Spirit:—a unity connected with the Lord:—and a unity connected with God.
First; what the Holy Ghost by His presence constitutes absolutely in one? What is essential in its nature and unchangeable, “one body” called in “one hope?” It has not two.
Then; the external profession of it, in the truth of course, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism?” i.e. one system of faith.
Then again, a larger and wider range or sphere of unity. “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all;” in the saints God has taken a central place, and when He takes up the universe as the display of His glory, the church is the center of it all, and the habitation of God. What we get here is the central circle of all, God’s thought in the church itself. We have the same truth in Rev. 21, there is no temple there, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. A temple would be an obstruction to the light— “the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” He fills with His glory that wherein He dwells, and others get the light thereof. The church ought to have been so down here, for now it is the dwelling-place of God, that in it might shine out to all around His glory who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
It is wonderful to think that God has taken the church, that He may set Himself in it, to display His glory to the world; and we find every wickedness there. A heathen would not find in his own history the wickedness that is to be found in the church.
Now we get individualized again (vv. 7,8), and it is striking as regards the completeness of the triumph of Christ, Mark here the extent of what He does. Christ comes and takes us out of Satan’s power altogether, and so completely delivers us that He makes us the vessels of His power to destroy Satan’s again. So completely are we brought to be associated with Christ as the Lord’s host in putting down His enemies. He gives us our place of service in power, because He has Himself destroyed the power of Satan. He has ascended up—the witness in His own self—that He has broken through death—the power of Satan. His victory over everything is complete; and He associates us with Himself as the instruments of His power.
“Now that he ascended, what is it, but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the, earth?” (v. 9). Here I get Christ Himself as Redeemer. Faith knows that it has got the Christ who went down below the creature. He as Man goes down where sin had brought the first man-truly and really breaks and annuls the power of Satan; and then as Man goes up to the right hand of God. If I look at Christ, I cannot see a place where Satan triumphed over man, up to the throne of God, that is not a witness of His power we must have faith to see it-it will be displayed publicly hereafter. The whole power of Satan is null, for faith; death is gain, it is “absent from the body, present with the Lord.” All this is founded on His having led captivity captive. So that faith knows no place that Christ does not fill. I can say of Christ, He has gone down as Man to the dust of death, and right up to the throne of God, and this as Man. What a place for man!
Vv. 11-16. We get the whole unfolding of ministry, in these verses; but here we do not get any gifts that are signs of power as in Corinthians. He is not occupied with this here. Christ is occupied with His own work to have the church for Himself. We have gifts here, and ordinary ministries—persons as such. We get specific ministry—prophets are prophets; apostles are apostles, and so on: and then we get the whole body taken in by “that which every joint supplieth.”
What a place we are set in in the purpose of God; and this would be impossible if redemption, which puts us spotless in the presence of God, is not complete! It is the place where He chooses to dwell, because He has redeemed it to Himself. What a place He sets us in! In the world that rejected and crucified His Son, God has a place to dwell!
How far have we kept that, as God originally set it up? Look at our responsibility, where are we? “Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?” as Jeremiah said; (only the Church is not a flock—it is the habitation of God through the Spirit—the body of Christ). He abides more really and truly than with Israel. The Lord said, “It is expedient for you that I go away, for, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.” How truly it is thereupon that He gives man a place in Himself, and sends the Holy Ghost to dwell in the Church. How far does what is called the Church, in any shape or form answer to it?
The responsible, outward Church, is not out off yet, but it has failed. Infidelity, popery abound on all sides; though God is at the same time working graciously. If a person were to look for the manifestation of the Church of God, and the Spirit working in it, where would he find it I But the Head never fails, whatever the individual does, and he never can find himself in trials and difficulties, in which he is not bound to act according to the divine principles God has revealed, and where there is not the power of Christ for him. It is impossible that Christ can be anything but sufficient for us. Faith unfeigned is ours, because the perfection and faithfulness of Christ are ours, and they, as the truth of God, have never changed,