Ephesians 4

Before entering upon the subject of ministerial gifts, which is brought before us later on in the chapter, the Holy Ghost dwells upon the unity that belongs to the saints of God in Christ now. It was necessary that this should be laid down as a grand platform upon and in connection with which ministry takes its course. For ministry rather brings into prominence individual members of Christ and not so much the entire body. For although it is a common statement that the Church teaches, it is really and entirely unfounded. Indeed the notion leads to the pretence of infallibility; and this finds its most open expression in Romanism. The truth is, the Church never teaches, but, on the contrary, is the body that is taught. There is no such thing as a body that teaches. The Church, no doubt, contains within itself the husbandmen that are employed of the Lord; but itself is God’s husbandry, or the scene on which God labours to produce fruit unto Himself. This is an important truth practically; because it destroys all pretension on the Church’s part to create or even define doctrines. The Church is called to be the pillar and ground of the truth; it is bound to take care by holy discipline that nothing contrary to the truth should be tolerated within it: God’s assembly cannot relieve itself from this responsibility. But while this attaches to the entire christian community, that it should be that body which on earth holds out the truth before men and within which we must come if the truth, having been believed, is to be acted on at all; yet the way in which God has been pleased to work for the spread of His truth upon consciences is by individual members of His Church who are qualified for this particular purpose. Power to teach depends upon the gift conferred by sovereign grace. It is no question of an abstract right that any man can teach or preach if he likes. There is no such license in the Church of God. The Lord Jesus has a right to call and to communicate power in the Holy Ghost as He pleases. The Church is not a society of men who hold particular views on this or that: still less is it the gathering into one of the world. It is the assembly of God, of those He calls and wherein He dwells. And as this is true with regard to the whole — that it all belongs to God — that it is God who forms, and guards it, and maintains His own holiness and glory in it, so is it in respect of ministry, which is one very important function that is maintained in particular members of the Church. That is, there is the unity which the believers now have in Christ Jesus by virtue of which there is the assembly of God — the common unity of blessing in which all believers now stand and which is the groundwork, if I may so say, of everything. But in connection with it you have ministry at work, which pertains to particular members rather than to the whole Church. The gifts are in and of some for the good of all.

This divides the earlier portion into two parts. In the opening verses, to the end of verse 6, we find rather the unity of the Spirit; from verse 7 the diversity of the members of Christ. First of all, observe that the Holy Ghost has brought us now to the ground of exhortation. We have doctrine in the first three chapters; now we come to practice. “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.” This vocation consists of two parts more particularly. First, the saints, all who know the Lord Jesus now, compose one body in Him; secondly, they are the habitation of God through the Spirit. Thus, although the assembly of God is a body existing upon earth, yet it is founded upon heavenly privileges, the body of Christ showing us our corporate blessedness, the habitation of God through the Spirit rather bringing before us our responsibility as having God dwelling in the midst of us. It is too clear that these two things are very feebly entered into even by true children of God. When they hear of the body of Christ, the idea is scarcely more than that they are forgiven, are children of God, and are going to heaven. How very little all this is a measure of what is implied in the body of Christ! Many true believers suppose it to mean the aggregate of those who are reconciled to God — the objects of His favour who are not left to die in their sins. But one might have all these privileges without any of the characteristic features of Christ’s body, or God’s habitation through the Spirit. It would have been quite possible, if God had been so pleased to order it, that Christians should have been children of God, conscious of their redemption, knowing their sonship, fully expecting to be glorified with Christ in heaven, and yet never have been joined together as one body in Christ, with God dwelling among them by a special presence of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. This was a superadded privilege over and above redemption through the blood of Christ. And this is so true, that if you search all the Old Testament through, you will find that never are the saints of God spoken of there as members of Christ’s body, the habitation of God through the Spirit.

But more than that. The prophets are full of a glorious scene yet to be enacted on this earth, when the Lord will put down Satan’s power. There is a time coming when evil will no longer be permitted to go unpunished, nor good to suffer here below; and when that day comes, Scripture is plain that although God will have a people for Himself upon earth, they will not be joined together as one body, nor will they form His habitation through the Spirit. It is between the two advents of Christ, between the grace which has appeared, and the glory which is going to appear (Titus 2:11-13,) that we hear of the special vocation wherewith we are called. For let us consider what the body of Christ is — His body, of course, I mean, not as predicated of Himself personally, but as composed of and applied to those who believe in Christ now, that spiritual corporation to which belong all true saints of God now found upon the earth and ever since Pentecost. What are the blessings which constitute it? What does the Holy Ghost mean by membership of this body? I answer, the cross, being the witness and expression of the guilt of the Jews more especially (the guilt, doubtless, of all men in general, but pre-eminently of the Jews), gave occasion for God to dissolve completely, for the time being, the peculiar place of favour which the Jewish people had previously possessed. God Himself blotted out the landmark which separated Israel from the Gentiles; and instead of making Israel to be the one channel of His promise, on the contrary, the tide of blessing turns decidedly and conspicuously towards the Gentiles. He gathers out of Jews and Gentiles a people for His name, and joins together this election out of them both, who believe in Christ, in order to the possession of new privileges that never had been tasted in like mode or measure before.

One most remarkable feature of the blessing is, that the distinction between Jew and Gentile is gone. In the cross they united in wickedness before God. But what does God use it for? He says, as it were, I will take that very cross which man has made the scene of his outrageous rebellion against Me — which proved that My ancient people were grown violent in hostility against Me in the person of My Son; and I will make the cross to be the pivot on which will turn fuller, richer blessing than had even been hoped for by believing men in this world before. Thus, as the cross was the rallying point of Satan to gather men in an unholy union against God and His Son, so God makes it to be the precious centre where He forms the Jews and Gentiles that believe in His Son into a new body, where all such distinctions are blotted out for ever. And if God is pleased to call out a people for the purpose of giving a practical testimony to this new display of His love, who is to gainsay it? The law is righteous; and it would be an outrage upon God to put the smallest stigma upon the ten words. But while the commandment is holy, just, and good, grace brings in what is higher and better still. It is right, of course, if I do well, that I should be rewarded for it; but is it not more blessed, if I do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently? This is grace, acceptable with God, and the practical principle on which He is calling His children now to act. It was not the public rule of government in Old Testament times, but the contrast of it. Does God, then, contradict Himself? Far from it. God may have one way of dealing with the Jewish people; and then He may lay down another mode of action with Christians. Indeed, who can deny that He has? The Jew would have been guilty of a grievous sin if he had not been circumcised; and I believe that, as far as the earth is concerned, even in the bright day that is coming, the Jew will have his land, city, priest, and temple, etc. The will of God for the Jews will remain substantially unchanged. I find in the prophecies a state of things not yet accomplished, when all these outward ordinances of God will be fulfilled. Am I not to believe God till I see the prophecies thus realized? It is not thus we treat the word of a good man. But if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. And for a man to receive Samuel and Kings, and not to believe Ezekiel or Hosea, is to treat God as you would not treat an ordinary man. But if I believe all that He has said, there are peculiar principles of God for the Jews which are still to be carried out by the Messiah reigning in power when the devil is bound. God will accomplish all that He has spoken of in the prophets in the days of heaven upon the earth. But meanwhile the Messiah that was promised to bring in the glory came, and has been rejected. Instead of having a throne, He had the cross; and far from taking the earth for His inheritance, He was cast out of it and went up to heaven. A new state of things consequently was opened; and for this order, altogether different from that contemplated generally in the prophecies, we have the New Testament revelation. Therein we find what meets little intimations here and there in the Old Testament, but at the same time introduces, as a whole, a scene without precedent or successor, where God unfolds privileges that were never tasted before, and looks for a walk that He did in no way demand even from saints of old.

There are, of course, certain plain, fixed principles always obligatory. God never sanctioned a lie, or covetousness, or malice: no dispensation can neutralize or weaken the grand moral distinctions between right and wrong. But the God who wrought in earthly power to protect His people, and would have protected them had they been faithful under the law, now, on the contrary, calls His people to suffer in grace. The same God who shielded them and brought them through the Red Sea, and who would not allow any power to gain universal supremacy in the earth till Israel had proved themselves unfaithful, then, when they did manifest themselves altogether unworthy, permitted Babylon, the very worst of the Gentile powers, to overthrow them; and then one empire succeeded another, till finally, under the Romans, both Jews and Gentiles united in crucifying the Lord of glory. Then the world’s doom was sealed; the knell of its judgment sounded from the cross of Jesus. You might have expected, had God been then acting upon principles of righteousness, that at once the universe of God would have been convulsed, at least Jerusalem and Rome destroyed in His fiery indignation. Far otherwise. Heaven opens, but it is to receive the crucified Jesus, not to judge His murderers: it is furthermore to send down the Holy Ghost on earth, to form by grace this new body the Church of God; it is to bring those vile murderers of Jesus, if they only received Him, into a place of blessing, whose breadth, and length, and depth, and height never had been enjoyed or known before. And this is grace. “The law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The gospel of God’s grace goes out; but it does not merely save souls — it gathers them, unites them to Christ, makes them members of Him and one of another. The Old Jewish vantage-ground has disappeared; the Levitical privileges are completely eclipsed as far as the Church is concerned. The Gentiles were sunk in idolatry, and the Jews self-complacent under God’s law which they kept not; but both are brought through the Spirit, by faith in Christ, into this one body, and worship God on the same common ground of grace. They are “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” This is “the vocation wherewith we are called.”

“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord,” etc. He again points to that honourable scar from the world’s enmity, because he is bringing out in a practical way what the consequence was in this world even to the greatest servant of God that ever lived (next to Christ). After all, he was the Lord’s prisoner. What a wonderful honour? There were no fiery chariots to surround him, as with Elijah; no power put forth to preserve him. He is suffering from the same empire that crucified the Lord of glory; and out of his prison he is cheering the saints to walk worthy of that same calling! Even now the world is overmatched: what will it be when Christ comes?

Nevertheless, the word is, “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.” There was a danger of the contrary: spiritual privilege might be misused to puff up the saints. He therefore meets this, and shows them the only proper tone that becomes the Christian. “With all lowliness and meekness.” It is a blessed thing to find zeal; but what can redeem the walk of a Christian which fails in lowliness and meekness? There is a time to be firm and a time to be yielding, but neither gift nor position can justify those who seem to think that in their case the exhortation to meekness and lowliness has no place. We must take care, on the other hand, that it is not meekness in manner or lowliness in word only, for God looks in us for what is real. Too often, such humility but covers the deepest pride, as love and the spirit of Christ are most talked of where they least exist. Let us beware of this vain show.

But supposing there is that in others which you cannot overlook, as being contrary to the mind of God, how are we to act? No doubt there should be the fitly spoken word of reproof, if needful; but there is to be “long-suffering” also; and if in any place long-suffering be specially called for, it is where evil touches ourselves. We are not to tolerate evil against the Lord; but wherever it is that which injures us, long-suffering is the word, “forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Here it is not only the lowly grace and patience which the Christian has to cherish, but the spiritual diligence with which he is called to hold fast what is most precious and divine here below.

“Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” How perfect is Scripture! It does not say, “the unity of the body,” although including it. But had it been said, “the unity of the body,” people might have built up (as indeed they have) an outward institution and made it a point of life and death not to separate from that. But what the Holy Ghost lays upon those belonging to Christ is, “endeavouring” — showing all needed earnestness — not to make, but “to keep the unity of the Spirit.” It is something already made by the Spirit which we have to maintain or observe. It is not merely that we are to have feelings of love towards our fellow-christians. This might be in a thousand different bodies; but if ever so well heeded, this would not be keeping “the unity of the Spirit.” What is meant then? The unity of the Holy Ghost, which is already formed, embraces all the members of Christ. And where are the members of Christ to be found? In one sense, thank God, everywhere: in another, alas! anywhere. Wherever Christ is preached and souls have received Him, there are His members. And what have we to do? Diligently to maintain the unity that embraces everyone belonging to Christ — “in the bond of peace.” Here we find peace spoken of, not so much for our own souls with God, but rather for enjoying and furthering practically union among saints of God. The flesh is anxious and restless: a peaceful spirit is the fruit of the Holy Ghost, and mightily contributes to the binding together of hearts in practice. God’s Spirit is not occupied with merely giving right opinions about points: deeper purposes are His. He is bowing souls to Christ, and exalting Him in their eyes. But to bring one soul out of darkness into light, or out of a little into deeper light, is surely precious; and this is what God Himself is now engaged with. We do well, while holding fast our liberty for Christ, not to allow the barriers that men have brought in, but to treat them as null and void.

But, then, it will be, as is often, said that every man has a right of private judgment. I deny it totally. No man has a right to an opinion in divine things; God only and absolutely is entitled to communicate His mind. What one has to do is to get out of the way, that God’s light may shine into the hearts of His children. Men, in their self-importance, only cause their dark shadows to pass over themselves and each other: they thus hinder instead of helping the communication of divine truth. Whereas, when the desire of Christ’s servant is, that God may lead on and strengthen His children, is it in vain? Never. The moment you begin to gather people round a particular person, view, or system, you are only forming a sect. For this is a party, though it may contain many members of Christ, which forms its basis of union, not on Christ, but on points of difference, which thus become a special badge and means of separating between the children of God. The apostolic Church never challenged a convert’s faith as to an establishment or dissent — never asked, Do you believe in episcopacy, voluntaryism, or even the Church of God? The true and God-glorifying enquiry ever was and is, Do you believe in the Christ of God? It is true that in early days, if a man confessed Christ, he was cast off by Jews and Gentiles, and became an object of enmity to all the world; and this was no slight a guard then against people confessing Christ, unless they really believed in Him. But if a man had received the Holy Ghost, through the hearing of faith, he was at once a member of the one body, and acknowledged as such.

Why should this not rule now? Am I not content with the wisdom of God? Would I then supplement His word, or do without or against it? It is no sect if you act upon the mind of God; it is a sect if you depart from it. The question, therefore, is, what is God’s intention about His Church? How would He have us to meet? Am I willing to receive all real Christians — persons whom all believe to be converted? Doubtless there is such a thing as putting them out if they prove not to be so; for there is no possible case of evil but what the word of God applies to, so that there is not the smallest need for any rules or regulations of men. Unless men are spiritual, they will not keep the unity of the Spirit long; they will soon find abundant ground for fault-finding. But those who hold fast and firm to Christ as the centre of the Spirit’s unity, as they are no sect, so they never can become one, whatever be the schisms, divisions, heresies, of their adversaries. It is very sorrowful that any souls should go away in self-condemnation, but it is the more blessed for those who, spite of all, have faith and patience and grace to stay. The apostle said, in writing to the Corinthians, “There must needs be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest.” These were the men who in that day clave to the Lord with full purpose of heart. May the same thing be true of us now! I deny that the word of God is made of none effect, or that I am in any way bound to sin now more than then. The unity of the Spirit which the Ephesians had to keep, is the unity which God lays upon all His children. If the word has regenerated my soul through the Holy Ghost; if through it I know my Saviour and my Father; if to it I am indebted as the means God uses for cleansing my soul from day to day, am I to say that I need not follow His word as a member of Christ’s body in the assembly of God, where He dwells in the Spirit? Surely, if my soul owns its divine authority, woe is me if I do not seek to follow it in all things. God calls on us to be diligent in maintaining “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” It is not the unity of our spirits, but the unity of the Spirit.

When we reflect that it is the Holy Ghost who forms this unity, is it not a solemn thought? Ought we not to guard against anything that would grieve Him? Our Lord attached special importance to what touched the Holy Ghost; and so should we, if wise. If the Holy Ghost is here for this purpose on earth, He becomes a divine test for souls, whether they are prepared to honour Him or not. But people might say, if you receive all Christians without requiring them to give a pledge for the future, tacitly, if not expressly, you may accept a Socinian or an Arian. But I do not acknowledge such to be Christians at all: do you? What is the Church founded on? “Whom say ye that I am,” says our Lord in the very chapter in which He first notices that He was going to build the Church. “Thou art the Christ,” said a disciple, “the Son of the living God.” And what does our Lord reply? “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Hence there ought to be the strongest, strictest dealing with souls, whether in deed and in truth they believe and confess the divine glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The smallest compromise as to this allowed would be a reason for standing in doubt of any soul. You have no ground to receive as a Christian him who tampers with the purity, glory, or integrity of the person of Christ. The Church is founded on Christ the Son of God: if this rock be shaken, all is gone. “If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?” To touch Christ is to touch the very basis on which the Church of God rests.

But where a soul confesses Christ really and truly, confesses Him in such a way that it commends itself to your conscience as divine, receive him; for God has. He may be Baptist or Paedo-Baptist: never mind, receive him. If he is living in sin, need I say that Christ and drunkenness, etc., cannot go together? Faith in the Son of God is incompatible with walking in darkness. No matter how a man may talk about Christ, if he joins with that confession a disregard for the moral glory of God, he proves by this fact that he is not born of God. Simon Magus thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money. It was a mistake that he made, some will say. Yes, but that mistake was vital, and proved that he could not have life from God; and therefore, though baptized, he was not received as a member of the body of Christ. We have no reason to think that he broke bread at all. Baptism would be no reason, in the face of such circumstances, why the assembly should receive him whom they do not believe to be a saint.

This will show in some degree the character or limits of the unity of the Spirit. For the Holy Spirit, while He calls souls and empowers them to confess Christ, never leaves them to walk in the mire of their own wickedness. If a believer falls into sin of a certain character, he ought to be put away. What is merely personal should be dealt with in a private way; it would be monstrous to put all failures on the same ground. The first and deep feeling of the soul ought to be, in vindicating God, to get the person right. The Church is a witness of divine grace, and has to seek the blessing of the unconverted and the restoration of Christians who have gone astray. Are we endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit? How is it that Christians are formed into different associations? If the word of God be that which they at all cost seek to carry out, why do they require human rules and modern inventions? If God gives a rule, I do not want another; I do want to have His in all its strength, so as to bring forth the truth to a man’s conscience, and say, That is God’s will. Is it well or wise to yield this up? God has written a word that bears upon everything moral, by which He intended His children to walk: are we doing so? Some may ask, Are you, then, perfect? I answer, We are endeavouring to hold fast and in peace the Spirit’s unity, we are honestly seeking subjection to the will of God: are you doing the same? This is the main question for every child of God — Am I endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit? And am I doing it in God’s way or out of my own head? Have I surrendered myself to do His will? Our business is to be dutiful to Him. We have our orders, and our responsibility is to carry them out, subject to Him whose we are, and whom we are bound to serve.

But further, this unity is to be kept in the bond of peace. God is forming His Church of all those who belong to Himself. It is not Christian persons holding particular views of this or that; but the Spirit holding to His own unity, or to what Christ is to them, not to the points in which they differ one from another. If I want to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, I must have my own soul settled upon this: the Holy Ghost is glorifying Christ alone. You cannot please the Father more than in exalting the Son; and you cannot touch Him more nearly than by slighting His Son. All is secured in maintaining Christ. This brings it to the simplest possible issue. What have we to do with forcing people to give up their views and adopt ours, let them be ever so correct? God’s word furnishes a ground, in the name of Christ, on which you can embrace all saints, let them be ever so weak or prejudiced. Let us beware of being more careful of our own reputation or ease than of His will. Let us not be vain of our little knowledge, or of the point we have attained to in practice. Let us look up to the Lord for faith and patience to own every real member and servant of Christ, wherever found. Let us cleave to the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and be diligent in maintaining it, whatever the difficulties may be, and surely they are great. Faith does not see many bodies and one Spirit — it knows but one body. Bearing with others who in this see dimly or double, let us be rigid in holding fast the name of Christ, and for ourselves be careful to accredit nothing contrary to it. “There is one body and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling.” This is our most essential, vital blessing in Christ; “for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” “One Spirit” is added immediately, because it is the Holy Ghost who makes it good; and what we are now, by the power of the Holy Ghost, we hope to enjoy by-and-by with Christ. We shall have it fully and perfectly in the presence of God in heaven. This is the first unity.

There is a difference between this and the following verses. The fourth verse is one character of unity, the fifth another, and the sixth a third; and these concentric unities enlarge respectively. “There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.” Nobody enters into this who is not born and baptized of the Holy Ghost. This one body is on earth, no doubt; but then it is a real thing and of God now, whatever may be the glory proper to it hereafter. But in verse 5 you have a more outside unity, an area of profession, larger than that of real spiritual power. Here “the Lord” is made prominent; and there are many who will say in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?”

Hence we hear next of “one faith,” by which is meant the christian faith. If I talk about faith in the sense of its being the medium by which we lay hold of Christ, and are saved in the grace of God, it is never called one faith. By the phrase is meant the common faith that all Christians profess, in contradistinction to the religion or law of Jews and the idolatry of Gentiles. Accordingly, “one Lord, one faith,” is followed by “one baptism;” because whoever professed to believe in Christ was baptized with water. Simon Magus received Christ nominally, and was baptized, though he soon proved to be no Christian. Thus, verse 5 gives us, not the unity which is real, and holy, and enduring, but that of the christian profession.

Last of all, we have “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all.” (Ver. 6.) Evidently in this we stand before a still vaster compass. There is an immense mass of mankind that does not profess Christ at all. The bulk of men have gone on with their idols, spite of law and gospel. Are there no claims there? We own “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all.” That is, it is a personal God: not at all the idea that everything is God, which is infidelity in its worst shape, or Pantheism. We own “one God,” not a number of divinities, like the Gentiles, but “one God and Father of all.” The Jew did not believe that He was the Father of all, nor even properly Father for the chosen nation, but rather their Governor, even Jehovah. The Christian revelation brings out God in an infinitely larger, as well as for us more intimate, character; but larger, too, as embracing all creaturehood — “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all” (His supremacy and providence, but more than these), “and in you all.” There is His near connection with some, and not with all. For it is not said, “in all,” but “in you all.” The Holy Ghost is speaking of the Father’s peculiar relationship to the Christian. Thus nothing can be more full, and beautiful, and orderly than these unfoldings of unity in and around Christ our Lord.

We have now closed the statement which the apostle has given us of the unity of the Spirit, the common place which pertains to all the children of God who are being called through His grace by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. We enter now the special ways in which the Lord calls upon the various members of His body to serve Him — not so much the common position which all must have who belong to Him, but the peculiar privileges and responsibilities of each individual member of Christ. And thus the seventh verse opens: “but unto every (or each) one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” This is the basis. Christ, according to His own good pleasure, as Head and Lord, is giving certain gifts. It is important to observe that this is the point of view in which the Holy Ghost presents ministry in Ephesians. There is no one brought, I need hardly say, into such unequivocal prominence as Christ. In Corinthians, on the contrary, the Holy Ghost is more prominent than Christ. Both aspects are necessary to God’s glory and equally perfect in their place; but they are not the same thing. There is the wisdom of God in each epistle suited to the special object that God Himself aims at.

It is impossible for any spiritual mind to look back upon the Epistle to the Ephesians without perceiving that the great truth of it is the fulness of blessing which belongs to the Church in virtue of its union with Christ. This, accordingly, brings Christ into relief. On the other hand, we cannot study the Epistle to the Corinthians, and particularly that part of it where the subject of spiritual manifestations is treated of, without seeing that it is not so much a question of Christ exalted at the right hand of God, as of the Holy Ghost sent down here below. The consequence is that in Corinthians we have rather the assembly upon earth and the divine person who is pleased to dwell and work in it. Thus the Holy Ghost is brought there into view; whereas, in Ephesians, it is Christ as the Head of the Church, who is regarded still as the giver of these gifts. Indeed in no part of Scripture is the Holy Ghost represented as properly the giver; and I doubt much, with another, that the expression “gifts of the Spirit” is an accurate phrase. You may find, in Hebrews 2:4, a text which seems to imply as much; but it is the “distributions of the Spirit.” Wherever giving is simply and distinctly spoken of, it is Christ who is regarded as the giver. So our Lord Himself says of that which lies at the source of all, “the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water,” etc. The water here represents the Holy Ghost. Hence, He is viewed in this place as the gift and Christ is the giver. And as this is true of that great foundation-truth, namely, the presence of the Holy Ghost Himself, so is it of all the details. Christ, the Head of the Church, is dealing in the individual members according to His own gracious affection; for this is the blessed side of the truth which is held up here. “Unto each one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” He is speaking about ministerial gift; but it is called grace here because it is regarded not so much as a position of authority (though some of these gifts involve it) but of One who loves His Church and cares for each member of it; and He cannot fail to supply whatever is suitable and worthy of Himself and His love. “Unto each one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.”

And this leads to another remark of a general kind. The Epistle to the Corinthians gave you an ampler field in which the Holy Ghost is presented as working; you have miracles — tongues — healings — the remarkable ways in which the Holy Ghost acts in outward power. All this is left out here. To what principle are we to attribute it? For God does nothing arbitrarily; but always with a love and wisdom worthy of Himself, and surely intended for our profit. What He has not revealed, it becomes us not to inquire; but what He has made known in His word, we are clearly free, nay bound, to seek to learn simply and thankfully. Why then have we also the more eternal operations of the Spirit in Corinthians? And why, in writing to the Ephesians, are the outward manifestations left out and only those spoken of which pertain to the growth of the soul, the founding of the Church, and the carrying of it on, the keeping up holy growth and fellowship and godly order among the children of God? For to these alone the statements of this chapter apply. The key, I believe, is found in what we have already hinted. In Corinthians the prominent thought is the Holy Ghost present in the Church, and whatever He does comes before us. And as the Holy Ghost may work in an extraordinary manner and is the power of that which is sensibly supernatural as well as of that which meets the wants of the soul, hence all is brought before us there. But in Ephesians, where Christ is viewed in immediate relationship to His Church, and where it is His love and the care for the members of His body which flows out of that love, it is plain that whatever merely deals with the world and is a witness to unbelievers would be not needed but superfluous: only that which has to do with the members of Christ is in place and season. Oh that we only had more patience and confidence in God and His word! We should find the answer to every difficulty in due time. God owns the heart’s reliance upon Him. By examining a particular part in the light of the whole book where it occurs, how often we discern that which gives us the right clue to its meaning.

But before looking at the gifts themselves, I would just draw attention to what is of still deeper interest and importance, the basis on which the giving of these gifts by Christ depends. For we have all suffered immensely from mere traditional views of ministry, regarding it as in general an honourable profession among men, or a certain position which has a status attached to it. These things entirely falsify the nature of ministry; and the consequence is that the full blessing and meaning of the word are so far lost for the soul. Do not mistake me. I deny not that God works where much is unscriptural. He is always right, and the failure of the Church, or of ourselves individually, cannot touch His sovereign goodness, who always watches over all and each member of Christ for blessing. But then He allows failure to show itself and permits that we should suffer the consequence of it to humble us and make us feel that all the good is from Him, that all the evil is on our part. Throughout the whole history of Christendom appear these two things: — man corrupting his way upon the earth, and God showing Himself above the evil that His light judges. This is true of ministry as it is of all else.

Hence if we turn to Scripture and see the ground on which ministry rests, we shall find that nothing can be more glorious; but, alas! nothing more contrary to that which ordinarily is its form among men. For its basis is not short of the redemption that Christ has accomplished by His blood, and of His ascension to heaven. Christian ministry flows from Christ at the right hand of God; it did not exist before. I do not deny that God had His ways of acting in Israel. But there His dealings partook more of the character of priesthood, from which ministry differs totally in character. Earthly priesthood is a caste of men who deal with God on behalf of those for whom they are priests: that is, they undertake the spiritual business of persons unable for one reason or another to transact it with God directly, and consequently dependent upon these mediators between God and them. The priest goes where the people cannot go, enters the holy place, presents the blood, burns the incense, deals with God in short for each spiritual want of those whom he represents. Ministry starts upon quite different ground, being an action, through man, from God toward men, and not from man toward God. The two are clean contrasts of each other. As to the servant of God, if truly one whom God raises up, who has a message from Him and a work to do for Him, that message or work is by God’s authority for the blessing of men. Hence, if you take an evangelist, what is he? One who, himself taught of God for his own soul’s need, not only knows the way to be saved, but has a power, which he did not possess before, given him of Christ, to act upon the souls of others. Every Christian ought to be able to confess truth, to confess Christ; yet this does not make one an evangelist, but so to state the gospel as to act powerfully on souls, specially of the unconverted, and thus awaken, clear, or establish in the grace of God. The spiritual action is by the Holy Ghost; but it is from God and His beloved Son, Christ our Lord, toward man. Thus, the gift, under the Lord’s hand, is exercised in love of souls to seek their good, and implies or is rather power from above to act upon them.

Take again the gift of teaching. There you have another form of the power of God. Many understand the truth for their own souls’ enjoyment, but they cannot help others: they are unable to put the truth so convincingly before believers, or so to deal with the affections, as to carry home the truth with energy to the soul. Where this is done, there is the gift of teaching. But I have only referred to it for the purpose of contrasting the nature of priesthood with ministry, and of showing that the confusion of the two things is a lamentable consequence of the state of the Church. If people go to hear a sermon, they say they go to worship. Men are so habituated to confound teaching with worship that the two things are supposed each to involve the other.

I admit there is such a thing as Christian priesthood: still ministry is wholly distinct. All Christians, without exception, men, women, and children, are priests; for the priest is one who has a divine call and qualification, which gives him access to the presence of God. Priesthood, in a word, gives the title of the soul to draw near to God. This is always its distinguishing character. On the other hand, ministry in the word is a varied service; but it is only by particular members of the body that Christ thus acts for the good of all. Hence while priesthood is universal, and no person can be a Christian without being a priest, it is only a few among the many who are what Scripture calls ministers of the word or public servants of Christ. I am not speaking of the vague sense in which all ought to be serving Christ every day of their lives; but the question now is of proper ministry in the word; and it is plain that all have not the power to preach the word of God profitably for the souls of others. The great mass of God’s children require to have the path of God pointed out and difficulties removed, the right handling of which things depends upon, or constitutes, ministry in one form or another.

Ministry, then, as said before, is from God to man; priesthood is from man to God. When we meet to worship God, it is an exercise not of ministry, but of priesthood. Perhaps one or more of the persons who take part in it might be ministers; but for the moment they are not ministering, but worshipping. Worship is the exercise of christian priesthood, the offering up of praise and thanksgiving. This is from man towards God — it is the direction of priesthood. Hence where there is an outflow of praise and thanksgiving, you have the highest character of priesthood. Intercession and prayer are a lower form, though intercession be blessed indeed, because it takes up the wants of others. But, strictly speaking, worship rather consists of praise and thanksgiving. Hence it is that the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, forms so central a part of christian worship. It is that which most powerfully, and in solemn joy, calls out our souls in the remembrance of Jesus and thanksgiving to God. And hence, though, of course, the taking the bread and wine cannot be regarded as in itself worship, yet it is that which acts upon the soul and draws out the heart, by the Holy Ghost, in the worship of God. Where the Lord’s Supper is regarded as a means of grace, persons repair to it for comfort, or at least the hope of it. It is never so presented in the word of God. On the contrary, if the communicants did not enter into the mind of God in the Supper (i.e., did not discern the Lord’s body), it became a means of judgment to them. “He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.” By this were meant not spurious Christians, but Christians ever so real, who were taking the Lord’s Supper in a light spirit and without self-judgment. Where a soul, therefore, is walking in known sin, and comes to the table of the Lord, the effect is that the hand of the Lord is stretched out in one way or another, and it is impossible to escape when thus trifling with God. Again, if one put himself outside to avoid this, he is proclaiming his own sin and practically excommunicating himself. Thus, there is nothing for a soul but to go straight forward and to look up to God for grace to watch against sin, yea, the least risings of it, and in self-judgment to lean on the Lord who alone can strengthen us to walk worthily of Him. To such an one the word is, “So let him eat;” it is not, Let him stay away; but let him judge himself and come.

These two things, then, worship and ministry, ought never to be jumbled together. There may be a word spoken at the table of the Lord, helping on communion; but this can scarcely be called the ordinary exercise of ministry. A regular discourse there would be, I conceive, most irregular: it would distract from the prime object which the Lord intends. There may be the unfolding of the affections of Christ, or in particular circumstances there might be even more, such as one visiting for a limited time, as when Paul continued his discourse till midnight. But the Lord’s Supper having no connection with ministry, but rather with the members of Christ remembering their Lord, and with their worship coming together to praise Him, it is plain that the formal exercise of ministry, properly speaking, finds its place elsewhere, not at the table of the Lord. A brief word that would awaken the soul’s affections and gather them up to Christ whom we are remembering, is most comely and seasonable, if the Lord so give; but it is important to see the scriptural place, and order, and aim of the two things. In ministry you have the Lord providing for the spiritual supply of His people’s wants. And on what is this founded? Upon the fact that Christ has gone on high as Head, having first put away sin and glorified God on earth; and from His present seat of heavenly glory He is communicating the needed gifts. By what title has Christ taken His place? Not as God, nor simply as man. Neither did Christ enter into the presence of God, because Satan had not been able to touch Him, when tempted in all points. There was a still more solemn scene — the great hour for which He came — the bearing of sin — the cross, where He made Himself chargeable with every failure, with my sins and with your sins. He has done so. Christ has only taken His place at the right hand of God on the ground of His having put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Upon this basis ministry is founded. God’s righteous judgment has been borne and vindicated; sin and Satan are completely vanquished for us by Christ. The testimony of divine grace, yea, the fulness of it, can be the portion of the believer now without hindrance. The victory for God in behalf of the most guilty sinners is won. And Christ has taken His place in the highest seat of heaven as the victorious man. As such He has carried humanity to the throne of God, and is there, as man, set down far above all angels, principalities, and powers. From thence it is that He gives these gifts.

Christian ministry, therefore, owes its very origin to this — the full remission of sins on God’s part and the heavenly glorification of man in Christ’s person. They are fruits and witnesses of complete victory. Yet is it all and only made known to faith, save so far as miracles once were a sign to unbelievers. What is the consequence? Man goes on in sin. Satan still roams about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. The judgment of God is hanging over the world. What then is the value of the death of Christ, and of His victory? Immense, but immense only for those who believe in Christ; and, therefore, in the midst of this ruined world, and while sin and Satan are there, the judgment of God impending, there is this wonderful link between Him who is at the right hand of God and those who were once poor, lost sinners in the sight of God. He sends down gifts; He calls out this one and that one, and makes them to be the witnesses of His power, who has won all this and more; who has, in short, left nothing undone that is needed for the glory of God and the blessing of man. The world hears the sound only to slight the good news, and even the child of God sees it dimly if he reasons about it; but if I believe what God tells me His beloved Son has done, I ought to know that all these things are gone as between my soul and God with as simple a certainty as if they had never existed at all. I ought to be as sure that sin is blotted out, as if I had been guilty of none — that Satan is as thoroughly judged as if he were in the lake of fire — that God’s righteous judgment is completely stayed, and that nothing but His grace remains for me. It is true of all His children. It is the only thing that becomes a Christian, because it is what God provides for him. God does not own christian people in their trouble or hesitation whether all is finished for them. To doubt that all which Christ undertook is settled in their favour, is practically to deny redemption; and if all this is done and accepted, what more can I want? Did not Christ know better than myself what was needed? Did not God feel what was due to His holiness more than you or I? And yet He who was and is God said, “It is finished.” Who or what am I to doubt it? To Christ, therefore, I owe it to bear this witness.

Ministry is founded upon Christ’s work and exaltation. There were the twelve and the seventy sent out, no doubt, before Christ went up to the right hand of God, but their mission during the days of Christ’s flesh is excluded from Ephesians 4. Apostles are mentioned of course, but not in virtue of their call while He was the Messiah on earth. On the contrary, “when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.” Not that those who had been appointed apostles when Christ was here below, were not also brought into this new place, Judas excepted; but that their being apostles of the Church is founded upon their having this gift of Christ after He had ascended on high. Therefore it is here said, “He gave some apostles.” Why had there been twelve? In relation to the twelve tribes of Israel; and so, when our Lord sent them out, He forbade them to go into any city of the Gentiles. But the apostles of the Church, are they sent only to the Jews? Every one knows that it is not so. After Christ was crucified, the links with Israel were broken. The rejected, suffering Son of man ascends to heaven, and from His heavenly glory He sends down the Holy Ghost, and calls out from the world in sovereign grace, constitutes members of His body, and endows with power to serve Him in whatever way seems good to Himself.

Hence what is called succession, is completely disposed of. In Jewish priesthood there was successional order, and all earthly ministry forms itself on this model. But christian ministry is not of human appointment, but divine in the fullest sense; and therefore the whole source of man’s thoughts on the subject is a manifest and total fallacy. Are we to abandon the clear word of God for the passing opinions of men? If so, I shall never know any certainty at all. The Dissenter will say a church must call a man to be their minister. He may have and be a ministerial gift from Christ; but what makes a man to be their minister is their own call. Thus, it is founded on a particular church electing whom they please to be their particular minister. He is their choice and therefore their minister. But what if there be no such thing in Scripture? What if such an idea be foreign to the word of God? There is not even a hint of it to be found there. We have the appointment of men to take care of the funds and of the poor, and this with the concurrence of the assembly. No person ought to undertake such a work unless he have the just feeling of satisfaction in the whole christian assembly. The Church gives what she can, and therefore is entitled by God to say who shall take care of their trust; that is, who shall transact the outward business of the Church. But in spiritual gifts, in teaching, preaching, exhorting, ruling, can the Church give? Clearly not. The word of God contains nowhere such a notion as the Church choosing or appointing, except in such gifts as the Church can confer. The Church gives money, and can appoint persons to administer it. The Church does not give ministerial gifts, and has no title nor room to interfere. Who has? It is Christ alone who gives, as we find here: “According to the measure of the gift of Christ.” “When he ascended up on high, he gave gifts unto men: some apostles, some prophets.” This excludes even the true Church of God from any claim of power to appoint; and if it be examined, you will see how the scriptural history agrees with and confirms the principle. Who but the Lord chose Matthias? Who appointed Peter or the rest? Who addressed the multitude on the day of Pentecost? It could not be the Church, for the Church was only formed on that day. Peter preached, and by his preaching the Church was gathered. It was the Lord thus brought such as should be saved; so that ministry precedes the Church, as the atonement and ascension of Christ precede ministry. The Lord from on high calls the vessels of His grace, communicates power, leads forward by His Spirit’s guidance, working by and controlling all circumstances, so that His servants shall be more or less faithfully doing His work. The consequence is, souls are gathered and the Church is formed. Thus ministry in the word never flows from the Church, but from Christ, and the Church is the result. Ministry is therefore antecedent to the Church, instead of being founded on its authority. Hence it is that you have not only the dissenting principle of popular election entirely put aside, but every other human device. It was not the apostles, but Christ who gave gifts. And has He ceased to give them? Is He at the right hand of God still? Then, I ask, is He there as the Head of the Church? Does He not remain now as perfectly and efficaciously the Head of the Church as before the day of Pentecost? Then He was there, bringing the Church into being; and now He is there, to perpetuate the Church and supply all its need. It is as impossible, therefore, for ministry to fail as for Christ to leave the right hand of God before the body is complete. But He is there as the giver of all needful gifts; and the exercise of these gifts is what we call ministry.

But if we look further, there is a most magnificent parenthesis of the apostle on this subject. “Therefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.” That is, He led those captive who had led the Church captive. We were led captive of the devil, and Christ going up on high passed triumphantly above the power of Satan. The fallen spirits were completely defeated and by Christ as man. Man has conquered Satan in the person of Christ, and we can look up as those that are one with Him who has defeated Satan. We ought never to treat with Satan as if he had power against us. We are entitled always to bid a detected Satan depart from us. We may and should always resist him: and we are told that, if so, he will depart from us; not because we are strong, but because He to whom we belong has gotten Him the victory by death and has given it to us. “Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth.” This supposes the glory of His person. He that is gone up is the One that first came down.

It is indeed the constant principle of God; He is always the first to come down. We require to be lifted up and have nothing of our own to come down from. Christ, being God, was the only man who had glory proper to Himself and above all creaturehood. He descended first into the lower parts of the earth. His very humiliation is the proof of His own personal dignity. From His natural supremacy, so to speak, He descends first to do His work here below. “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.” Thus we have here a most magnificent sight of our Saviour. The Holy Ghost gives us in two short verses the grand sweep of His glory and triumph, who condescended to be a man and a servant. He that is gone up now is the same that first came down, and who only would go up again into glory when He had completely put away all that must have for ever kept us from Him. But He came down to put it away and would not return on high till it was done. He so loved us, with a love according to the glorious counsels of God, that our sins, gross and fatal as they were, only gave Him the opportunity to show what God is, and is to us, in His own person. And now it is a question of God’s righteousness, not only to Him but to us, because of Him. What a difference” He might come down in love, but that of itself would not give us a place in the presence of God; but He is gone up in righteousness; and this is the reason why our Lord says that, when the Spirit was come, He should convince the world of righteousness, “because I go to the Father.” You have the full display of righteousness now in Christ seated at the right hand of God. Righteousness toward Him in this world was nowhere found, but the foulest wrong and indignity. Where must I look for it? At the right hand of God. I see One there to whom God, with reverence be it spoken, is indebted for the display and vindication of His moral glory, to whom He owes the only adequate exhibition of all that which manifested and maintained His character before men, even in the man Christ Jesus. God never had His character at all fully retrieved since sin came into the world till Christ died on the cross. When His blood was shed for the glory of God and the deliverance of man, God shone out in a new light before this world. God was no longer regarded as the hard master that Satan’s lie misrepresented Him to be. The veil was rent; the truth could no longer be hid that there was no proof of love the creature could have asked of God but what God had surpassed it in His Son, dead, risen, and glorified above. Up to the death of Christ God’s righteousness must have destroyed every creature that had a sin upon it. Now, on the contrary, it is the righteousness of God to justify me, a believer, though I have been a vile sinner; and for this reason, that, although my sins in the one scale must have sunk myself alone down to hell, yet there was, in the other scale, Christ and His blood far outweighing all and raising me up to heaven. What is the consequence? My sins are clean vanished before that precious blood, and the scale of Christ proves itself to be the only one that keeps its weight before God. Upon this now hangs the very righteousness of God. It is no longer a question of legal righteousness; but now He has Christ, and this is what God owes to Christ’s obedience unto death, even the death of the cross; by virtue of which God righteously clears the guilty, which, as dealing according to the law, He could by no means do. “By him all that believe are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses.” What was known of God in creation contained no provision for sin; what was known of Him under the law would have only blasted the smallest hope of the sinner. Whereas now, the more I see what God is in Christ’s cross, the more confidence and peace I have. “This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”

We see, then, in these verses, the heavenly source of ministry. It is not a position which, according to God, gives importance in the world. The labourer, we all know, is worthy of his hire. But do you not see that the Apostle Paul would not use the title to support that the gospel gave him? He would not have what he calls his confident boasting made nothing of; for though he had power, he preferred to work with his own hands rather than be burdensome. And this is the wonderful liberty of grace: under it there is nothing we cannot do, except sin. But though all things are lawful, they are not all expedient; and, no doubt, it was in the wisdom of God that the great apostle did what many servants of Christ would be ashamed to do. What a fearful declension there is from the whole spirit as well as letter of Christianity! How complete the change from the character of the gospel, that men — Protestants or Catholics, Churchmen or Dissenters, Presbyterians or Methodists — should alike consider as a blot and matter of censure that which was the boast of the apostle? There was a weighty principle involved in his conduct. He received a gift from the Philippians; help was sent to him in prison as well as out. He desired fruit that might abound to the account of the saints. If the apostle had not occasionally received from them, it would have been loss to their souls. Christianity does not mean that saints should use for themselves what they owe to God, and what grace loves to do for all and any one. But the apostle never acted either so that it could be said that he served himself by the gospel, or that he was indifferent to the saints. God took care that it should be so in Paul’s case. The smaller gifts there would have been the danger of despising. But the gracious effort of the apostle was to maintain the less; the greater less needed his ample shield. But where any gave themselves up to gospel service, the apostle takes the utmost care to affirm their title to live of the gospel. Let those who so live take care that in this they serve the Lord Christ.

“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets.” I apprehend that the apostles and prophets are clearly what might be called the foundation gifts, such as God used for the purpose of laying a broad and deep platform on which the Church was to be built. This was done by those whom God empowered in a special manner. The apostles and prophets were the two classes that first of all entered as instruments into the calling of the Church of God. Evangelists were at work from early days, also pastors soon after. But the first two, apostles and prophets, were peculiar in their full force to the original laying down of the Church of God. There is no ground to suppose that, in the strict sense, apostles and prophets were meant to continue, or do so in fact, though something analogous to an apostle may be raised up at fitting times. Take Luther, for instance. There was a partial recall of the saints of God generally to fundamental truth, which had been long lost sight of. This answers, in a little measure, to what an apostle did. A prophet, again, was one who not merely expounded the Scriptures, but who so brought home the truth as immediately to connect the soul with God.

At the very beginning, men of God appeared who were not apostles, nor necessarily inspired communicators of truth, such as Mark and Luke; but prophets, like Judas and Silas. (Acts 15:32.) The Scriptures were not all written when the Church began, nor were the apostles everywhere. God, therefore, raised up prophets, who, in certain cases at least, were the means of revelation. And why is it that we have not such channels now? Because revelation is complete: we have the word of God, and want no word more. To suppose another revelation now, would be to impair what we have; so that the need for these prophets in the highest sense is closed with the canon of Scripture. In a subordinate sense, what would answer to the prophetic work in question is the revival of truth and powerful action on saints at large by recalling what was once revealed, but completely evaporated. Take, for instance, the capital point of the coming of the Lord as the hope of the Church. This truth has suffered a long and almost total eclipse. Within our own day it has again shone out with a certain measure of power from God. In what writing, since the days of the apostles, do you find the nature and calling of the Church set forth? where the unfolding of the Church’s hope — the Lord’s coming to receive the Church and to give it a heavenly place? These truths had slipped away from the minds of men, until recovered within the last thirty or forty years. Justification by faith had been partially known by Augustine and Bernard. The Waldenses possessed great faithfulness but not clear doctrine. But the nature of the Church as the body of Christ, and the character of the Christian’s hope, were most completely lost sight of, as far as I am aware. They had vanished from the Church. And it seems to me that the recovery of these truths resembles prophetic work in this particular, though one might hesitate to call any used in the work either an apostle or a prophet.

When we come to the next classes of gifts, namely, “evangelists, pastors, and teachers,” it is plain that we have these still at work, more or less, in the present broken state; and not confined to these believers or those, but distributed throughout, as the Lord pleases. Men confound ministry with local charges. It may be said, that I have slurred over a part of Scripture — the apostles laying their hands on the elders, etc. With the most entire recollection of it, let me say that elders are not the same thing as ministers. Ministry is the exercise of a gift from Christ; elders were appointed by men, but never except by apostles or apostolic delegates, such as Titus was. How do we stand with reference to that question now? Where are the men who are duly authorized to appoint elders today? Do you know any better than I where they are to be found? Some people, no doubt, pretend to the power of appointment, but the pretension does not make their appointing valid. In civil things, if one man were without full authority to appoint another to be a magistrate, he would run the risk of being punished severely. Is it possible that in the things of God interference with the authority of our Lord is of less moment? It is not, that some sections have apostles and some have not, for no one has them more than another. I do not see that much is gained by assuming to do the work of an apostle, where it is only assumption. It is surely more humble not to pretend to apostolic work, if we are not apostles. We cannot legitimately ordain elders, because we want for it apostolic authority. Is it not most in accordance with the lowliness that becomes us, to abide within the limits of our powers? I do not admit that any one living is entitled to choose elders, or anything else of the sort, because there is neither an apostle nor an apostolic man commissioned by the Lord for the purpose. If men assume to ordain, they should prove their title.

But ministry and eldership are not the same thing; they are almost always confounded, but they differ totally. These two things are found in Scripture: local charges, duly ordained by apostles or their delegates; and ministerial gifts, which never required human authentication. In Scripture, no person was ever chosen to be an apostle, nor called to be a prophet or an evangelist, except by Christ. It was precisely the same with pastors and teachers, as we see in our chapter; and why should it not be the same still? Christ has not vacated His office; and it is His office to call and give pastors, evangelists, teachers, etc. But there is another principle quite distinct from that involved in these gifts, namely, that Christ warranted the apostles to act in the way of authority. In virtue of this, they appointed persons to be elders or deacons, as the case might be. We cannot do what apostles did unless we are clothed with like authority; but we have Christ ever abiding the immediate giver of ministerial gifts: this is always true. Ministry does not and never did depend upon apostles or the Church, but upon Christ; and therefore it cannot lapse. But as the appointment of elders, according to Scripture, hung upon the apostles, and as there are no apostles now, the rightful power to appoint elders is necessarily and evidently at an end. Scripture may intimate the continuance of gift, but not of authority to ordain. Elders, or rather officials, of the various religious bodies abound; but what is their appointment (I do not say their gifts) worth? Let any one that knows the Bible, say whether I am treating fairly this weighty matter according to the word of God.

The question, then, for us now is, Are we carrying out the will of God? Many have a notion that there is some special value in a human rite of ordination in making a man a minister. But in the days of the apostles themselves, no one ever thought of being appointed to preach the gospel. If a person could preach, he was bound to do it; if he did not, he was like the slothful servant, hiding his talent. If a man took the ground of having a right to preach or to speak in the assembly, you may safely deny his right. None but God has a right to proclaim glad tidings to the world, or to speak to His assembly by whom He will. He, therefore, may call men and put them forward, one to do this work and another to do that work. And here comes in the searching question, Is the Lord to be acknowledged honestly and thoroughly as the Head over His own Church? In ministry, properly so styled, it is not a question of men appointing men, but whether Christ is allowed to be the Head of His own Church. Do not, then, acknowledge that it is the Church’s business to appoint ministers in the word. The Church is not my Lord, but Christ; and we ought never to put the Church in the place of Christ. This has been one of the main and most mischievous sources of Popery.

It follows that we ought to acknowledge all those the Lord appoints. If a man preaches the truth in this or that body, I am not to ignore, but own the servants of Christ everywhere. They may not thoroughly carry out the truth; but in all cases it is not the brethren, but Christ who gives gifts. But does it follow that I am to go to mass, even if a Romish priest preaches a measure of truth? I must examine whether he who may be ever so real a servant of Christ, is doing the will of God in the matter. We are not called to follow this or that one, except so far as they follow Christ. We are called on to do the will of God; and “he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” Nothing, therefore, can be more simple than the path of the Christian. Let him value the servants of Christ in their place, but not necessarily all that they are doing, unless it be according to the will of God. But is it not said that we are to obey them who have the rule over us? Yes, and it is as true now as ever it was. But supposing you are converted to God and there is a priest of Rome who says that you must obey those who have the rule over you, and that they have this rule, am I not to question what he means and what he is using the text for? Is it to induce me to disobey God? If so, am I not to say, I “must obey God rather than man?” Thus a path always appears for the saint of God who desires to do His will, and that path is simply obedience. It may sometimes take the form of what mistaken or self-willed men might call disobedience; but certainly it will be the obeying of God rather than man. Nothing can absolve us from the positive. invariable duty of obeying God.

This will show that whatever may be the value of ministry, it was never intended to bind down the children of God, and to make it a question of mere blind acquiescence. Ministry, where it is true, manifests what is the will of God wherever there is a simple mind. It puts the truth in so convincing a way as to bring the conscience into the light, making it feel its responsibility to follow that light. If you do a thing merely because a minister of God says it, influence is at work and not the power of the Spirit of God. Christian obedience is neither the blind leading the blind, nor the seeing leading the blind; but the seeing leading the seeing. Every believer has power in the Spirit to see the mind of God for himself; and he who is called of God to the place of guiding others will, as a general rule, be enabled to bring the mind of God so completely to bear upon the conscience that the simple-hearted cannot but see it. But let us remember that it is serious for any one to acknowledge the truth and not to follow it. “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

I have already explained that the first two of these classes of gifts brought before us in verse 11, had for their aim the originating of a new work and testimony. They were destined for, and employed in, laying a foundation for that previously unknown building, the assembly gathered in one out of Jews and Gentiles in the confession of Jesus, the Son of God. The apostles were used not merely like the prophets as the inspired communicators of the mind of God which had not been before revealed, but also as invested with authority in the Lord’s name. Hence there was a competent governing power, as well as a sure medium of communication from God to man. The prophets as such had nothing to do with government, properly so called. They did not visit as authoritative agents (1 Cor. 4, 11; 2 Cor. 12, 2 Cor. 13), nor did they lay down institutions here and there for regulating the Church as the apostles did. (See 1 Cor. 7:17.)

Nevertheless, the prophet was used in what was of the deepest importance, in bringing out directly and immediately from God truth that had never till then been known or even disclosed. They were, consequently, connected very specially with the revelation of truth, it might be by word of mouth or by writings; and this is the meaning of Romans 16:26. Any one who is able to examine the language which the Holy Ghost employed, will see that the expression is not strictly “the writings of the prophets,” but prophetic writings. These refer exclusively to the New Testament Scriptures, which were not all of them written by apostles. Two of the gospels were not apostolic, but they are just as much inspired as if they were. This is as true also of the oral instruction that was given in the apostolic days. For the Church began before any part of the New Testament was written. The misuse of this fact is a favourite argument of those who contend for a sort of inspiration in the Church. They insist that the Scriptures are not so essential as we allege. But I answer, that if the Church at first had the presence of inspired men, the Church afterwards had the holy deposit of the apostles and prophets committed to writing, under the perfect guard of the Spirit of God. Here, then, we have the only standard of divine truth: the Old Testament being the original revelation of God as given to Israel — the New Testament being that supplement of His truth which is necessary to the Church. But before the canon of Scripture was closed or even begun, it is evident there was needed a class of men who should bring out the mind of God in the rising difficulties of the Church. This was supplied in the apostles and prophets. It appears that, among the saints at Corinth, there were such persons as prophets.

Hence we have a remarkable word in 1 Corinthians 14, that I would advert to for a moment. The Spirit of God laid down there as a rule (ver. 29) that in case any one were speaking in an ordinary way in the assembly, if a revelation were given to another, the latter was entitled to stop the former, and to bring in the revelation. Persons may reply, Supposing you had such a thing now, there would be confusion. But I answer, God is no longer now giving new revelations. While you had the state of things in which the full unfolding of the mind of God was not given, and while there were these inspired persons on the earth, God maintained His right, even to interrupt a person by a communication of some fresh truth from Himself. But now, if any person were to plead a fresh revelation from God, he would only prove himself deluded if not an impostor. We have the full communication and standard of God’s mind, now that these inspired persons have passed away. Thus the Church is cast, not upon apostles and prophets, but upon the written word of God as a criterion. Of course, there are the more ordinary means that the Spirit of God used then and still uses — gifts just as really as apostles and prophets, but not of the same authoritative character in action as apostles, nor having the title to communicate new revelations like the prophets. Now everything is subordinate as compared with these. Whatever measure of authority there may be at present must prove itself to be from God in its character and end; and it must not pretend to be some fresh revelation of the divine mind, but the right use or application of what has already been given.

On the other hand, the gifts which the Holy Ghost still raises up for the good of the Church, are here called evangelists, and pastors, and teachers. These are not the only gifts that abide, for Scripture in no single passage gives, as men would like, a complete list of them. We must search all Scripture. And a wholesome, blessed thing it is for us, that we never can find anything complete from the word of God, by merely examining some particular part of it. God necessitates our searching His word through and through, in order to get at His mind with any measure of fulness. Were it not so, we should be disposed to make favourites of certain portions and to leave the rest alone. This is the reason why many Christians practically neglect a large part of the word of God, as if it no longer applied. On this very subject of ministry there is a great deal of ignorance and infidelity at the present moment. The idea is that you have merely sanctified intellect. Now, I admit, God gives and forms intellectual power. That is what is called in Scripture “the ability.” But examine our Lord’s parable where He alludes to this very thing, and you will find that He distinguishes between “the gift” and “the ability” — “He gave to every man according to his several ability.” God in calling men to serve Him, even before they are converted, fashions the vessel for His purposes. His providence singles out a person from his very birth, and He orders all the circumstances of his after life. Perhaps he is educated as a priest, or as a lawyer. Thus Paul so thoroughly knew all the resources of self-righteousness that he could fall back upon grace, and judge what it is that man’s righteousness loves, lives in, and leads to. His own experience proved that even when cultivated to the highest degree, it issues in direct antagonism to the Lord of glory. Still you have in Paul a most remarkable natural character, as well as no ordinary training and acquirements. All this was providentially ordered in Saul of Tarsus; but besides, when called by the grace of God, a gift was put into him, that he did not possess before, a capacity by the Holy Ghost of laying hold of the truth, and of enforcing it on people’s souls. God wrought through his natural character, and his manner of utterance, and particular style of writing, but everything, though flowing through his natural ability, in this new power of the Holy Ghost communicated to his soul. Thus there are these two things, the ability which is the vessel of the gift, and the gift itself which is, under the Lord, the directing energy of the ability. There is no such thing as gift apart from the vessel in which the gift acts.

But now let me make another remark. In this epistle the gifts are not regarded as merely spiritual powers. They are regarded as such in Romans and Corinthians, but in Ephesians they are always persons. He gave apostles — not merely the apostolic gifts. I find the gift of teaching in Romans and the gift of a teacher in Ephesians. The two truths are perfectly harmonious. There is a divine reason for the difference, which seems to be this. In Ephesians the love of Christ to the Church is the key-note to the whole epistle — it is the fulness of blessing which Christ’s body, the Church, has by virtue of union with the Head. What acts upon the affections of the Church is not a mere power. You can love, not a power, but a person; and a person through whom the gift flows evidently acts upon the affections of those for whose good it is used. All through the epistle it is Christ, and not (save exceptionally) the Spirit. In Corinthians the Holy Spirit is made prominent. Here it is Christ; and in accordance with this, you have these persons who act from Christ for the good of His body. In this is a beautiful instance of the harmony of the truth of God. The active love of Christ is represented in this epistle as the spring of all the blessing of the Church; and so with the personal gifts of Christ, whom He Himself loves, and uses to keep up His own love in others.

The difference between the evangelists and the pastors and teachers is obvious. The evangelist is the ordinary means of gathering souls to Christ. It may be said as a gift to be wandering in its own nature; not confined to one spot, but called to be here and there wherever the Lord by the Spirit might lead him out for the need of souls. Timothy, who has been by clerical sleight of hand metamorphosed into an archbishop, is called in Scripture an “evangelist.” He was marked out by prophecy to a particular work, and a certain gift was communicated to him through the apostle, accompanied by presbyters. He goes at the apostle’s command to a certain place, and there he takes a cognizance of things. But neither he nor Titus were stationary, like a modern diocesan. Still less was there a provision made for successors. Timothy was to commit what he had heard from the apostle to faithful men who should be able to teach others also; that is, the charge concerns the conveyance of truth, not of authority or holy orders, as men perversely say.

The fact is, that a plurality of bishops were appointed in every Church where there was a certain number of saints gathered together — at least, after a certain time of testing and experience. They were chosen there by an apostle, or one commissioned by the apostles. As it is usurpation for gifted individuals to discharge the functions of the Church, so it is equally usurpation for the Church to assume the functions of the individual gifts. Of course, if there were anything immoral in the conduct of a servant of Christ, he is as much responsible as any other, and more so. The children of God and himself are bound to watch with holy jealousy, because his sin would bring a greater shame and scandal upon the name of Christ than a less conspicuous member of the body. But, except in matters of a moral nature, in the exercise of his ministry, there ought not to be the slightest interference between him and the Master who has called him to serve Him. Herein dissent is thoroughly and radically unsound, because the Church is supposed to appoint a minister, and, of course, has the power to discharge him if they like. This makes the minister to be the minister of their church; but Scripture never speaks, as all do now, of the minister of a particular church. There is no such thing as “our” and “your” minister. What Scripture shows us is, that all gifts are gifts in the unity of the body of Christ. If a man is a pastor or teacher at all, he is set as pastor or teacher in the whole Church. As far as this goes, it matters not where he may be; wherever he goes, he has a call, if walking scripturally, not from a congregation but from Christ, to exercise his ministry fearlessly, of course humbly, and not pretending to more than he has got. For a person setting up for more generally destroys credit even for what he possesses; and, in general, the tendency of the children of God is not to discredit ministry, but to give an undue place to it. But Satan, who is always working to dislocate the means of helping the body on, stirs up the saints to give credit where they ought not, to be captious and to discredit where they ought to be thankful. All these things require to be regulated by the word. The thoughts of men in general are founded upon the Old Testament and not upon the New: hence the notion of ministry being a kind of honourable profession, or something known as a title in the world. But if we examine such a portion as this, or all others in the epistles, it will soon appear that there never was such a thing recognized in the world as an apostle, etc. They were despised by the world. Peter was not more honoured in his day in the world after he became an apostle than he was before. The world might recognize that he wrought miracles, which is another thing altogether. Many fleshly men wrought great miracles. In Corinth they were mere babes in understanding, because they were so taken up with miracles and the display of external gifts. They liked, too, to hear themselves talk; and the apostle shows that to bring out even a few words for the good of the Church, was far higher and better than any signs and wonders they performed. He could work more miracles than they all, yet he says he would rather speak five words with his understanding “that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” Thus, if the Church is shorn of the miraculous powers which strike the eye of the unbeliever, what is even more important abides, save the fundamental gifts, which did not require to be continued.

The foundation was so perfectly laid that apostles and prophets are not needed. This is intimated here. The Spirit of God does not prepare the saints for the long continuance of things in this world. Christ gave “some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” The believers in those days could not have known but that the whole work of the Church was to be completed in that very generation: there is no such idea as a succession taught here, though now we may see it is implied. Ministry is the exercise of a spiritual gift; and these gifts depend upon Christ always abiding the Head of the Church, never terminating His office as a high priest might, whose office would devolve upon some successor by reason of death. But Christ is in heaven after resurrection, and these apostles are what He gave when He ascended on high. We stand so far on the same ground now as they did upon the day of Pentecost. Christ had left the world then, and it was thence that He gave these gifts here described. The Holy Ghost abides in the Church, and by the Holy Ghost He empowers men on earth for whatever the Church may need. We have evangelists, the great agents the Lord uses for recruiting His spiritual army. Then we have pastors and teachers whom the Lord raises up and gives for the purpose of leading on and guiding and ruling those saints of God who are brought in. All these gifts abide as much as ever. I am not speaking of measure of power, for things are weak indeed; but inasmuch as they depend upon Christ above and the Holy Ghost below, and as Christ never can cease to be Head there and the Holy Ghost does not leave the Church here, these gifts necessarily abide also. So it is added, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith.” There is no divine warrant for the continuance of miracles, but it is implied for the continuance of these edification-gifts for the good of souls.

Our Lord, then, gave these gifts “till we all come.” It does not say He will give them, because the early Church was set in the posture of expecting the Lord Jesus Christ again. Paul and the other apostles directed the saints to be always looking out for Christ. There was no intimation that Christ must come, but they were to expect Him constantly. Hence, there is no such thing in connection with ministry as preparing for a long lapse of ages. But Christ is at the right hand of God, supplying what is necessary. “He gave some . . . . . till we all come in the unity of the faith.” If Christ had come in the apostolic generation, this would have been true. Christ has delayed; but it abides true, “till we all come.” So that, with the exceptions already stated, we are warranted to expect a perpetuation of ministry of the same character, and flowing from the same source, as the apostolic Church had. Whatever is necessary for the gathering in of souls, and caring for them when gathered, abides till Christ comes and completes all.

What a blessed thing it is to know that we can accept from God that ministry, which in man’s hand has been so proud or servile or both — that we can look for it from Him and recognize it as a divine thing — that we are not driven to the notion that we have only a human ministry now instead of a divine, as of old, but that we have the certainty that these gifts flow from Christ, who cannot fail in His word and work! But how are we to know a minister, an evangelist, a pastor, a teacher? I ask, How do you know a Christian? Every Christian, who is conversant with Christians, has a general idea. I do not say there is any infallible discernment of it. But although nobody can pronounce unfailingly, and we are necessarily dependent for our measure upon God’s present help, still we know as a general rule there is that in a Christian which commends itself to his brethren in general. There is that in his confession of Christ which harmonizes with the word of God more or less. The spirit, the tone, the general life and ways, after they have been a little inured to the trials of the way, may either strengthen or weaken the conviction. It is just so as to judging of ministry. And we are bound to prove all things. A person is used of God to move souls powerfully and with blessing; to gather them in and to bring them to Christ. There is an evangelist clearly. On the other hand, you may see one whose heart does not go out so much in putting the gospel before souls, but who enjoys and loves to make others enjoy the truth of God, and to develop the character of God. Is not he a teacher? Others may know the truth of God as well, but they cannot bring it out so as to act thus upon others. But if a third person attempts to deal practically with souls and yet habitually makes grave mistakes, can I say, There is a pastor? When there are difficulties, he is at his wits’ end, knowing not what to do nor advise. He may be able to explain the Bible, but when it is a question of applying it to the practical life of Christians, there are endless blunders. Again, a pastor supposes not only knowledge of the truth, but the power to urge it day by day on individuals: it involves a dealing with conscience and affection in a way that a teacher does not necessarily imply. A man might be a teacher without being a pastor (and vice versa), or he might be both. An apostle might be a teacher, and an evangelist and pastor too. You will find a particular gift in one man and another of a totally different kind in another. Again, there may be a person who cannot bring out truth powerfully, but he can exhort; he can deal with the conscience. This is an invaluable gift not alluded to here; but in Romans 12 we find it. Here are the more prominent gifts for adjusting the saints in their proper order and functions. But while I believe the indwelling Spirit of God is the only power of discerning with the measure of certainty that God pleases, whether a person is a Christian or not, and whether he has a gift or not, of course the degree of discernment depends upon our hearts being above the flesh and its activity. It demands spirituality, and this supposes self-judgment. The whole Church is responsible to judge. An evangelist might make a mistake, thinking a person to be truly converted, and he might baptize him. But something comes out which leads the Church to refuse him. Supposing a person confessing the name of Christ and baptized seeks fellowship, the assembly of God in that place are bound to examine. No one has a right to come: who has rights now but God? We are to be under obedience instead of talking about rights. The Church then examines, and if there be a general fellowship or such a measure of satisfaction as would lead them to say, We believe that this person has received Christ, we should not be justified in refusing his profession to be a member of Christ; the person is then received into the assembly, and then comes the trial — dependence upon God after one is received. Christ is absolutely necessary for a right walk. Those even that are born of God will not be kept unless they walk in real lowliness and looking up to God.

The Spirit of God works in the assembly. One man manifests ability to preach, another to teach; some to serve the Lord in private, and others in public. What is the power for judging of these? The same Spirit of God. And after all, it is a simpler question than many imagine. Just as a human being knows the food that is good for it, whether it be a babe or a man: so is it inseparable from the saints that they should know in the main what is for their spiritual blessing. If persons are low and fleshly they will be taken with showy trash; but you will find in the main a right and sound judgment from the most matured spiritual judgment down to the mere babe. Although all are not able to point out the right thing, all who are guided of God in any measure are able to find out the value of what is ministered. And as to heresy. How can the assembly judge of false doctrine? Christ is the standard. Whatever scripturally exalts Christ is true; whatever lowers Christ is false, and of the devil. Christ is the power of God. and the wisdom of God. But God works by means, and if there is a false teacher who brings in what is evil, there are true teachers who are able to discern it; and though he may try to wrap it up in pleasing forms, yet the Holy Spirit who dwells in the Church works against Satan, and by different members He unveils and brings out the true character of the evil thing before the assembly of God, and all are able, who are walking with God, to pronounce a divine judgment upon it when once it is exposed. If we had to make a railway we should not know how to begin the work; but when the railway is made, we can tell perfectly well the use and value of it, and can judge well enough for practice whether it is a good one or not. So with the Church of God. Though all may not equally discern and expose what is evil, God gives some who can, and afterwards all readily form a judgment upon it. These gifts are indispensable to the Church as a whole, though I do not say that wherever there is an assembly of God, it is absolutely necessary for their walking together that there should be such or such persons raised up in their midst. But we can bless God for this provision for the wants of His Church, as long as He has a Church here below. The existence of the Church and of ministry rests on the same ground; they both flow from Christ’s love, and as long as we have the one we shall have the other; it is the same love of Christ that sees His body and that supplies certain members with the requisite spiritual power for the well-being of that body. All men of God, no matter where they are, acknowledge that God must have to do with ministry, and therefore the Dissenter, when he puts his vote into the urn, does not deny that the Holy Ghost must capacitate a man to be a minister. If he was a minister before, he is, of course, a minister after; but they say we want to make him our minister. Would it not be better to drop this unscriptural form and own him as a minister of Christ always? You thus leave him on his own proper ground as one who is bound to serve God at all cost and in all ways.

I admit that we find in the word of God bishops and deacons; but they are not referred to here. It is not said that He gave some bishops and deacons. But I maintain from the Scripture that these bishops and deacons required an apostolic or quasi-apostolic appointment. Is it not becoming for us now to say that, not being apostles, we do not pretend to exercise their functions in ordaining, though we do heartily recognize men possessed of the requisite qualifications for these local offices wherever we find them?

But the prevalent system not only assumes an authority which is not really possessed, but it introduces the utmost disorder and the most guilty confusion, if we judge it by Scripture, or even by its practical results; and this too in every human association — Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Congregational. For what can be more fatal to blessing or the Lord’s glory than to see an ardent evangelist tied down to a limited sphere and vainly essaying to meet the wants of a body of Christians who need to be built up in Christ? or to know that a mature teacher, just adjoining, is compelled to abandon his proper gift, because his congregation consists almost exclusively of the unconverted? What can be more painfully calculated to hinder the Spirit of God than this network of canons, ecclesiastical etiquette, etc., which degrades ministry into the bondage of man and disposes of souls as if they were the serfs of the soil on which they live?

On the other hand, where Scripture ground is taken with conscience toward God, things may be weak, still there is room for the Holy Ghost to enter and work by whom He will. The enemy, no doubt, has his special wiles for distracting, and, if possible, perverting those who are there; nor do any need more watchfulness and prayer, not to say humiliation. But thank God it is the arena of faith; it honours the word of God; it gives the Spirit His proper place; and it recognizes the Lordship of Christ, welcoming each member of the body where the Head has set it; and because of this, if men plead that there must be order, I ask of what sort it is to be. Is it an order of our devising or God’s that you really wish? If we are subject to Scripture, we shall allow no claim, howsoever specious, to set aside the on]y order which God sanctions for His children now on earth, i.e., His assembly, guided by the Holy Ghost, present in their midst to maintain the glory of Christ and to work sovereignly by whom He will, though, of course, only for edification and with the comeliness that befits the presence of God. Disorders there may be through want of spirituality, and this on the part of gifted men as well as the ungifted. But, assuredly, Scripture is a safer and mightier rule to correct all disorders by, than the wisest regulations of men, though nothing will avail without present dependence on the Holy Ghost.

The Apostle Paul, however, whilst meeting fleshly abuses. supposes the fullest opening for every gift of the Lord within the christian assembly, subject only to His own express restrictions. (See 1 Cor. 14) If this was God’s order then, when did it cease? or has the Church of God no longer divine landmarks for its public services? I cannot envy those who, abandoning God’s system for one of their adoption or invention, do not scruple nevertheless to cite scraps here and there, such as verse 33, 40, to support human arrangements directly opposed to both letter and spirit of the inspired word from which they are so abruptly taken. What God has laid down for the Church’s worship and service, is and ought to be as obligatory on the conscience as that which He has written for our individual walk and conversation. In a certain sense, indeed, it seems to me that public corporate disobedience is even more insulting to God than any individual’s failure, grave as this may be. And what is the present state of Christendom? God’s people, with the world mixed up together, have departed from the word of God. I do not speak of them as men or of moral duties; but the Spirit of God is not allowed His own proper place in the assembly, or even its members individually. His power is not owned as a divine person come down not merely to convert sinners, but to be the guide of the christian assembly. How is it everywhere with the meetings of the Church (nay, does it meet at all as such?) and with the exercise of the gifts of Christ in the assembly of God, separate from the world? When Christians ordinarily come together, is there not an unscriptural method set up, one thing here and another there, instead of leaving God’s assembly in holy subjection to the Holy Ghost, and trusting Him to work freely, and fully, and mightily by the members as He will, for the good of the whole? Is not the revealed word of God, as to His assembly, like all other truth, eternal for the Church’s conduct here below? I maintain that it is; and believe those who dispute its constant authority and their own present responsibility, will have a serious question to answer before the judgment-seat of Christ; while such as stand by the will of God in His word, will surely have His blessing now and His approbation in that great day.

But to come out from what is ostensibly evil is not all. Separation from our associations ought to be a pain to us, and should never be done except as believing it to be the clear will of God. And though one ought not to refuse the weakest Christians that come from elsewhere, yet I do not think that a person ought to be quick to receive what is new to them, unless they believe that it is assuredly of God. If they only come because of some happy circumstances, it will not stand: if they say, “There is so much love, truth, union, simplicity, etc., among these Christians that we must go there,” by and by some trial comes, and then they are ready to say, “There is no love at all among them — how changed they all are!” These spiritual effects may act upon the affections and win attention; but they are not an adequate ground-work for the Christian in presence of the revealed will of God. Nay, supposing you could assemble a company of happy believers, all of the same mind as to the Spirit, and the Church, and the Lord’s coming, beside fundamental truth, I would not belong to it, if adhesion to their mind were a condition. It wants and ignores the divine foundation. Be it mine to cleave only to the name of the Lord Jesus, the sole and sufficient gathering-point for the entire Church of God; and this if those who gather to it are ever so few and feeble and whatever the cost. Perhaps my dearest friend may get astray or I may myself. Of course it is painful and humiliating for one to be judged by others, because of failing to judge self. But I dare not stay away because I know the will of God is against it. We are not free to make of the Church a religious club to suit ourselves. It is God’s to choose and to call as it pleases Him for the glory of His Son; it is ours to obey from our hearts. In the present broken state of Christianity we have learnt that God’s principles always bind the conscience, and we have come together to be where His word is free to be carried out by the Holy Ghost. If some one amongst us falls into sin, our adversaries cry, See! they are no more perfect than their neighbours. But who ever talked of personal superiority? We arrogate nothing to ourselves, only desiring to be led of God to walk individually and collectively as He would have us do.

Are you willing to be like the people who gathered round David in the cave of Adullam? Though they were distressed and miserable when they came, they did not continue so. He who attracted them to himself was the centre of God’s counsels, and God wrought in them and formed their hearts, and put honour upon them, and the day came when those despised ones became the heroes and champions of the Lord’s cause when everything was broken in Israel. May it be our lot to serve Him faithfully! I believe that we are ecclesiastically where we ought to be — where the Spirit is free to open and wield and apply that truth which is calculated to separate us in heart and practice to God and His objects from the world. It is now our own fault only when we do not get on. If all that hindered us once (when bound up with the systematic dishonour of the Holy Ghost) is removed, may we feel deeply our personal failure! Our principle is no longer a human motive but divine, because it is neither more nor less than carrying out the word of God as to His Church in faith, and this as He vouchsafes light and power. If any others could show us wherein we could do His will more perfectly, should we not greatly thank them, and bless God for the help? May we hold fast truth in subjection to His Spirit, desiring the good of all believers, let them be where they may, and not anxious to bring them out or in one moment sooner than God gives them to know His mind! I do not acknowledge that any human society, great or small, has the least right to a single child of God. It is only a question of His will. To obey His word, to urge it upon others, is neither presumptuous nor uncharitable, but faith in God. May we abound in it with thanksgiving!

Although we have already dwelt upon the more remarkable forms in which the grace of Christ has displayed itself in the way of gift — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, we have not yet touched upon the object that our Lord had in view, i.e., the general aim of ministry. This is said, in verse 12, to be “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Now you will observe, in the very first expression of the Spirit of God, that which corrects one of the most prevalent fallacies of Christendom at this moment: and not merely of Christendom in its darker forms (for I am not speaking so much of Latins or Greeks), but where there is the orthodox light of Protestantism, and even strong evangelical sentiments. No one who is acquainted with the state of feeling that is now so general will doubt but that, even among Christians, the prominent notion of ministry is the bare calling in of souls to the knowledge of their own salvation in Christ.

But this is not the Lord’s ultimate design in ministry. The winning of sinners to the Saviour is a necessary part, but is only a part of the blessing. Evangelists, like the rest, are given “for the perfecting of the saints,” which goes much farther. It is clear that they must first become saints; but that which the Holy Ghost makes to be the proper end in view is the forming the saints according to Christ; adjusting them according to the Lord’s call and sovereign will touching them; the bringing them out adequately and rightly and freely, so as to find their proper action toward God and one another. This seems to be implied in “the perfecting of the saints.” Then we have rather the mediate forms which this end assumes, “unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ.”

God always makes of prime moment His saints individually considered — their right condition before Him, their being thoroughly fashioned recording to His standard. Their being gathered together and working as an assembly, important as it is, comes after. Thus, the subject of the body, the Church, does not appear till the close of Ephesians 1. What is the early part of that chapter filled with? That which is necessary for the perfecting of the saints. God Himself reveals His truth precisely in the same order, and to the same primary end. Here again the gifts of Christ are found to be just after the pattern of His own dealings. The perfecting of the saints is the nearest object to His heart; and then follows the means used to bring into the knowledge of common privileges, and the working of the Spirit in the assembly, which is bound up with His glory in the earth. Thus, whatever may be the condition of the Church, whatever the blessed ways of God in dealing with the Church, whatever the affections of Christ towards His body, after all God makes His saints of most immediate account, makes their perfecting to be the first and most prominent object. And this He always holds to. Whatever the fluctuations of the work, whatever the character of His testimony at any given moment upon the earth may be, the perfecting of the saints is the unceasing object before Him.

There is something exceedingly sweet in this. Come what may, God will accomplish the perfecting of His saints, and turn even the things that are sorrowful and afflicting into a means of blessing for them, if not always to their credit. Where we need humbling, it is plain we are not humble; where we are not low in our own eyes, God must Himself make us so. The process does not give room for our importance; but God keeps His own blessed end in view, and never fails to accomplish it. So that we may always adore Him for His goodness; though it may be in that which is distressing for the time, still God never fails; He is bent upon the perfecting of the saints; He is faithful and will do it. He puts this forward before His saints as the practical object of Christ. There we have ministry taking these different forms according to His own sovereign disposition.

But the Lord has to do with ministry, directly and immediately, without the intervention of the assembly. There is no such thing in Scripture as a ministry flowing from the Church, though there is ministry directed to the Church. St. Paul speaks of himself as a minister of the Church: that is, not as derived from it, but serving it: for the Church is formed by ministry, instead of ministry flowing out of the Church. The gifts are for the perfecting of the saints. The ministry may fail, but the Lord never fails in accomplishing His end. It may be in a slower way, and there may be that which is utterly weak and even afflicting; but He accomplishes His purposes. He gives these gifts “for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ.” These two latter clauses come in as subordinate to the first. It is most blessed to see the saints acting together; but however the work of the ministry may fail or be impaired in man’s hands, the great end to which the Lord commits Himself, and for which He has given these gifts, is carried through spite of all. And more: this is true, “till we all arrive at the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at a perfect man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” The “perfect man” here does not refer to resurrection, but to our being thoroughly grown up into the knowledge of Christ.

This is observable in St. Paul. Although his great work was unfolding the redemption of Christ and the counsels of God’s glory founded on redemption, yet he cannot but insist on this full growth of the saints in connection with the deepening knowledge of the Son of God. It is the person of Christ that rises up before the soul; and this is very much more a test of spirituality than any acquaintance with His work. It is with Himself, as a divine person, that we become more and more intimate through the truth that God ministers to our souls. This is what is put before us — “Till we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at a perfect man.” Knowledge of the past ways of God would not do now. The Old Testament saints did look to the Messiah in the way of hope; but the present form in which the Spirit of God presents the object to us is the knowledge of His person, as the Son fully revealed for our joy and praise and worship. So that we have here the great christian object and form of knowledge that God has in view with all His saints now. The comparison with verse 14 gives the force of the expression, “a perfect man;” it is in contrast with being children, “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; that we henceforth be no more babes, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” What God designs for us is that we should be full-grown, and this “unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” It is in contrast with this condition of weakness and exposure to all the craft of men, and their changing, scheming tactics of error.

Then we have the opposite practical way in which our growth is carried on. “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up unto him in all things, who is the head, even Christ.” The expression seems deeper than what we have here. It is “being truthful in love,” not merely “speaking the truth in love,” though, of course, this is a very important part of being truthful, but it is not everything; and we all know that it is very possible not to be truthful in thought and feeling, where the words are quite correct. “Being truthful in love” implies truth in the inward parts.

We find here the two essential features of godliness which were found in Christ in infinite perfection. He was the light. Whatever He might say, He exactly reflected the full truth from God Himself; nay, He was it. We find a remarkable expression when our Lord was dealing with the Jews and bringing Himself out as the light of the world, in John 8. They asked Him what He was, and He says (according to the English version), “Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.” But the true meaning is,” Absolutely what I speak unto you.” There should be neither “at the beginning,” but “absolutely;” nor “what I said,” but “what I am speaking.” If these words are weighed, you will find the force of them. Our Lord is exactly and absolutely what He utters; His words convey with infallible certainty what He is. He certainly was truthful in love. Our Lord’s words so completely gave out the inner man, He was so perfectly transparent, that not one thing in Him deflected from the truth; nothing seemed to be but exactly what He was. And this because there was no sin in Him neither was guile found in His mouth. There was no object but God before His soul, as He says Himself: “I do always those things that please Him.” And you may rely upon it, that it is having Christ before us as the object of our souls in everything practically, which alone gives us power of truth. The moment we have anything of our own as an object, so far we slip aside, and that comes out which is not the full truth, for Christ alone is the truth, and He alone gives us the truth in perfect love; and it is only in proportion as we are filled with Him, and have Him to the exclusion of all our own evil, that we ourselves walk in the truth. Let us have our hearts fixed on any one thing or person save Christ, evil slips out, and it is good for us to know and own this. It was never so with our Lord. He could say, “I have set the Lord always before me.” And He has given us Himself always to set before us.

Our Lord’s meat and His drink was to do the will of His Father; still, of course, He had to meet God about our sins in a manner that none is called upon to do. We start upon a redemption accomplished by Christ, which has brought us into the presence of God, and which calls upon us to walk according to the grace which has brought us there and which keeps us there. We may not all realize it, but we have done with ourselves by virtue of the work of Christ; we are brought near to God, brought to be at home with God, and from that place we are called upon to take up everything that becomes us here below; and here we have to judge what is the will of God, for we are palpable weakness if we are not doing His will distinctly. It is not only that God will have us conformed to Christ by and by, but this is what He has in view now. And in spite of all, wherever the heart is true and Christ is before the soul, though there may be immense differences, yet this is God’s delight with His children. The child does not remain always a child, but becomes a man: and so should it be with the family of God. He would have us all to grow.

This, then, is the object in the gifts of Christ. He is bent upon blessing souls even now in the world, and such is the object of all ministry. It is not something left for our thoughts and arrangements, but it is all in the hands of the Lord. It is He who loves His saints, who will bless them, and who makes His individual servants, that have to do with the saints, to be immediately connected with Himself, and to have His objects before their eyes in a duty which they have to discharge to Him and not to them. For directly the Church becomes the great object before the soul, the blessing is of a lower character altogether, inferior in all its spiritual lineaments. There may be right feelings toward one another, but there is that which is much higher than loving one’s brethren, divine though it be; and if you know nothing above brotherly love as the object, you will fail to walk in love. God is higher than love, and this is precisely the point of difference so much needed for the moment. One of the main things that we have to guard against is Satan’s endeavouring to persuade people that, because God is love, therefore love is God. But it is not so. If I say that God is love, I bring out what He is in the active energy of His holy nature. But this is not all that God is. He is light as much as He is love; and I should own His love without the denial of His light. What prevails among many now is the deifying of love in order to strip God of His light. But where we have it clearly before us, not that love “is God,” but that “God is love,” love will not be the less, but in fact more true and pure. While it will be the active spring of our own hearts, it will not be found at issue with His character, but will leave room for God to display Himself according to all that He is. God is truthful in love. Take it in the case of His dealings with my soul, for instance, in conversion. Is faith the only thing produced by the Holy Ghost? What is the first effect of His breaking in upon a sinner? Making nothing of him. Is not this love? Yes; but it is God’s love that deals with me in the truth of what He is, and of what the sinner’s awful condition is. So the effect produced on the heart of him that is renewed is not merely faith in Christ, but repentance toward God; it is the judgment of his whole moral condition in His sight. And as you find both connected in God’s dealings with a soul from the first, and in the moral answer produced in the soul of the saint, so it is true all through. Where the action of a saint is healthful in the presence of God, the room will surely not be less open for divine love, yet there will be the maintenance of the holiness and majesty of God. We should not wish to be spared pain for the purpose of slipping through at God’s expense. There never has been one trial of heart gone through with God, but we have been blessed by it. We might have the blessing in a still fuller way without so much failure or letting out of what we are. But supposing we do not so lay hold of Christ as to be lifted above ourselves, then we must learn painfully what we are. Yet God turns it all for blessing. This is the great thought of the chapter. He has brought us into a blessed place. First of all, we are in Christ before God; and next, God dwells in us: the one is our great privilege, the other is also our solemn responsibility, which flows from the fact that God has made us His dwelling-place.

At once all contracted ecclesiastical notions are shut out by the truth of His dwelling-place. If we merely meet as a church, such a connection with God disappears. But if it were only two or three, I must meet on the ground of the Church or it has no truth in it before God; and two or three Christians thus gathered would do God’s will and would have Him dwelling in them. There Christ is, and there God dwells in a special way. God can bless where He does not sanction; He can bless even in Popery. His grace is so rich and free, and above all the wicked ways of men, that He can use the name of Christ in the most untoward circumstances; but this is very different from God’s putting His seal to what we are about. In order that He may Himself be associated in it, we must be in the truth of things, and acting according to the divine mind. I believe that only in our own days, since the time when the apostles, Paul especially, were raised up, has this great truth been brought out by the Holy Ghost so as to bear upon souls according to God. I am not aware of any adequate testimony to it since the ruin of Christendom. There were in abundance efforts of men to improve the present and imitate the past; but either is a very different thing from God’s provision in the word for saints in a fallen state. If you see a man who is striving simply and ever so earnestly to get better, you say justly that he is under law and does sot understand the gospel. Just so, when a number of Christians are trying to ameliorate Christendom by new plans and efforts, I should say that, if they understood the nature of the Church of God, and the Holy Ghost’s relation to it, they would feel that mere union is a poor substitute for unity; they would humble themselves in the sight of God because of the state of the Church, and would fall back upon the word of God to see whether there is not a real and lowly but divine direction for the actual state of things in Christendom. May God deliver His saints from the unholy as well as unbelieving but very general notion, that we are obliged on account of present circumstances to go on in sin! To men of spiritual discernment the thought is just making God such an one as ourselves. If I give up His holiness in one thing, how can I stand up for it or trust Him in another? Contrariwise, let us maintain that there is no emergency as to which God can lower His holiness, or sanction the lack of it in us; and if His will be perfect in other things, is it less in that which so deeply and nearly concerns the glory and name of Christ as the Church? People argue from the fact that things are not in order and beauty now; they go so far as to deny the responsibility of saints, as if Christians were not in one way or another connected with these public departures from God. Will it be urged that they are to be adhered to because they themselves or their fathers have been brought up in them? Surely the one question for us is this: Do we desire to learn and do the will of God? Is this our governing object? Or is it merely, Where can I get enough comfort or blessing to keep my head above water? Of this, too, I am fully assured, that if you are found doing the will of God, you will have the most and best blessing; but it is not the true christian motive, and it is an unsafe guide. We may go here and get a little blessing, and then go there hoping to get a little more. But, as it is said here, growth is, “that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” He would guard us from all the cunning craftiness of men whereby they lie in wait to deceive.

Is there, then, no means of having certainty in the midst of the confusion that reigns? Assuredly there is, and where the soul is sufficiently broken down to feel what is due to God, He will make all plain. We never ought to join in a single thing that we know to be wrong, whether privately or publicly. Of course, there may be everywhere things done or said that one may not be able to approve of, but this individual failure is different from joining in public acts of worship, the order of which is known beforehand to be systematically unscriptural. There I am identified with the guilt of what is done contrary to the word of God and so fixed by human authority. But this shows us the importance of nothing being done in the assembly but what will carry the weight of the whole assembly along with it. Hence, too, the evident desirableness of keeping out of the assembly all debatable questions. We may speak of them to a servant of God, to a wise brother; but even that which I may individually enjoy is not a thing that I am entitled to occupy the assembly of God with, unless I believe God would have me say it, especially when there may be room for a just doubt on the mind of the simplest believer there. Minor matters of discipline never ought to be brought into the assembly. When anything appears of fundamental false doctrine or of a grossly immoral character, let it be what it may, there it is plain that all saints must be assumed to have the very same judgment. All would feel that they could have no fellowship with blasphemy or drunkenness, or any fatal manifestation of evil of one kind or another. Then we have cases which claim the united judgment of the whole assembly. Supposing a saint were what is called a Churchman, or a Dissenter, and little versed in scriptural thought or action ecclesiastically, still, if he were really born of God, there could be no material difference of judgment about such matters. The power of the Spirit is mighty; the Lord knows how to work; and the common spiritual instincts of all the children of God, guided by His word as to such matters, find their expression in the renouncing and judgment of all such evil. But public discipline in the Church is so serious a matter, that it ought never to be resorted to till the evil rises up to such a height that all unbiassed believers would be united about it. There is a tendency among righteous and active minds to make, out of every matter of difference, questions for the Church to decide on and deal with. This is a grave mistake, fraught with ill for all concerned, and to be resisted with all possible earnestness. Even saints are apt to be prejudiced or prepossessed in what concerns one another especially in small things which can at all admit of party feeling. Besides, it would become an instrument of torture for many souls, if every private matter were liable to be brought into public. Thanks be to God, He has made His own landmarks for our guidance, and has shown us clearly that to bring anything into the open arena of Church discipline, ought never to be till every means has been taken to hinder it. The desire of our hearts ought to be the glory of the Lord in the blessing of one another’s souls; and we all know that needless publicity must add largely to shame, pain, and difficulty. But when it is needful, let it be done, so that it be to the Lord, with the utmost gravity and real love. The destroying the true notion of the Church, and of its action, has tended to reduce it to the level of a mere club, sometimes lower than the world, though with the highest pretensions.

But when we lay hold of the truth that the Lord has that on earth with which He links His name, although only two or three souls may have gathered unto that name, renouncing their connection with what is of the world and of man; when we have come to learn from God that He who saved our souls is the only One competent to form and keep and guide the Church, when we know that He has made us members of His own Church, all we have to do is to act upon the ground of the Church that God has made. If we now belong to God at all, we belong to His assembly, and we are called to follow it out practically. If I know ever so few that act upon the word of God which applies to this, I am free, yea, bound in the liberty of Christ to meet with them. Of course, it would be matter of thankfulness, if there were hundreds of thousands meeting thus, though this might in other ways entail more sorrow and trial; but the trial will not be mere trouble of flesh; it will be, if we walk with God, the exercise of grace and patience; it will call out the real love to Christ that seeks the good of others, and this is always drawn out into intercession by the pressure of evil on all sides.

Supposing, then, two or three come to the point that they cannot acknowledge a human church, any more than a human salvation; are they to sit still, dishonouring God and ruining their conscience by persisting in known evil; or are they not in faith to meet in the Lord’s name? By all means let them come together, following the word and trusting the Spirit of God. They will find trial, but true liberty and the Holy Ghost working in their midst. He is given to abide with them for ever; let them believe it and not fail to count upon it. They may be very weak, but the Holy Ghost is not weak. On coming together, perhaps there is no one to speak at length, with profit, to them; but the assembly of God does not come together for sermons. Much or little speaking, their object is to do the will of God, to remember Christ, to act scripturally on the faith of God’s aim and glory in His Church. If there were twenty thousand Christians round about, but meeting on human principles, what believer can maintain that these two or three would not enjoy the special presence of God among them in a way the others could not? The more we have the sense of the ruin of the Church, the fuller our confidence that God’s principles always remain intact and as obligatory now as on the day of Pentecost; the more happy the soul in the Lord, the more it will be drawn out in love to all saints. May it be ours thus by grace to “grow up unto him in all things, who is the head, even Christ!” This does not depend on the number of communicants, nor on the forms and means of ministerial power, but far more on our own souls being with God, and doing His will, not only in individual service and life, but also as His assembly, which ought to come together according to His word.

There are, then, these three things: first and prominently, the perfecting of the saints individually; subordinately, next, the work of the ministry, where other persons act upon me; and, lastly, the building up of the body of Christ. The full aim and desired result of it all is the growing up unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; “that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up unto him in all things, who is the head, even Christ.” Allow me to point out a practical proof of it. You are aware that at an early date, false doctrines and heresies of all kinds came in. What was the resource of good men in those days? They invented creeds and confessions by which they endeavoured to try suspected persons. But where was the authority for this course? Or was it found that these bulwarks kept the evil out? In no wise, time, or place. There is only one power of maintaining truth and love — even Christ; and where Christ is really held up and to, without the devices of men, there may be weakness and ignorance at first, but the result will be that Christ’s strength will be made perfect in their weakness. The power of Christ will rest upon those who, feeling their own weakness, cleave to Him alone. On the other hand, while you often stumble weak consciences in good men by imposing creeds, you can rarely, if ever, thereby shut out bad men; nor would spiritual men, alive to the honour of God’s word, and aroused to see their unwarranted character if ever so correct, deem it right to own them. Thus you hamper the weak and you exclude the strong among the children of God; you have a crowd of thoughtless or bigoted subscribers; and, as to dangerous men, what thief or robber cannot leap over a creed? Human restraints may clog and dishonour the work of God, but they avail not to hinder the evil of man or Satan. What you find in Scripture is the saints led on and the body knit together by the different joints and bands and thus having nourishment ministered. This is the exercise and fruit of ministry exercised in all its extent; for there may be the Spirit of God giving a word by one who has not a permanent gift, though God ordinarily makes a man an evangelist or a teacher; so that a stated ministry is a truth of God, while the truth goes much farther.

But exclusive ministry, I am bold to say, is an interference with the rights of Christ and with the action of the Holy Ghost. God has caused to be felt in these last days the ruin of the Church more than at any epoch known to me in its past history; but He has also made souls learn and feel that no ruin of the Church destroys a divine principle. What was the truth for the Church is the truth for him who believes. The original principle of ministry ever abides the only principle which He sanctions or we ought to follow. If there was nothing like modern practice in apostolic times, it is a human thing (and why should a saint hold to or justify it?) in our days. It is absolutely due to the Lord, that the Church should not interfere with those who are scripturally doing His work;² and also, that all should leave room for Him to raise up others as He pleases. No workman, skilled or blessed as he may be, has all gifts in his person. There might be some member of Christ in the congregation qualified of God to edify by a word of wisdom occasionally, or able to preach the gospel, to exhort, or to minister in some mode or measure, according to the word of God. What we find in Scripture is the door kept open in principle and practice for all that God gives. Surely this is not to disparage ministry; it is, on the contrary, to assert it, and the rights of the Lord in it. But the ground on which ministry is exercised at the present time, is so wholly, certainly, and transparently human, that the effect is inevitably to accredit a number of persons as ministers who are not even Christians, and to discredit all real ministers, who, for the Lord’s sake, refuse unscriptural forms, old or new. This is an evil that no godly man, who desires to be obedient, ought to tolerate, or even make light of, for an instant. It seems to me a good reason why it is wrong to become a minister of any denomination that follows (as all do) these baseless traditions. If you are a minister at all, you are a minister of Christ and of nobody else. This the word of God makes as plain as light. The action of the assembly, as such, is entirely distinct. While the minister is, of course, a part or member of the assembly, yet must he act, if he act rightly, from Christ, and from Christ alone. He may strive to edify believers by discourses, exhortations, etc., addressed to them; he may seek earnestly the conversion of unbelievers; but ministry or no ministry (in which last case there would, of course, be loss), yet the assembly goes on, competent and bound to perform its own functions in subjection to the Lord. Again, not ministry but the presence and operation of the Spirit constitute the power of the assembly. This is as important for the assembly to bear in mind, as it is for the servants to remember that they have immediately to do with Christ as their Lord. Of course, abuse of ministry, like any other sin, necessarily brings him who is guilty under the judgment of the assembly. No man can ever be beyond the Church’s judgment, where he gives occasion for it by the allowance of evil in his conduct. But the Church’s interference never ought to appear, save in the case of known evil doctrine or practice.

This may help to show the practical bearing of the passage. What God does and Christ gives, the mutual service of the various members of the body, joints and bands, — all is that we should “grow up unto Christ in all things; from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” There we have the theory of the Church, because God, in laying down these blessed principles, does not bring in the mere accidents of evil. There is no such thought as a screw being loose here or something else being wrong there. All is supposed to be moving on harmoniously for the great end for which the Lord has established it. Disciplinary action, resources where evil reigns, must be looked for and are provided elsewhere.

There is a difficulty that people often bring forward — that you cannot have a perfect church on earth. What do they mean? If it be a condition where there will not be a soul ever doing or saying anything but what is quite according to God, they are asserting, doubtless, a simple truism, if it be not rather mere foolishness. But what is insinuated is, that you cannot on earth get any association of saints according to the will of God. I deny this, believing that you may readily find the path of His will, and that every believer ought to find that path. You are responsible to learn the will of God about His Church, if you are a member of it, and to be doing nothing else. If I know two or three Christians in a place, seeking to walk according to the Scriptures, there should be my lot. One may be a forward man naturally, another might have strange notions and ways. There might be something faulty in each of the individuals. All this is not to deter me for an instant, because my owning them as being that part of the Church which is acting where they are according to God does not depend upon an immaculate ideal in this or that. The question is — are they doing the will of God according to His word? God’s will at least is perfect, and he who does it abides for ever. Is not His will about His Church as absolute as about anything else? If this be allowed, there, I say, is the ground of action. Must we not be about our Father’s business as to this? Hence the one question for all who desire to please God is, what is His will? Not surely to meet as the flock of Mr. So-and-so, (for where do we read anything of the sort in Scripture) but to meet as Christians who are simply cleaving to Christ, and counting on the Holy Ghost to teach all the will of God? Is not this, and this alone, the true basis on which Christians should corporately act? Where, then, shall I find believers so meeting? Are there any who have had the faith to come out of that which is merely human, so as to stand on the ground laid down in God’s word? The same Scripture that tells me how I am to be saved tells me how to walk in His house, the Church of God. Neither the assembly nor ministry is left to human wit or caprice; as to both, we must search, and be subject to, the word of God. God’s system (for He has one, as revealed in Scripture) is what we have to learn and act upon; and though we may encounter great trial and difficulty, and find ourselves in the same straits the early saints experienced, yet, even this confirms the truth to us. Surely we shall have joy and strength if simply dependent on and obedient to the Lord. The very trials will become a means of fresh blessing; and we shall prove how truly God can give us to use for His own glory much of His word which was once practically useless to us, and which we supposed merely referred to apostolic times. We thus begin to find a present application of the word of God in our corporate position, just as much as in meeting the wants of our souls day by day. If this be so. may we have the happiness, not only of knowing these things but of doing them steadfastly unto the end!

The reader now enters upon the general walk of christian men, as suitable to, and connected with, the doctrine of our epistle. Indeed there was already an exhortation in the beginning of Ephesians 4, to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called. But the apostle here descends to particulars. And, first of all, there is a solemn injunction to the saints, that they should not henceforth walk as the other Gentiles walked, in the vanity of their mind. The Spirit of God guards us against what we perhaps might think needless — the walk of those who surround us — the walk that was our own before we were brought to Christ. And yet, the moment that we reflect, the wisdom of such an exhortation is apparent; for Christians are ordinarily liable to be much influenced by the tone of thought and feeling-current in the world outside. The ruling passion that carries the world on for the time being is always apt to be a snare to those, at least, who shrink from the cross day by day, and so much the more because they do not suspect themselves. Whatever be that which occupies its energies, especially if philanthropy, moral progress, or religion be the form that it takes, there is always a liability to be thrown off our guard. Besides, and this is the immediate point here, old habit is strong; so that the apostle does not hesitate to warn these saints who stood out, not only in the fresh joy of faith, but also in outward position, very separate from the world (and the lines were at that time strongly defined); and yet, in this opening word of exhortation, the Holy Ghost very solemnly guards the saints against being drawn into the ways and practices of the Gentiles. There is often a danger of this with Christians, because they do not like to be singular. There may be peculiar people among the children of God. Of course, the apostle does not speak of eccentric individuals, to whom it would be no difficulty but a pleasure to differ from everybody else — men who affect originality in word and deed, and in their strain after it are only odd. But he is guarding against the common moral danger, when faith has lost somewhat of its simplicity and freshness.

On the other hand, the apostle has shown elsewhere — and we should always endeavour to remember it — that it is a wise and important thing to meet souls in grace as far as possible, not to impose upon others what they have not strength to bear. In writing to the Corinthians the apostle had insisted on this, as his ministry exemplified it. He had become a Jew to the Jews, that he might gain the Jews. He was made all things to all men, that he might by all means save some. There was no kind of pressing points. There was the hearty desire for the good of souls; for we may have this without the pressure of our own particular thoughts and feelings, however right they may be. It is the elasticity of the Christian if established in grace. We rarely can pull the cord too tightly in dealing with our own souls, or be too stringent in our vigilance and prayer against slipping here and there. But it is a totally different thing in having to do with others. We have to bear their infirmities, if, in truth, we are strong; it is for their good that the Lord lays them upon our hearts. We find that, even with His own disciples, He went not beyond what they were able at that time to bear. But the very desire to meet souls, and not to raise questions that would gender strife, might expose a gracious Christian to be taking the colour of those outside himself, and giving up his own principles. On every side he has to watch.

There is no doubt, then, of the forbearance in which we are called to walk with one another; nevertheless, we need to beware of turning grace into levity or licentiousness. “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their minds, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” (Ver. 17, 18.) Here he begins with the inner thing. You will find that our tendency is to occupy ourselves and others with something outward. But the apostle goes to the root of the evil walk of the Gentiles. Their minds were vain and empty, as all must be who have not God distinctly and positively and intelligently before them in any matter, whatever it may be. As to these Gentiles, in nothing had they God before them; they were “without God in the world.” Consequently, there was nothing but the empty vapouring mind and mouth of man, imagining one thing and expressing another. What was the effect? The understanding was darkened. “They were alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” These are various descriptions, not of the outward walk, but of the root of all the evil fruit they bore. God was not in all their thoughts. They were “alienated from the life of God.” How indeed could it be otherwise? The life of God is only found in His Son; and Him, and, consequently, it they had not. Far from having relish, or a just sense of need, they were estranged from good; and this on account of the blindness or hardness of their hearts. Thus far is the evident tracing of what the evil walk of these Gentiles sprang from; the sum and substance is that it arose from their ignorance. And their ignorance was because their hearts were hard, not from mental dullness. What a solemn and practical truth for every soul of man, converted or not! Our conduct flows from our judgment, and our judgment from our affections. Thus, the state of our heart becomes most important in practice. We find here that all the outward man finds its source in the inner man, and the inner man is formed by that which governs the heart.

Hence the all-importance of having Christ for the heart’s object — yea, exclusive object. For nothing is more common than to have divided affections. Indeed, it is the great thing against which we all have to watch. Had we an eye more single, and a heart more thoroughly and self-judgingly devoted to Christ, what would be the consequence? The heart always gives direction, colour, and energy to the judgment. There never would be a waver individually, and there would be nothing but peaceful walking together in the light of God, without slip or stumble of any kind. And this is the theory of a Christian. (Compare Phil. 1 and Col. 1) Practically there are difficulties. Who of us has not had to confess grievous failure and sin? Who has not had to say, I do not know what the mind of God is as to this or that? In a word, the understanding has been too often darkened, and the walk unlike His whose we are. Of course they differ from what we have described here. But is it not a solemn thing that the Christian has to watch against the very same evil which, in souls that know Him not, denies and outrages the character and will of God? And yet this is what we all have to feel and confess as to ourselves. How often we have been without divine light! This ought never to be in a saint. It never was so with Christ. He was the light; so that it would utterly fall short of His glory to say that He was always not only walking in the light, but according to the light. Consequently He never knew what it was to have a shade of doubt. If He waited, it was never doubt but simple dependence on His Father’s will, as in John 11. It may be our path to wait; and it is well to do so, when we have no such assurance. The development that follows is a description of the awful depravity of the Gentiles; as he says in the next verse, “Who, being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” No doubt it is the lowest moral degradation of which the life of man is capable. But the wholesome thing for us to see, and to apply for our own souls’ help and guidance and guard too, is that all the excesses of this outward evil were the result of the heart being darkened, and this because it was without the life of God. There was nothing but what Satan drew from a man’s own mind, and the consequence was the falsifying of his judgments and feelings. Hence men became a prey to every kind of evil. They had given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

But now comes the Christian in contrast. He says (although we are in danger of all this, and the very sense of our danger is what God uses to keep us from falling into the danger), “Ye have not so learned Christ.” As all the practical evil of the Gentiles arose from their ignorance of God, the heart, the mind, the walk, all wrong, and increasingly evil; so now God’s deliverance from all evil, root, branch, and fruit, is Christ. And what a blessed, simple, holy, God-glorifying deliverance it is! It is not that He enters into anything of the various processes He may use in leading to this result. Besides, Christ is the way, as well as the truth. The one grand means that applies to every case, and that gives the surest deliverance, is Christ Himself. “Ye have not so learned Christ.” He purposely makes Him to be the person who has to do directly with the soul. It is a remarkable way of connecting us with our Lord, though common in John, “My sheep hear my voice.” But here, though the union of the members with the Head and not life only is the point insisted upon, we approach closely to the teaching of “the elder.” It is as if we listened to Christ ourselves. “If so be that ye have heard him” — not about Him; they were taught in Him also, “as the truth is in Jesus.” Is there not great emphasis in this expression? It is not as the truth is in Christ. We all know that Jesus is Christ, and Christ is Jesus. But God never uses one word in vain. And I think that the difference is the greater because both are used. He first of all puts the word Christ — “Ye have not so learned Christ;” because there he brings the whole mass of my privilege before the soul. Christ is the special name, when I look at Him as the risen, exalted man. In Him I have got my blessing. The word conveys to my mind the thought of One in whom all is concentrated as dead, crucified, but now in heaven. Jesus is the personal name that He bears on earth. The Spirit had been revealing in previous chapters the great name brought before us in Christ. But when He is about to speak of the practical knowledge which would apply to the duties of their walk here below, He says, “If so be ye have heard him, and been taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus.” There, I apprehend, He is more speaking of Him as that person who, in the eyes of men, as well as before God, was the blessed example of all light and purity in His ways here below. Thus, I conceive, any spiritual mind will at once appreciate what a blessed way it is of bringing this before our souls. He places before us the living presentation of all we have in Him; but we see it in the ways of that blessed Man, Jesus, here below. By the “truth that is in Jesus,” does He not mean the truth that we see and hear and know carried out in every word He said, in all His ways and obedience and service, in every kind of suffering that He passed through on the earth, in His patience, in His earnestness, in His zeal for the glory of God, in His tender care for those that belonged to God, and in His compassion for perishing sinners? And yet, look where you will, behold His intolerance of that which is contrary to God. All these, and infinitely more, we find in Jesus, and no where else, in perfection.

It is only in the person of Jesus that we have all truth fully out. I may learn truth through the Holy Ghost, and He is the only power of my knowing the truth, and is therefore, I suppose, called “truth” in 1 John 5:6. Neither God, as such, nor the Father, is ever called the truth; nor could it be. When you speak of the truth, you do not mean merely either the divine nature in its perfectness, or His person “from whom cometh down every good gift.” But why is it that Jesus should be emphatically the truth? Jesus is the One who objectively has presented to me that which shows me the bearing and relationship of everything to God as well as to man. If I want to test any one thing, I never can arrive at its full character till I view it in connection with the person of Christ. The Holy Ghost is the truth subjectively, because no man can behold Jesus or find the truth in Jesus without Himself. The Holy Ghost is the revealer of Jesus; our own mind cannot see Him. Even the new man cannot of itself understand Jesus, or enter into the things of God. And you will observe how strikingly this was shown when the disciples themselves, already born of God, had to wait till the Lord opened their understandings to understand the Scriptures, and after that for power to act on them. After they were converted, they needed the power of the Spirit to enable them to apprehend the Scriptures. Besides, again they must wait for power to testify the truth from the Scriptures to others. They required to have the power of the Spirit, distinct from the new nature, for the purpose of entering into the things of God. Mere human nature never understands the things of God, the new man does. But in order to do it, the Spirit’s leading is requisite. The new man is characterized by dependence. The Holy Ghost acts in His own power. So that we do not merely need dependence upon God but power from Him in order to enter into the truth. I am not now speaking of being converted merely, but of the practical entering into the mind of Christ, and the ways of God as brought out in the ways of Jesus.

Let me illustrate the value of the truth as it is in Jesus. Take any truth you like, as, e.g., man. Where shall I learn the truth about man? Shall I look for it in Adam — a man that listened to his wife after she had listened to the devil — a man who, when God came down, ran away from Him, and even dared to insult God by laying the blame upon Him? Shall I look at his sons — at Cain, his firstborn, or at Abel, whom Cain slew? The beautiful grace in Abel was what was of God, not what was of himself. If you pursue the history of man as such, you only find evil and pride and presumption increasing upon him, till you give up the whole tale in shame and disgust. And so it would all end, but for the Second Adam. I find here in every step that He took, in every word that He said, in everything that flowed from His heart and was reflected in His ways, One that never did His own will. Now I learn the beauty and the wonder of a man subject to God upon the earth — the only One who ever walked in perfect, moral dignity, though He was despised of all, and most of all hated by the religious leaders of the world in that day. But how did not God delight in Him? Here, then, the humbling truth is told. Man has shown himself thoroughly out: Jesus, the cross, tells the tale in full.

But supposing another instance: if I look up and think of God, where shall I, of a surety, find Him? In creation? It is all ruined. Besides, to read Him only in the book of nature, is but to have glimpses of power and beneficence, But in the midst of all these large and shining characters of divine majesty, and wisdom, and goodness, scattered up and down through everything that He has made upon the earth, I should also have to face other characteristics, as of weakness, decay, suffering, death, etc. The question arises, whence do these come? They are as crooked as the others were straight; the latter as full of misery as the former were the impress of wisdom and power. The result of all is, that, for the mere reasoner in the vanity of man’s mind, the understanding gets darkened; and all that can thus be learned, even from the consideration of that which comes from the hand of God, completely fails to give the knowledge of Himself. I see the effects of another hand there as well as His own — the hand of a destroyer and liar; and instead of rising up from nature to nature’s God, as poets vainly sing, you are apt to sink from nature to the devil who has ruined it all; you fall into the snares of the enemy by the effort to find out God in your own strength. I want some other way wherein to learn what God is. To gather an evidence of His being is one thing; to know Him is another. I can delight in anything that He has made, but what are His thoughts, feelings, ways, especially to a sinner? If you talk about providence, is there not an Abel suffering and a Cain prosperous? Great deeds were done in the family of the proud murderer; while those who had whatever then shone of the light of God, were disliked and scorned by the world; often weak in their own eyes too, but suffering and cast out wherever faith made them odious to those who had it not. This is an impenetrable enigma to man. How can he, in the face of such facts, discern the superintending power of a God as conscience tells there is? Constant difficulties arise; and the reason is very plain; — it is not in circumstances around, any more than in my own mind, that I can find the truth. Not that there are not traces and indications in providence as in creation; but I want the truth and cannot find it in either.

Then I may come down to the law. Does it give me the truth? In no way. It is not that the law was not good and holy, but it is never called, nor in itself could it be, the truth. Its design was more for making the discovery of man than of God. Its operation was that man might thereby learn what he is himself. It runs like a ploughshare, when directed by the Spirit, into the heart, and lays bare many furrows, and discovers what man never knew was there before. But none of these things shows what God is to man in grace. Not even the law can give the truth as to this. I cannot at all learn by it what a Saviour-God is, nor even fully what man is. At the best it declares what a man ought to be as well as do; but this is not the truth. What I ought to be is not God’s truth but my duty. Law was the standard for man in the flesh; and hence it never was given till man was a sinful man. “The law was given by Moses,” and not to or by Adam. The commandment laid upon Adam is never called the law, although it was, of course, a law.

Further, you will never find truth, even in the Bible, if you sever it from Jesus. But the moment the same blessed One, who has shown me in His own life and death what man is, has also shown me in the very same what God is, then all the clouds break and the difficulties vanish. Now I know God, beholding Him in Jesus. New thoughts of God dawn on the soul, and submitting to Him, I am made perfectly happy; perhaps not all at once, but as surely as my soul has received Jesus, and learnt what the true God is in Jesus, I have eternal life, and shall find unbroken peace; but in Him I receive all that I want, all that God intends for my soul, because the truth is in Jesus. Thus, then, as a believer, I know God; I know that which the heathen never did nor could reach. Their understanding was darkened. Having no knowledge of Jesus, they had no full or saving means of knowing God. But this is precisely what the gospel brings close to every poor, needy soul who hears it now. And what is it then that I learn of God, when I look at the truth as it is in Jesus? I learn first this — a God that comes down to me, a God that seeks my soul to do me good, a God that can follow me with love, selfish as I am, and pity my ignorance, and not this only, but One that can instruct me, and is willing to do it, spite of my wilfulness and stupidity; in short, a most gracious and faithful God He makes Himself known in Jesus. I find One who, after using other means, spent Himself in love upon me, that I might know Him; One who undertook to bear the judgment of my sins. For Jesus came and took all sins upon Himself for every soul that believes upon Him. I learn now that even the hateful self which has so refused and slighted Him — for this He has suffered, and completely deals with it. It has been judged in the cross of Christ; and if my soul believes that God is good enough to do all this for me, to suffer all this for me, to take and bear the whole consequence upon Himself in the person of His beloved Son; if I see this and bow to it, and receive it from God, what can shake or harass my soul more? My sins? Certainly if anything ought to trouble my soul, they most of all. But what is the cross for? What has God done there? What has He told me in the gospel? If it was God revealing Himself in His beloved Son, if it was Jesus the Son of God that was made sin there, why should I have a single doubt or anxiety upon that score? All depends upon this: Have I bowed to what God has wrought and given me in the cross of Christ? If I am despairing about sin, it is in effect making the cross of Christ of none effect, and the work of Christ a vain thing. He has perfectly done His task, and I am entitled so to rest upon it, as to know that my sins never can come up against me more. Ought I not to be a happy man, and to rest in the most perfect peace because of what Jesus had done and suffered? Here faith can repose. Christ’s death has such value in the mind of God, that He loves to give this peace in consequence. Such is the truth as it is in Jesus. What a wonderful depth and breadth of truth there is, if you look at it thus! What a poor thing my own experience is, compared with the truth as it is in Jesus! Spiritual power is much more proved by discerning Jesus in others, than by measuring or comparing what people are in themselves, which, indeed, is far from wise. But yet what a disappointing thing it is to see Him merely as He is reflected in others! I must look at the truth as it is in Jesus: in what He was here below, as One who has shown me all through His life and up to His death what God is and man too, Himself the model-man.

In the same person of Jesus I alone see the full truth about anything at all. And you will find the value of this not merely in the great lessons of what God or man is, but if you have to do with any particular trial or difficulty, what is the one test of anything right or wrong? The truth as it is in Jesus. It is the power of using Jesus to meet that difficulty, and of seeing how His name bears upon it. He has expressed His will about it — where I am to be quiet, where I am to act, how I am to walk, and how to bear. He has given me an example that I should follow in His steps. The secret of the power of being like Jesus depends upon the measure of spirituality we have in applying His name. I am still assuming that there is honesty of purpose, and that we are desiring to walk before one another as we are walking in truth before God ourselves. It is in proportion as we turn to Jesus and use Him, and view things in Him; this is the rule and spring of real spiritual power. It is this which constitutes strength and maturity in Christ. It was not the amount of zeal or of overcoming the world, or any great knowledge of this thing or that, but it is found in knowing Him. “I have written unto you fathers, because you have known Him that is from the beginning.” Who is this? Jesus. The knowledge of Jesus, then, is the practical power, growth, and wisdom of the Christian; it is, as well as shows, advance in the things of God. This is in truth what all have to learn, more or less. But to know it deeply, and so as to apply it and bring it out, was what specially characterized the fathers. Everybody talks in his own tongue. The dullest soul can use intelligibly the words of his vernacular language. But there is an immense difference between the capacity of different persons in wielding their own tongue. It is not every one who can speak according to what the subject calls for. A man who has a mastery of the language proves it by applying it appropriately to all variety of subjects. So all saints must have laid hold more or less of the truth in Jesus, but then the power to know it well, to use it rightly, to bring it out on fitting occasions and turn it to profit for ourselves and others — this is the true secret of our progress in the things of God, and what tends to the blessing of souls and the helping on of the cause of God. The importance of such growth in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus cannot be over estimated.

Then we have stated to us the practical object of it all — “That ye put off according to the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the lusts of deceit.” It is not a question of improvement. There is no bettering our old man. The heart may be purified by faith, but in itself it is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Faith may work the new life, and the Spirit; but the flesh never can be changed or renewed. And here we find what is to be done with our odd nature: “That ye put off,” etc.³ The apostle is speaking to Christians. They have the old man, and need practically to put it off. We must beware, remembering that we have still this incurably evil thing, accustomed to indulge its bad ways before conversion, and still tending to drag one, if unwatchful, into evil.

But now begins the positive part. There was, first, the putting off the old man, the moral judgment of it, grounded on God’s judgment in the cross of Christ, where it was definitively done with. Then comes the renewing of the spirit of the mind, which we cannot have unless there is the judgment of the old. The renewal is intimated to be a present process going on gradually, as the spirit of the mind is imbued with Christ. The putting off and putting on are not viewed as present, but as the act in itself once for all. “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; that ye put on the new man which, according to God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” They had the new man of course; but it is the putting on the new man practically, the outward manifestation of the new man that was already within them. It is well to bear in mind that this is “righteousness and holiness of truth.” It is the truth here again that produces it. Such is the full and real meaning of the expression.

Righteousness and holiness differ in this respect. Righteousness is the true perception and, of course, the walking in our relative duties as men of God, holiness is rather the rejection in heart and way, according to God’s nature, of what is contrary to Him. Holiness, therefore, is a far more absolute thing than righteousness, which takes up what we owe relatively to God and man. It is in contrast with the first man. Adam was good as a creature, but he had no right apprehension of God Himself, or of what evil was according to God. He did not then know sin; there was no evil to know. If one had talked about lust to Adam in the garden of Eden, he must, I believe, have avowed his ignorance of what it meant. Therefore, if the law had been given to Adam, “Thou shalt not covet,” he would not have comprehended its meaning, having no experience of sin till afterwards. We have hearts which crave what we have not got, but Adam had not. He was just the sample of creature-goodness in a man. It was not after God, created in the righteousness and holiness of the truth. God made man upright; but uprightness is a different thing from being created in holiness. Upright he was created, and innocent; but the new man is much more, knowing right well, through the Spirit’s teaching, what evil is and what good is. Adam only learnt what good and evil are when he fell, never before; he then became conscious of a good that he lost and that he was not, and of an evil that he had fallen into, which God hated and must judge. So when a man is brought to the truth as it is in Jesus, he knew good and evil before with a bad conscience, but now he knows it with a purged and good conscience. There is nothing that could make a conscience so clean as the sacrifice of Jesus. Supposing that any of us were able to live without iniquity to the end of our days, would this make our conscience good? Not in the least. There would always be a bad conscience, because of the consciousness of past, unremoved, unforgiven sin. No human process, nay, nor giving us a new nature, can get rid of the evil we have done. The sacrifice of Christ has done it perfectly. My evil is there judged according to God. The evil of the old man is dealt with in His death before God. Christ rises from the dead and gives me His life, which is the new man. Christ in resurrection is the very source of the new man in my soul. If this be so, we must deal with the old man. It is to faith a thing done with. Jesus has shown me it as a judged thing in His cross, and I must judge it, and in no way allow my old pride and vanity and folly. I have all still within me, but I must treat it as dead: else I shall grieve the Lord, and bring myself under His hand. We have each of us to watch earnestly against the former conversation; but then it easily happens that a person might be enticed by an evil never fallen into before, because he imagined it was impossible for him so to fall. There is nothing so exposes one to fall, as the notion one could not so turn aside. Self-confidence leads away from dependence on God, and has often been the ruin of a christian man, as far as His glory is concerned.

Thus, the new man is spoken of so as to bring out its contrast with what man was even in his best estate. Yea, Adam, when he came from the hand of God, could not be described in the terms of blessing which are true of every believer now. There is no such thing as restoring to an Adamic condition. A soul when converted now has the place of the second Man; and as He, the Lord, cannot fall, so the Christian has a life that never can be touched. It is as impossible for a Christian to be lost, as for Christ to be removed from the right hand of God; because He is the life of the Christian. If you say that people can fall away from grace, nothing is more certain than that they may. But if you mean by this, that the life of the Christian can perish, you flatly contradict the word of God. It is a question, then, of understanding the Scriptures. Christ Himself is the life of the Christian: can He fall? Thus it is a virtual denial of Christ Himself, that there should be a doubt allowed about it. All these exhortations are based upon this; that they had learnt Christ, and knew the truth as it is in Jesus. They were already in living relation to Him, and upon this ground all christian exhortations come. Is it even or ever a reasonable thing to talk about fruit till the plant has thoroughly taken root? It would be no use to talk to a baby about the duties of a man. The man must be there, as such, before you can expect to see the discharge of the duties of a man. And so with the Christian, before you can rightly insist on the duties of a Christian. But now that the truth as it is in Jesus is known, you must not allow the old man. He is speaking of practical fruit and walk, because of already being in Christ, and knowing the truth in Him. This ought always to be a great encouragement to a soul. Even if God is exhorting me to self-judgment, it always supposes my previous blessing as a possessor of life everlasting. It is on this ground that God, as it were, thus addresses us. Is it possible that when I have done so much for you, you can be so careless of my will? It is to touch the spring of grace in the soul, in order that we may go on with Him and do His will.

Now some of the results are pressed upon them. “Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another.” (Ver. 25.) As they had learnt the truth in Jesus, the shame of falsehood was the more manifest. What is the ground that we have here? We are too apt to take falsehood rather upon the human basis of honour. Many a man would not do it on moral grounds; or he would be too proud to tell a lie; and he that had a certain sense of the fear of God before his eyes, would not do it, because it was a practical denial of God. It is as good as saying that God does not hear. So that whether you look at a mere man in his natural pride, or at a godly man, like a Jew, there you have the grounds on which many would act. But this is not enough for a Christian. It is of great importance for our souls, not only that we should walk well and righteously, but that the motive, character, and extent, should be according to God too. Not only is this exhortation necessary, but there is that coupled with it which we rarely think of in our intercourse one with another: we are here exhorted to speak truth every man with his neighbour, “for we are members one of another.” It is looking at Christians only. None but such are members evidently. He wants to connect with Christ the most common duty, which we are in danger of putting upon a lower basis, and the ground he takes is this: — that it is as preposterous and uncomely for a Christian not to tell the plain simple truth to a brother Christian, as for a man to deceive himself. They are part of ourselves. “We are members one of another.” Do we realize this? If we did, what would be the effects? Assuredly, one would be perfect plainness in dealing with that which is wrong; another would be a real, hearty desire to set right those who are wrong. It is evident that we could not wish to injure ourselves. And if I regard another as a part of myself, I ought to act towards them accordingly. In the same way, also, we ought to feel what is contrary to God in another. And as one would greatly desire if awakened to feel one’s own sin, to go to God about it, and have our souls set right there, so it should be in having to do one with another. The deeper realizing of this truth would give a stronger desire for the well-being of our fellow-Christians. And yet if it is to be in accordance with God’s glory, it is not merely that we should judge what is wrong, but that we should seek to get what is right and according to God. We are apt, where persons have been, for instance, put away from fellowship, to think only of getting rid of the evil; but do we find this where the membership one of another is felt and owned in the presence of God? Even where it comes to the extreme degree of so dealing with one whom we had believed to be a member of the body of Christ, the end of all discipline is to remove the evil, in order that that which is of Christ may shine forth.

“Be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” (Ver. 26.) I take this to be a most important and holy intimation for our souls. There is a notion often that it is wrong for a Christian ever to feel displeased or angry; this and other Scriptures show it may be right. But we must take care what the source, as well as the character, of the anger is. If it is merely about something that affects self, and it therefore takes the form of vindictiveness, this is of course beyond a doubt contrary to all that is of Christ. We find in Him (Mark 3) that He looked round about upon certain persons with anger, showing clearly He had the strongest feeling about that which was contrary to God. It was not merely that He denounced the thing, but the people who were guilty of it. I find the same analogy in the epistles. We are told not only to cleave to that which is good, but to abhor that which is evil. Man’s thought is that it is not for a Christian to judge and to be angry with what is wrong. The word of God tells us there are certain things we ought to judge and others we ought not. I am not to judge what is unseen; I am to judge positive, known evil. There we have plainly and clearly the line drawn by God. You will find that men say, if you speak strongly about the wrong of this thing or that, you are uncharitable. But not so; it is real charity to denounce it, not to let it pass. True love as to this consists in always having the feelings of God about what comes before us. That is the one question. What God has fellowship with, we can have fellowship with; and what God hates, we are not to love or allow. But we must take care that we are in the intelligence of God’s mind. “Be ye angry and sin not.” There is the greatest possible danger of sinning if you are angry, and therefore is this added. The simple emotion of anger toward one who has sinned may and ought to be a holy feeling; it is provided it rests there. Thus it is felt in God’s presence. But how am I to know that I am not sinning in my anger? “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” If there is irritation kept up in the spirit, impatience, dislike, or scorn betrayed, who cannot see that it is not of God? When the sun goes down, it is a time either for your peaceful communion with God, or your indulgence of resentment away from Him. Therefore it is added, “Neither give place to the devil.” (Ver. 27.) Where there is the nursing of wrath or the keeping up of grievances in the mind, Satan easily comes in and is not easily dislodged.

In these exhortations, as in the doctrine of the epistle, there is no notion of bettering the nature of man. A new nature is shown to belong to the Christian: Christ is his life. The practical aim follows that this should be exercised and manifested.

Nevertheless, there is a serious hindrance, for the old man remains, the flesh is still in the Christian; and as the new creature is in no way the result of improving the old, so the old nature is incapable of being absorbed or exalted into the new. They are irreconcileably opposed. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The only course and comfort and duty open to the faithful is to deny and mortify the flesh, so that the new man may be left free to do the will of God.

On the last portion which occupied us, we saw the danger of yielding to anger; it easily degenerates into hatred, and this gives occasion for the devil to enter. We have now another exhortation, which to some might seem hardly called for among Christians. “Let him that stole steal no more.” It is not exactly “him that stole,” but “the stealer.” “Thief” would be too strong; and “he that stole” is too weak. The apostle was led to choose a term so large as to take in every shade of such dishonesty. Do you think the caution needless? Beware lest your self-confidence, and the slight of any word that God has written, ensnare you. There can be no doubt that the Spirit, who inspired the epistle, judged the admonition necessary for all saints, as well as for the Ephesians; yet nowhere do we find an assembly more happy, flourishing, and blessed of God, than the Church in Ephesus. Yet even for them, quickened and raised with Christ, and seated in Him in heavenly places, the Holy Ghost saw its suitability. God knows us better than we know ourselves; and let saints be ever so instructed, devoted, or earnest, in none of these things, apart from the enjoyment of present communion, apart from actual dependence on God, is there any adequate safeguard. Besides, if a soul, through unwatchfulness, had slipped aside into that which is so degrading even in human eyes, we can readily conceive the force of such a word to the heartbroken and ashamed, in danger of being swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. How little the heart felt its perils, or knew either its own weakness or the power of Satan! Now, restored to judge itself according to God, it owns the value of words like these, which it had once deemed well-nigh useless for the saint. Now, too, it feels how exceeding broad is the Spirit’s appeal, comprehending every kind of worldly, professional, or trade custom (no matter how respectable) that is fraudulent, as well as the grosser forms of dishonesty. God is training the new man according to His own wisdom and grace.

How strikingly also such a precept shows that the Christian is on larger, higher, firmer ground than that on which Israel after the flesh stood or rather fell. Never do you hear the law say “Let the stealer steal no more;” its voice must rather be, “Let him die.” The law is good if a man use it lawfully; and its lawful application is expressly not to form, guide, and govern the walk of the righteous, but to deal with the lawless and disobedient, ungodly and sinful, unholy and profane, and, in short, with whatever is contrary to sound doctrine. Sin, we are told in Romans 6, shall not have dominion over Christians, “for ye are not under the law, but under grace;” and this in a chapter where the question is the holy walk of the saint, not his justification. Yet in the face of this, the clear and uniform teaching of the New Testament, the tendency of most in Christendom habitually is to go back to law, especially where there is feeble separation from the world. But it is easily understood. For the world does not receive or understand the grace of God, whereas it can appreciate in the letter the righteous law of God. Hence, when the world and the saints are mixed together, the will of man soon takes the upper hand; and as the saint cannot elevate the world to his standing, he must sink to that which he holds in common with the world; and thus both meet once more on Jewish ground, as if the cross of Christ had never been, and the Holy Ghost were not sent down from heaven to gather believers out of a mixed condition into the assembly of God apart from the world. Even for the individual Christian, as well as for the Church, and most of all for God’s truth, grace, and glory, the loss has been incalculable. For the ordinary walk has been reduced to a string of negatives, save in public acts of philanthropy, religions activity, or ritual observances, which the Christian shares with any and everybody that will join him. It is not occupation with good according to God’s will; still less is it suffering for the sake of Christ and of righteousness from a world which knows them not. This is not Christianity, though it is the state and the system of most Christians. Did Christ ever obey from the fear of judgment? Was not His life a surrender of Himself to the holy will and pleasure of His Father? So our souls must be occupied with God’s grace in Christ, if we are to find strength in pleasing Him. The mere avoidance of evil, the not doing this or that, is below our calling. Do we indeed desire to know and to do His will as His children? Are we zealous in learning to do well, no less than careful to cease from each evil way? If not, the day will come when we may begin to do evil again, and with a conscience the less sensitive, because we have learnt truth which we do not carry out.

Very beautiful, therefore, is the apostolic exhortation on the positive side. “But rather let him labour [idleness is neither right nor safe], working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to distribute to him that needeth.” (Ver. 28.) Thus does the Spirit cheer and direct the man whose hands were once put forth in unworthy ways; thus does He open a happy path where grace can vindicate its power, spite of a dishonest nature and habit; and he who was the stealer before he knew the Saviour’s name, may now have fellowship with the spirit and practice of the great apostle (Acts 20:33-35), yea, and of the Master Himself, remembering His words, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. To live is the worldly man’s object in labour; to give is the christian motive. It is not a mere question of chance surplusage, but an express object, especially for him who has the consciousness of the mercy that delivered him from covetous sin and its shame and judgment. Only the toil must be about what is good and honest. In vain will you plead a benevolent or religious use of ill-gotten gain! No employment that is contrary to God’s will is good for the Christian, but should be given up at once. The covenant of Sinai never enunciated such a motive for toil as this. To talk about the ten commandments as the rule for the Christian’s walk now, is to go back from the sun which rules the day to the moon which rules the night; it is to eclipse Christ by Moses under the delusive profession of doing God service. In general, what the law exacted from those under it on the principle of right, the Christian is responsible on the principle of grace to exceed in every possible way. The scope of obedience is immensely increased; the inward motives are searched out and laid bare; the very tendency to violence, corruption, and falsehood is judged in its roots, and suffering wrongfully and withal in love takes the place of earthly righteousness for the disciples. Such is the unquestionable teaching of our Lord and of His apostles; it is darkened, undermined, and denied, by those who insist on judaising the Church by putting the Christian under the law as his rule of life. Truly, they “understand not what they say nor whereof they affirm.”

Next, it is not our deeds only that have to be considered, but our words. “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers.” (Ver. 29.) Worthless language is to be eschewed as one rejects good-for-nothing fruit; if it were on the tongue, let the unprofitable word proceed no farther. Unclean allusion we shall find specified and forbidden in the chapter following. Here I conceive the circle is more comprehensive. Many who would neither utter nor hear impure conversation may often have to bemoan the utterance and the sanction of unsavoury discourse. Better to be silent if there be not (such is the force) something good for needful edification. The need measures the service, and love builds up instead of puffing up as knowledge does. It is equally true that “in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin,” and that “the lips of the righteous feed many;” they “know what is acceptable;” and those who hear are refreshed and blessed.

Hitherto we have had grounds of holy action, as well as guards against sin, found in the features of the new man. But this, we know, does not give us the full character and power of the christian man. The holy Spirit of God dwells in him. This blessed but solemn truth is now pressed in its practical bearing. We are said (Eph. 2:22) to be built together for an habitation of God in Spirit; and therefore do the apostles exhort us (Eph. 4) to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we have been called. But there is an individual indwelling of the Holy Ghost, as well as His relation to the house of God. We have been sealed by the Spirit, appropriated thereby to God on the ground of accomplished redemption. The precious blood of Christ has washed away our sins; in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of God’s grace. Thus, His sacrifice has effaced before God and to faith all our evil, and a new nature is ours in Christ; so that the Holy Spirit can come and dwell in us, and seal us for the day of redemption, when our body shall be transformed into the likeness of the glory of Christ, as surely as our souls are now quickened into His life. In presence of this infinite present privilege and pledge of glory for ever, the apostle adds, “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” He is the spring of energy to strengthen the saint unto all that is well-pleasing to God. But this supposes that there is self-judgment and dependence on God. Otherwise we grieve Him, and are made to feel, not His power, but our own wretched unfaithfulness.

Again, it seems strange that any Christian should be so unintelligent as to confound the word here with “quench not the Spirit” in 1 Thessalonians 5:19. The context (ver. 20) there shows plainly that it is a warning not to hinder the smallest real manifestation of the Holy Ghost in a saint, no matter how feeble he might be; and the history of Christendom to the present hour proves how much the precept was needed, and how little the apostolic injunction has been attended to. But the passage in Ephesians 4 is a personal concern for every saint and his own conversation every day.

Another thing to be noted is the difference from the language of Psalm 51: “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” But the apostle, even when he presses that we should not grieve the Holy Ghost, never hints at His being taken away. On the contrary, he in the same breath assures us that we were sealed by Him for the day of redemption. Where can there be a fuller way of intimating our personal security than such a sentence? To what are we to attribute this difference? Not, I need hardly say, to a higher inspiration in Paul the apostle, than in David the king; but to the necessary and revealed modification of the Spirit’s relation to the saint, since Jesus died and rose and went to heaven. Till then there was no such thing as the Spirit given to abide with the believer for ever. He blessed souls then, wrought in and by them, filled with joy and power betimes; but indwelling, as the Christian has and knows it now, there was and could not be till the glorification of Jesus, because of sin put away by His blood. Hence we are told not to grieve the Spirit, but are never, since He was given, supposed to deprecate His departure. Unquestionably, this aggravates the sin of a Christian and imparts poignancy and bitterness to his self-reproach in that case; but even this is intended of God for the graver warning of His child. The verse, therefore, clearly proves, on the one hand, the danger of sinning and thus of grieving the Spirit; and, on the other, the security of the saint even in and spite of such sorrowful circumstances. He is brought to God, reconciled, washed, sanctified, justified; he has eternal life and shall never perish; he is sealed of the Spirit, and that seal, who can break? If he fall into sin, assuredly God will see to it and chasten, yea, unto death; for He will neither make light of his evil nor condemn himself with the world. So Peter exhorts the godly to walk in holy obedience, and while they called on Him as Father who, without respect of persons, judges according to each one’s work, to pass their time of sojourn in fear; at the same time, far from weakening their confidence, he proceeds, “forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold . . . . . . . but with the precious blood of Christ.” Thus, the truth of God has the effect of attracting and strengthening the affections, even when it sets us with our faces in the dust, while human error, as it weakens the full grace of God, so it fails thoroughly to humble the soul. But what a truth it is for the believer, that he has within the constant presence of a divine person, the Holy Ghost, the witness of all that passes these! How careful should we be that we grieve Him not! But it is not a truth for conscience only, but pregnant with consolation; for He dwells in us evermore, not because we are worthy of such a heavenly denizen, but in virtue of the worth of Jesus and the perfectness with which His work has cleansed us in God’s sight from our sins; and He is in us for our joy, and strength, and blessing evermore, through and in Christ the Lord. May we be enabled, always confident, always to pray, and not to faint!

The doctrine of the Holy Ghost’s presence in the individual believer, sealing him for redemption-day, has been already seen, and seems to be bound up in the closest way with practical holiness, as a motive and a guard, no less than as the power. For what more solemnly affecting than the remembrance of such an inhabitant ever dwelling in the believer’s body? and what more certain than that He is the Spirit, not of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind? We may be utter weakness, and the natural heart deceitful and treacherous beyond human conception. But this is not the only truth. The Christian is characterized by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Is He weak? Or if ill might be His, is He in the believer the passive, inactive witness of every fault and infirmity? Is He not, on the contrary, within Him to associate his affections with Christ, to glorify Christ, taking of the things of Christ and showing them to him? Doubtless, He may be and is grieved by allowed folly, and carelessness, and evil, and as to this we have just been seriously cautioned; but it would be well for such as speak incessantly of the good-for-nothingness of the flesh (which is most clear and certain) to bear in mind that the believer, the Christian, is no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit, seeing that the Spirit of God dwells in him. Meet it is, therefore, that sin, all and every sin, should be confessed and judged; but it is neither genuine humility nor the faith of God’s elect to ignore the blessed and encouraging as well as serious fact, that the Spirit of God is in us to give all strength in revealing Christ to our souls. It may be wholesome, unquestionably, to learn the painful lesson of Romans 7:7, and seq.; but to rest there is to prove that it has been ill learnt. For the proper place of the Christian is, as to this, the end of the chapter, ushering him into the still deeper exercises and the more unselfish sufferings of Romans 8, with the liberty, and power, and hope, and security which it so abundantly shows to be our portion through grace. The redemption of our body and of creation outside is not yet come; but He who is its earnest is within us.

This being so, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking be put away from you with all malice.” (Ver. 31.) The very nearness into which the family of God is brought may become a snare unless there be watchfulness and a simple looking to Christ. But the Holy Ghost gives quarter to no evil feeling whatever. These are the breaches of our nearness; in the next chapter (ver. 3 and seq.) we shall find the abuses of it.

If we come to particulars, “all bitterness,” I think, denotes every form of the sharp, unsparing mood which repels souls instead of winning them, and makes the most of the real or imagined faults of others. The “wrath and anger,” next following, refer to the outburst of passion, and the more settled vindictive resentment, to which the indulgence of acrimony gives rise, a “clamour and evil speaking” are their respective counterparts in words: all flowing from the deep-seated fountain of “all malice,” which is finally condemned in our verse. Thus, as we were warned against dishonesty in word and deed, before the allusion to the Holy Spirit’s seal, so now, after it, hatred in its various parts and expressions is denounced. It is, alas, natural to the first man Adam — the same corruption and violence which brought the flood on the world of old, but, spite of God’s judgment, renewed itself, and will, till Christ deal with man and Satan in person.

But, as was observed in the previous verses, bare abstinence from the mind and workings of the flesh suffices not. There is the activity of good in Christ, the second Man, and this the Spirit produces as well as demands in the Christian. Hence it is added, “Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you.” Clearly, therefore, It is a question of showing grace; and the pattern of it all is God in Christ, not in the law, holy, just and good as the commandment is. But good as the law was and is, Christ is the best of all, the genuine and only foil and perfect expression of what God is. And leaving the law to deal with the wicked (1 Tim. 1), as the apostle expressly declares is its lawful use, we who are dead with Christ are not under law but grace, which, by the power of the Spirit, strengthens us according to its own character and gives communion with Him who is its source.

The reader will notice that there is a departure from the Authorized Version of verse 32. It is done advisedly. Why king James’ translators deserted the Greek, followed by Wycliffe, Coverdale, and even the Rhemish, it is hard to say, especially as Beza, who often influenced them, is here accurate. The erroneous rendering obscures the very grace of God which is set before us as our spring and pattern, and tends to countenance the error that Christ was the procuring cause of His love, instead of being the blessed and infinite channel of its communication to us, the only possible means in which even His love could holily and justly avail for us. It is a part of the same error to think of God as “our reconciled Father,” or to say that Christ “died to reconcile Him to us.” Atonement was necessary beyond a doubt, the expiation of our sins by the blood of Christ. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.” But God was in Christ reconciling; it is we (not He) “who have now received the reconciliation.” “And you that were sometimes alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works. yet now hath he reconciled.” Such is the uniform doctrine of Scripture. How blessedly all is put and kept in its place! The atonement is that aspect of Christ’s work, which is toward God, to put away sin by suffering the divine judgment of it in His own person; reconciliation, contrariwise, is toward us, to bring us back in Christ unto God. Both are most true; to confound them is to lose much and weaken all; and what is more serious, it is more or less to misrepresent the character of God, as if He were turned by Christ from an angry judge into a loving Father. God is love as truly as He is light. It is what He is, not what He is made.

² If honour to those that labour and help to maintain them or their families in case of need are supposed to involve a title to interfere, the worldly and evil source of such a thought becomes apparent. Would they purchase the gift of God with money, or reduce a servant of Christ into the hireling of men? On the other hand, let us beware of mere human independence, which is simply pride, where it is least becoming and most injurious.

³ Some suppose that the truth in Jesus is, “that ye have put off, as concerns your former conversation, the old man . . . . . and have put on the new man,” etc. (Ver 22-24). so Dr. Eadie and Mr. Peile, whose rendering seems to me quite consistent with the context, notwithstanding the depreciatory notice of Alford and Ellicott. Mr. Darby takes the version and connection to be that the truth in Jesus is not exactly “that ye should,” nor “that ye have,” but “your having put off,” etc. I have not, however, altered the rendering and the comment, which remain here as before. The reader can judge for himself.