The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Ephesians

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Findlay George Gillanders. The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Ephesians

THE INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. THE WRITER AND READERS

PRAISE AND PRAYER

CHAPTER II. THE ETERNAL PURPOSE

CHAPTER III. THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE

CHAPTER IV. THE FINAL REDEMPTION

CHAPTER V. FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART

THE DOCTRINE

CHAPTER VI. WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST

CHAPTER VII. FROM DEATH TO LIFE

CHAPTER VIII. SAVED FOR AN END

CHAPTER IX. THE FAR AND NEAR

CHAPTER X. THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION

CHAPTER XI. GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY

CHAPTER XII. THE SECRET OF THE AGES

CHAPTER XIII. EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN

PRAYER AND PRAISE

CHAPTER XIV. THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST

CHAPTER XV. KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE

THE EXHORTATION

CHAPTER XVI. THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES

CHAPTER XVII. THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST

CHAPTER XVIII. THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH

ON CHRISTIAN MORALS

CHAPTER XIX. THE WALK OF THE GENTILES

CHAPTER XX. THE TWO HUMAN TYPES

CHAPTER XXI. DISCARDED VICES

CHAPTER XXII. DOCTRINE AND ETHICS

CHAPTER XXIII. THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT

CHAPTER XXIV. THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT

ON FAMILY LIFE

CHAPTER XXV. CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE

CHAPTER XXVI. CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE

CHAPTER XXVII. THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD

ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FOES OF THE CHURCH

CHAPTER XXIX. THE DIVINE PANOPLY

THE CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XXX. REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION

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In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle we are conscious of entering a different atmosphere. We leave the region of controversy for that of meditation. From the battle-field we step into the hush and stillness of the temple. Verses 3–14 of this chapter constitute the most sustained and perfect act of praise that is found in the apostle’s letters. It is as though a door were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts behind us, and earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these two writings, following each other in the established order of the epistles, is singular and in some ways extreme. They are, respectively, the most combative and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned, the most concrete and abstract, the most human and divine amongst the great apostle’s writings.

Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity of character. The two letters are not the expression of different minds, but of different phases of the same mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic behind the ardent missionary and the masterly debater. Those critics who recognize the genuine apostle only in the four previous epistles and reject whatever does not conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how much is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul. Without the inwardness, the brooding faculty, the power of abstract and metaphysical thinking displayed in the epistles of this group, he could never have wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those earlier writings, nor grasped the principles which he there applies with such vigour and effect. That so many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny, St Paul’s authorship of this epistle on internal grounds and because of the contrast to which we have referred, is one of those phenomena which in future histories of religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities of a hypercritical age.2

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St Paul assures us that God and the world will be reunited, and that peace will reign through all realms and orders of existence. He does not, and he could not say that none will exclude themselves from the eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made it possible for them to contradict Him, so long as they have any being. The apostle’s words have their note of warning, along with their boundless promise. There is no place in the future order of things for aught that is out of Christ. There is no standing-ground anywhere for the unclean and the unjust, for the irreconcilable rebel against God. “The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity.”

When the apostle reaches the “heritage” conferred upon us in Christ (ver. 11), he is on the boundary between the present and the future. Into that future he now presses forward, gathering from it his crowning tribute “to the praise of God’s glory.” We shall find, however, that this heritage assumes a twofold character, as did the conception of the inheritance of the Lord in the Old Testament. If the saints have their heritage in Christ, partly possessed and partly to be possessed, God has likewise, and antecedently, His inheritance in them, of which He too has still to take full possession.47

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