Chapter V: AUTOGRAPH CONCLUSION.--1. The Judaisers' motive (ch. vi. 12, 13) (13)

+I. His mission on earth was one of peace.+--"And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh" (ver. 17). His advent was heralded by the angelic song, "Peace on earth, and goodwill toward men." The world is racked with moral discord; He is constantly striving to introduce the music of a heavenly harmony. It is distracted with war; He is propagating principles that will by-and-by make war impossible. The work of the peacemaker is Christ-like. Shenkyn, one of whose anomalies was that with all his burning passions he was a notorious peacemaker, and had means of pouring oil upon troubled waters, once upon a time was deputed to try his well-known skill upon a Church whose strife of tongues had become quite notorious. He reluctantly complied and attended a meeting which soon proved to his satisfaction that the people were possessed by a demon that could not easily be expelled. The peacemaker got up, staff in hand, paced the little chapel, and with his spirit deeply moved, cried out, "Lord, is this Thy spouse?" Faster and faster he walked, thumping his huge stick on the floor, and still crying out, "Lord, is this Thy spouse? Slay her!" Then there came, as it were from another, a response, "No, I will not." "Sell her, then!" "No, I will not." "Deny her, then!" Still the answer came, "I will not." Then he lifted up his voice, saying, "I have bought her with My precious blood; how can I give her up? How can I forsake her?" The strife had now ceased, and the people looked on with amazement, crying out for pardon.

+II. He made peace between man and man.+--"For He is our peace, who hath made both one; . . . to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace" (vers. 14, 15). The hostility of Jew and Gentile was conquered; the new spiritual nature created in both formed a bond of brotherhood and harmony. The Jew no longer despised the Gentile; the Gentile no longer hated and persecuted the Jew. Where the Christian spirit predominates personal quarrels are speedily adjusted.

+III. He made peace between man and God.+--"That He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross" (ver. 16). The enmity of man against God is disarmed and conquered by the voluntary suffering of Jesus in man's stead, and by Him thus opening up the way of reconciliation of man with God. God can now be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. The violated law is now atoned for, and the violator may obtain forgiveness and regain the forfeited favour of the offended God. There is peace only through forgiveness.

+IV. His death removed the great barrier to peace.+--This paragraph is very rich and suggestive in the phrases used to explain this blessed result: "Ye are made nigh by the blood of Christ" (ver. 13). "By the cross, having slain the enmity thereby" (ver. 16). "Hath broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity" (vers. 14, 15). It is not the calm, silent, featureless, helpless, forceless, _peace of death,_ but a living, active, aggressive, ever-conquering peace. The death was the result of agonising struggle and intense suffering, and the peace purchased is a powerfully operating influence in the believing soul.

"A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser."--_Shakespeare._

+V. True peace is realised only in Christ.+--"But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ" (ver. 13). "For He is our peace" (ver. 14). "For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (ver. 18). "Christ takes us by the hand, and leads us to the Father." Men seek peace in the excitements of worldly pleasures, or in the pursuit of ambitious aims, but in vain. They only stimulate the malady they seek to cure. Christ is the restful centre of the universe, and the sin-tossed soul gains peace only as it converges towards Him. The efforts of men to find rest independent of Christ only reveal their need of Him, and it is a mercy when this revelation and consciousness of need does not come too late.

+Lessons.+--1. _Sin is the instigator of quarrels and strife._ 2. _Only as sin is conquered does peace become possible._ 3. _Christ introduces peace by abolishing sin._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 13-18. _Nearness to God._

+I. They were brought into the Church of God and admitted to equal
privileges with His ancient people the Jews.+

+II. They were brought near to God as they were admitted to enjoy
the Gospel, which is a dispensation of grace and peace.+

+III. They were brought near to God by the renovation of their souls
after His image.+

+IV. This nearness to God implies a state of peace with Him.+

+V. Another circumstance of the nearness is access to God in
prayer.+

+VI. Another is the presence of His Holy Spirit.+--Let us be afraid
of everything that tends to draw us away from God, and love
everything which brings us nearer to Him. Let us seek Him with
our whole heart, persevere daily communion with Him, choose
His favour as our happiness, His service as our employment,
His Word as our guide, His ordinances as our refreshment, His
house as the gate of heaven, and heaven as our eternal
home.--_Lathrop._

Ver. 13. _Our State by Nature and by Grace._

+I. Our state by nature.+--The distance from God here spoken of is not a local distance, neither is it that which separates us from Him as an infinite Being. 1. It is legal. Banished by a righteous sentence and by a sense of guilt and unworthiness. 2. It is moral. Estrangement. Absence of sympathy. Want of harmony. 3. In both these respects it is ever-widening. 4. It is miserable and dangerous.

+II. Our state by grace.+--1. The legal barriers are removed by the blood of Christ shed on the cross. 2. The moral alienation is removed by the blood of Christ as applied to the believer by the Holy Spirit. 3. The nearness to God thus effected is a valuable privilege. It includes reconciliation, friendship, communion. Sinner, apply now to be made nigh. Believer, remember thy obligations.--_G. Brooks._

Vers. 14, 15. _Death a Peacemaker._--The struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America closed for ever at the funeral of General Grant. The armies of rebellion surrendered twenty years before; but the solemn and memorable pageant at the tomb of the great Union soldier, where the leading generals of the living Union and of the dead Confederacy stood shoulder to shoulder and mingled their tears in a common grief--this historical event marked the absolute conclusion of sectional animosity in America.

Ver. 16. _The Power of the Gospel to dissolve the Enmity of the Human Heart against God._--1. The goodness of God destroys the enmity of the human mind. When every other argument fails, this, if perceived by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and persuasive way through every barrier of resistance. Try to approach the heart of man by the instruments of terror and of authority, and it will disdainfully repel you. There is not one of you skilled in the management of human nature who does not perceive that, though this may be a way of working on the other principles of our constitution--of working on the fears of man, or on his sense of interest--this is not the way of gaining by a single hair-breadth on the attachments of his heart. Such a way may force, or it may terrify, but it never, never can endear; and after all the threatening array of such an influence as this is brought to bear upon man, there is not one particle of service it can extort from him but what is all rendered in the spirit of a painful and reluctant bondage. Now this is not the service which prepares for heaven. This is not the service which assimilates men to angels. This is not the obedience of those glorified spirits, whose every affection harmonises with their every performance, and the very essence of whose piety consists of delight in God and the love they bear to Him. To bring up man to such an obedience as this, his heart behoved to be approached in a particular way; and no such way is to be found but within the limits of the Christian revelation. There alone you see God, without injury to His other attributes, plying the heart of man with the irresistible argument of kindness. There alone do you see the great Lord of heaven and of earth, setting Himself forth to the most worthless and the most wandering of His children--putting forth His hand to the work of healing the breach which sin had made between them--telling them that His Word could not be mocked, and his justice could not be defied and trampled on, and that it was not possible for His perfections to receive the slightest taint in the eyes of the creation He had thrown around them; but that all this was provided for, and not a single creature within the compass of the universe He has formed could now say that forgiveness to man was degrading to the authority of God, and that by the very act of atonement, which poured a glory over all the high attributes of His character, His mercy might now burst forth without limit and without control upon a guilty world, and the broad flag of invitation be unfurled in the sight of all its families. 2. Let the sinner, then, look to God through the medium of such a revelation, and the sight which meets him there may well tame the obstinacy of that heart which had wrapped itself up in impenetrable hardness against the force of every other consideration. Now that the storm of the Almighty's wrath has been discharged upon Him who bore the burden of the world's atonement, He has turned His throne of glory into a throne of grace and cleared away from the pavilion of His residence all the darkness which encompassed it. The God who dwelleth there is God in Christ; and the voice He sends from it to this dark and rebellious province of His mighty empire is a voice of the most beseeching tenderness. Goodwill to men is the announcement with which His messengers come fraught to a guilty world; and, since the moment in which it burst upon mortal ears from the peaceful canopy of heaven, may the ministers of salvation take it up, and go round with it among all the tribes and individuals of the species. Such is the real aspect of God towards you. He cannot bear that His alienated children should be finally and everlastingly away from Him. He feels for you all the longing of a parent bereaved of his offspring. To woo you back again unto Himself He scatters among you the largest and the most liberal assurances, and with a tone of imploring tenderness does He say to one and all of you, "Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?" (Ezek. xxxiii. 11). He has no pleasure in your death. He does not wish to glorify Himself by the destruction of any one of you. "Look to Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved" (Isa. xlv. 22), is the wide and generous announcement by which He would recall, from the outermost limits of His sinful creation, the most worthless and polluted of those who have wandered away from Him. 3. Now give us a man who perceives, with the eye of his mind, the reality of all this, and you give us a man in possession of the principle of faith. Give us a man in possession of this faith; and his heart, shielded as it were against the terrors of a menacing Deity, is softened and subdued, and resigns its every affection at the moving spectacle of a beseeching Deity; and thus it is, that faith manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it, of working by love. Give us a man in possession of this love; and, animated as he is with the living principle of that obedience, where the willing and delighted consent of the inner man goes along with the performance of the outer man, his love manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it when it says, "This is the love of God, that ye keep His commandments." And thus it is, amid the fruitfulness of every other expedient, when power threatened to crush the heart which it could not soften--when authority lifted its voice, and laid on man an enactment of love which it could not carry--when terror shot its arrows, and they dropped ineffectual from that citadel of the human affections, which stood proof against the impression of every one of them--when wrath mustered up its appalling severities, and filled that bosom with despair which it could not fill with the warmth of a confiding attachment--then the kindness of an inviting God was brought to bear on the heart of man, and got an opening through all its mysterious avenues. Goodness did what the nakedness of power could not do. It found its way through all intricacies of the human constitution, and there, depositing the right principle of repentance, did it establish the alone effectual security for the right purposes and the right fruits of repentance.--_Dr. T. Chalmers._

Ver. 18. _The Privilege of Access to the Father._--In the Temple service of the Jews all did not enjoy equal privileges. The court of the Gentiles was outside that of the Jews and separated from it by "a marble screen or enclosure three cubits in height, beautifully ornamented with carving, but bearing inscriptions, in Greek and Roman characters, forbidding any Gentile to pass within its boundary." Such restricted access to God the new dispensation was designed to abolish. The middle wall of partition is now broken down, and through Christ we, both Jews and Gentiles--all mankind--have equal access by one Spirit unto the Father. Observe:--

+I. The privilege of access unto the Father.+--That God is the proper object of worship is implied in our text, and more explicitly declared in other portions of the sacred writings. According to the nature of the blessings desired, prayer may be addressed to any of the three Persons in the Godhead; but the Bible teaches that prayer generally is to be presented to the Father through Christ and by the Holy Spirit. And so appropriate are the offices of the Persons in the Trinity that we cannot speak otherwise. We cannot say that through the Spirit and by the Father we have access to Christ, or through the Father and by Christ we have access to the Spirit. We must observe the apostle's order--through Christ and by the Spirit we have access to the Father. Access unto the Father implies:--

1. _His sympathy with us._--God is our Creator and Sovereign, but His authority is not harsh or arbitrary. He does not even deal with us according to the stern dictates of untempered justice. On the contrary, in love and sympathy He has for our benefit made His throne accessible. He will listen to our penitential confessions, our vows of obedience, our statements of want. He has sympathy with us.

2. _His ability to help us._--That access is permitted to us, taken in connection with God's perfections, prove this. He raises no hope to disappoint, does not encourage that He may repel, but permits access that He may help and bless.

3. _His permission to speak freely._--There is nothing contracted in God's method of blessing. We are introduced to His presence not to stand dumb before Him, nor to speak under the influence of slavish fear. We have such liberty as those enjoy who are introduced to the presence of a prince by a distinguished favourite, or such freedom as children have in addressing a father. We are brought into the presence of our King by His Own Son; to our heavenly Father by Christ, our elder Brother. The results of this access to ourselves: 1. It teaches dependence; 2. Excites gratitude; 3. Produces comfort; 4. Promotes growth in grace.

+II. The medium of access.+--Under the law the high priest was the mediator through whom the people drew near to God. He went into the "holiest of all, once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people" (Heb. ix. 7). Under the new covenant "boldness to enter into the holiest" is "by the blood of Jesus" (Heb. x. 19). But as the mediation of the Jewish high priest, though "done away in Christ," was typical, it may serve to teach us how we are to come to God. He sprinkled the blood of the sin-offering on the mercy-seat and burnt incense within the veil (Lev. xvi.), thus symbolising the sacrifice and intercession of Christ.

1. _We, then, have access to God through Christ as a sacrifice._--"Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. ix. 22). But, "that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," we could never, as suppliants, have found acceptance with God.

2. _Through Christ as an intercessor._--"But this man," etc. (Heb. x. 12). A disciple in temptation cries for deliverance from evil, and Christ prays, "Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me" (John xvii. 11). A dying saint asks for "an entrance into the heavenly kingdom," and Christ pleads, "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am" (John xvii. 24). None need deem himself too unworthy to call on God who comes to Him through Christ's sacrifice and intercession.

+III. The assistance afforded by the Holy Spirit.+--As we have access unto the Father through Christ pleading _for_ us, so we have access unto the Father by the Spirit pleading _in_ us.

1. _The Spirit kindles holy desire._--It is the work of the Spirit to draw off the hearts of men from the world and raise them to God in prayer. As in playing on a musical instrument no string sounds untouched, so without this influence of the Spirit man would never look heavenward, or his heart fill with desire toward God.

2. _Prompts to immediate application._--Blessings are often desired but feebly. The Spirit rebukes this hesitancy, and urges on to immediate application.

3. _Aids in that application._--"Without the Spirit we know not what we should pray for" (Rom. viii. 26). Our thoughts wander, our affections chill, the fervour of our importunity flags, unless the Spirit "helpeth our infirmities."

+Reflections.+--1. _Those who do not enjoy this privilege are highly culpable._ 2. _Those who do enjoy this privilege are indeed happy.--The Lay Preacher._

_Access to God, revealing the Trinity in Unity._

+I. The end of human salvation is access to the Father.+--That is the first truth of our religion--that the source of all is meant to be the end of all, that as we all come forth from a Divine Creator, so it is into Divinity that we are to return and to find our final rest and satisfaction, not in ourselves, not in one another, but in the omnipotence, the omniscience, the perfectness, and the love of God. Now we are very apt to take it for granted that, however we may differ in our definitions and our belief of the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we are all at once, there can be and there is no hesitation, about the deity of the Father. God is Divine. God is God. And no doubt we do all assent in words to such a belief; but when we think what we mean by that word "God"; when we remember what we mean by "Father," namely, the first source and the final satisfaction of a dependent nature; and then when we look around and see such multitudes of people living as if there were no higher source for their being than accident and no higher satisfaction for their being than selfishness, do we not feel that there is need of a continual and most earnest preaching by Word and act, from every pulpit of influence to which we can mount, of the Divinity of the Father. The Divinity of the Father needs assertion first of all. Let men once feel it, and then nature and their own hearts will come in with their sweet and solemn confirmations of it. But nature and the human heart do not teach it of themselves. The truest teaching of it must come from souls that are always going in and out before the Divine Fatherhood themselves. By the sight of such souls, others must come to seek the satisfaction that comes only from a Divine end of life--must come to crave access to the Father. So we believe, and so we tempt other men to believe, in God the Father.

II. And now pass to +the Divinity of the method.+--"Through Jesus Christ." Man is separated from God. That fact, testified to by broken associations, by alienated affections, by conflicting wills, stands written in the whole history of our race. And equally clear is it to him who reads the Gospels, and enters into sympathy with their wonderful Person, that in Him, in Jesus of Nazareth, appeared the Mediator by whom was to be the Atonement. His was the life and nature which, standing between the Godhood and the manhood, was to bridge the gulf and make the firm, bright road over which blessing and prayer might pass and repass with confident, golden feet for ever. And then the question is--and when we ask it thus it becomes so much more than a dry problem of theology; it is a question for live, anxious men to ask with faces full of eagerness--Out of which nature came that Mediator? Out of which side of the chasm sprang the bridge leaping forth toward the other? Evidently on both sides that bridge is bedded deep and clings with a tenacity which shows how it belongs there. He is both human and Divine. But from which side did the bridge spring? It is the most precious part of our belief that it was with God that the activity began. It is the very soul of the Gospel, as I read it, that the Father's heart, sitting above us in His holiness, yearned for us as we lay down here in our sin. And when there was no man to make an intercession, He sent His Son to tell us of His love, to live with us, to die for us, to lay His life like a strong bridge out from the Divine side of existence, over which we might walk fearfully but safely, but into the Divinity where we belonged. Through Him we have access to the Father. As the end was Divine, so the method is Divine. As it is to God that we come, so it is God who brings us there. I can think nothing else without dishonouring the tireless, quenchless love of God.

+III. The power of the act of man's salvation is the Holy Spirit.+--"Through Christ Jesus we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." What do we mean by the Holy Spirit being the power of salvation? I think we are often deluded and misled by carrying out too far some of the figurative forms in which the Bible and the religious experience of men express the saving of the soul. For instance, salvation is described as the lifting of the soul out of a pit and putting it upon a pinnacle, or on a safe high platform of grace. The figure is strong and clear. Nothing can overstate the utter dependence of the soul on God for its deliverance; but if we let the figure leave in our minds an impression of the human soul as a dead, passive thing, to be lifted from one place to the other like a torpid log that makes no effort of its own either for co-operation or resistance, then the figure has misled us. The soul is a live thing. Everything that is done with it must be done and through its own essential life, If a soul is saved, it must be by the salvation, the sanctification, of its essential life; if a soul is lost, it must be by perdition of its life, by the degradation of its affections and desires and hopes. Let there be nothing merely mechanical in the conception of the way God treats these souls of ours. He works upon them in the vitality of thought, passion, and will that He put into them. And so, when a soul comes to the Father through the Saviour, its whole essential vitality moves in the act. When this experience is reached, then see what Godhood the soul has come to recognise in the world. First, there is the creative Deity from which it sprang, and to which it is struggling to return--"the Divine End, God the Father." Then there is the incarnate Deity, which makes that return possible by the exhibition of God's love--the Divine Power of salvation, God the Holy Spirit. To the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. This appears to be the truth of the Deity as it relates to us. I say again, "as it relates to us." What it may be in itself; how Father, Son, and Spirit meet in the perfect Godhood; what infinite truth more there may, there must, be in that Godhood, no man can dare to guess. But, to us, God is the end, the method, and the power of salvation; so He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is in the perfect harmony of these sacred personalities that the precious unity of the Deity consists. I look at the theologies, and so often it seems as if the harmony of the Father, Son, and Spirit has been lost, both by those that own and those that disown the Trinity. One theology makes the Father hard and cruel, longing as it were for man's punishment, extorting from the Son the last drops of life-blood which man's sin had incurred as penalty. Another theology makes the Son merely one of the multitude of sinning men, with somewhat bolder aspirations laying hold on a forgiveness which God might give but which no mortal might assume. Still another theology can find no God in the human heart at all; merely a fermentation of human nature is this desire after goodness, this reaching out towards Divinity. The end is not worthy of the method. I do not want to come to such a Father as some of the theologians have painted. Or the method is not worthy of the end. No man could come to the perfect God through such a Jesus as some men have described. Or the power is too weak for both; and all that Christ has done lies useless, and all the Father's welcome waits in vain for the soul that has in it no Holy Ghost. But let each be real and each be worthy of the others, and salvation is complete. But each cannot be worthy of the others unless each is perfect. But each cannot be perfect unless each is Divine; that is, our faith is in the Trinity--three Persons and one God.--_Philips Brooks._

_The Christian Law of Prayer_--

+I. To the Father.+--1. How honourable! Right of entry to an earthly sovereign. 2. How delightful! Our pleasures may be graduated according to the part of our nature in which they have their rise. The pleasures of devotion are the highest taste for devotion. 3. How profitable! God is able to bestow all temporal and spiritual blessings. 4. How solemn! The intercourse of our spirit with the Father of our spirits. Heart to heart.

+II. Through the Son.+--1. Through His atonement. Legal barriers to our access must be removed. Have been removed by the death of Christ as a satisfaction to Divine Justice. He has demolished the wall, He has constructed a bridge across the chasm, He has laid down His own body as the medium of approach. 2. Through His intercession. It perpetuates His sacrifice. The Jewish high priest entering the holy of holies on the Great Day of Atonement. Amyntas, mother of Coriolanus; Philippa after the siege of Calais.

+III. By the Spirit.+--1. He teaches us what are our wants. For the most part we are likely to be aware of our temporal wants. In spiritual things the greater our need the less our sense of need. 2. He makes us willing to ask the supply of our wants. Aversion to beg. Aversion to lay bare the symptoms of humiliating disease. 3. He gives us power to spread our wants before God. One person employed to write a letter or a petition for another. 4. He inspires us with confidence to plead with importunity and faith. Confidence in the Father, in the Son, in the power of prayer.--_G. Brooks._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 19-22.

_The Church the Temple of God._

+I. Enjoying special privileges.+--1. _A saintly citizenship._ "No more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints" (ver. 19). The apostle has spoken of the separation and enmity existing between Jew and Gentile. The Jew, trained to believe in the one invisible and only true God, who could not be imagined by any material form, learned to look with hatred and contempt on the outcast, lawless Gentile, with his idol deities in every valley and on every hill; and the intellectual Gentile looked with philosophic pride on the stern land of the Hebrew and in philosophic scorn on his strange, exclusive loneliness. They were not only at enmity with each other, but both were at enmity with God. Now the writer is showing that by the provisions of the Gospel both Greek and Jew are united as citizens of one Divine kingdom. They enjoy the same privileges and are in actual fellowship with prophets and apostles and all holy souls in all ages and are sanctified subjects of a kingdom that can never be moved.

2. _A family life._--"And of the household of God" (ver. 19). The Church is a family having one Father in God, one Brother in Christ, one life in the Spirit, and one home in Heaven. As in earthly families, there are diversities of character, tastes, gifts, tendencies, and manifestations, but all the members of the heavenly household are bound together by the one common bond of love to God and to each other.

+II. Resting on a sure foundation+ (ver. 20).--The materials composing the foundation of the Church are _living_ stones--teachers and confessors of the truth, "apostles and prophets"; but Christ, as the one foundation, is the "chief corner-stone." The foundation of the Church is not so much in the witnesses of the truth as in the truth itself, and in propagating which truth the first teachers and confessors sacrificed their all. The truth which produced and sustained the martyrs is itself immovable. The apostles and prophets--teachers in the apostolic times--laid the first course in the foundation of the Church and were careful to recognise and build only one foundation, united and held together by the one corner-stone--Christ Jesus. They fixed the pattern and standard of Christian doctrine and practice. The Christian Church is sure because the foundation is deep and broad and can never be removed and replaced by any human structure.

+III. Ever rising to a higher perfection+ (ver. 21).--The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points over a wide area. The builders work in concert upon a common plan. The several parts of the work are adjusted to each other, and the various operations in process are so harmonised that the entire construction preserves the unity of the architect's design. Such an edifice was the apostolic Church--one but of many parts--in the diverse gifts and multiplied activities animated by one Spirit and directed towards one Divine purpose (_Findlay_). Since the Day of Pentecost, when three thousand living stones were laid on the foundation, the Church has been growing in symmetry, beauty, and vastness, and it is constantly advancing towards perfection. The building, though apparently disjoined and working in separate parts, is growing into a final unity.

+IV. Made by the Spirit His glorious dwelling-place+ (ver. 22).--The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder as He is the supreme Witness to Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words "in the Spirit" denote not the mode of God's habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency engaged in building this new house of God. With one chief corner-stone to rest upon, and one Spirit to inspire and control them, the apostles and prophets laid their foundation, and the Church was builded together for a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But for this sovereign influence the primitive founders of Christianity, the later Church leaders, would have fallen into fatal discord (_Findlay_). The Church is a spiritual organisation, pervaded and made vital and progressive by the presence and operation of the Spirit of God. An organ is composed of several instruments--the choir, the swell, the pedal, the great; and many stops--the diapason, the flute, the trumpet; and yet it is one. And the Church of God is one. One Spirit--one breath of wind turned on by one living Hand--makes all the organ vocal.

+Lessons.+--1. _The Church is the depositary of great religious privileges._ 2. _God dwells in the Church by dwelling in the heart of every member of it._ 3. _The Church provides every facility for worship and service._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 19-22. _The Church of God a Spiritual Building._

+I. The apostle represents the Church of God under the figure of a city and a household.+--1. _A Church must resemble a family or city in respect of order and government;_ for without these a religious society can no more subsist than a civil community or a household. 2. _In a city or household all the members have a mutual relation and partake in the common privileges;_ and though they are placed in different stations and conditions, they must all contribute to the general happiness. 3. _In a city and also in a family there is a common interest._ 4. _In a well-ordered city or household there will be peace and unity;_ so there ought to be in a Christian Church.

+II. The manner in which the Church is founded.+--The mediation of Christ is the foundation of our faith and hope. The apostles and prophets are a foundation only as they describe and exhibit to use the doctrines and works, the atonement and intercession, of the Redeemer. In Him all the doctrines of the apostles and prophets meet and unite, as the stones in the foundation are fixed and bound together by the corner-stone.

+III. The Church must be united with and framed into the foundation.+--Thus it may stand secure. Christ is the chief corner-stone in which all the building is framed. That only is true faith in Christ which regards Him as the foundation of our present hope and final acceptance.

+IV. As the Church must rest on the foundation, so the several parts of it must be framed and inserted into each other.+--As it is faith which fixes the saints on Christ the foundation, so it is love which binds them together among themselves. If we would preserve the beauty, strength, and dignity of the spiritual house, we must be watchful to repair breaches as soon as they appear, and to remove those materials which are become too corrupt to be repaired, lest they communicate their own corruption to sounder parts.

+V. The Church is to grow into a holy temple for God through the Spirit.+--We must not content ourselves with having built on the true foundation, but must bring the structure to a more finished and beautiful condition. The Church may grow and make increase both by the progress of its present members in knowledge and holiness and by the addition of new members who become fellow-workers in the spiritual building. God dwells in His Church, not only by His Word and ordinances, but also by the influence of His Spirit which He affords to assist His people in the duties of His worship and to open their hearts for the reception of His Word.--_Lathrop._

Ver. 19. _Christian Prayer a Witness of Christian Citizenship._

+I. The foundation of the citizenship of the Christian.+--In access to the Father--in the power of approaching Him in full, free, trustful prayer.

1. _Christian prayer is the approach of the individual soul to God as its Father._--Until a man utterly believers in Christ he can never pray aright. There are veils around the unbelieving spirit which hinder this free, confiding approach. The touch of God startles memories, rouses ghosts of the past in the soul's secret chambers; they flutter fearfully in the strange Divine light, and the man shudders and dare not pray. A man bathed in the life of God in prayer feels he is no more a stranger and a foreigner, but has entered into God's kingdom, for God is his Father.

2. _That prayer of the individual soul must lead to the united worship of God's Church._--We cannot always pray alone. The men who stand most aloof from social worship are not the men who manifest the highest spiritual life. Our highest prayers are our most universal. I do not say we don't feel their individuality, we do--but in and through their universality.

+II. The nature of Christian citizenship.+--1. _Prayer a witness to our fellowship with the Church of all time._ Realising the Fatherhood of God in the holy converse of prayer, we are nearer men. Our selfishness, our narrow, isolating peculiarities begin to fade. In our highest prayers we realise common wants.

2. _Prayer a witness to our fellowship with the Church of eternity._--All emotions of eternity catch the tone of prayer. Sometimes in the evening, when the sounds of the world are still, and the sense of eternity breaks in upon us, is not that feeling a prayer? We know that we are right, that in worship we have taken no earthly posture, but an attitude from higher regions.

+Lessons.+--1. _Live as members of the kingdom._ 2. _Expect the signs of citizenship--the crown of thorns, the cross._ 3. _Live in hope of the final ingathering.--E. L. Hull._

_The Communion of Saints._

+I. Society becomes possible only through religion.+--Men might be gregarious without it, but not social. Instinct which unites them in detail prevents their wider combination. Intellect affords light to show the elements of union, but no heat to give them crystalline form. Self-will is prevailingly a repulsive power, and often disintegrates the most solid of human masses. Some sense of a Divine Presence, some consciousness of a higher law, some pressure of a solemn necessity, will be found to have preceded the organization of every human community, and to have gone out and perished before its death.

+II. Worship exhibits its uniting principle under the simplest form, in the sympathies it diffuses among the members of the same religious assembly.+--There is, however, no necessary fellowship, as of saints, in the mere assembling of ourselves together; but only in the true and simple spirit of worship. Where a pure devotion really exists, the fellowship it produces spreads far beyond the separate circle of each Christian assembly. Surely it is a glorious thing to call up, while we worship, the wide image of Christendom this day. Could we be lifted up above this sphere and look down as it rolls beneath this day's sun, and catch its murmurs as they rise, should we not behold land after land turned into a Christian shrine? In how many tongues, by what various voices, with what measureless intensity of love, is the name of Christ breathed forth to-day!

+III. But our worship here brings us into yet nobler connections.+--It unites us by a chain of closest sympathy with past generations. In our helps to faith and devotion we avail ourselves of the thought and piety of many extinct ages. Do not we, the living, take up in adoration and prayer the thoughts of the dead and find them Divinely true? What an impressive testimony is this to the sameness of our nature through every age and the immortal perseverance of its holier affections!

+IV. And soon we too shall drop the note of earthly aspiration and join that upper anthem of Diviner love.+--The communion of saints brings us to their conflict first, their blessings afterwards. Those who will not with much patience strive with the evil can have no dear fellowship with the good; we must weep their tears ere we can win their peace.--_Martineau._

_Characteristics of Believers._

+I. Believers are here described as having been strangers and foreigners.+--1. There are relative expressions, meaning that natural men are strangers to the household of God and foreigners as respects the city of Zion. 2. Consider the natural man with reference to the city of Zion, and the truth of this representation will appear. (1) He is a stranger and foreigner--(_a_) By a sentence of exile (Gen. iii.). (_b_) By birth (Gen. v. 3; John iii. 6). (2) He is proved to be a stranger and foreigner--(_a_) By features (Gal. v. 19-21). (_b_) By manners (1 Pet. iv. 3). (_c_) By language. As such he is under another ruler (Eph. ii. 2), he is at war (Gal. iv. 29). 3. Though "strangers and foreigners" in relation to Zion, yet men are naturalised in another country. 4. This does not imply living beyond the pale of the visible Church. The Parable of the Tares. An alien to the saints and a stranger to God may be in the visible Church. 5. That there are "strangers and foreigners" in the Church seems a calamity. (1) They are thereby deceived. (2) They injure Christians. (3) They betray Christ.

+II. Believers are described as being fellow-citizens with the saints.+--1. They are citizens. (1) Their sentence of exile is cancelled (ver. 13). (2) They are naturalised by birth (John iii. 5). (3) They are reconciled to God and believers. (4) They are under Zion's government. 2. They are "fellow-citizens with the saints." (1) They have intercourse--holy. (2) They are united by mutual love. (3) They have reciprocal duties. (4) They have common rights and privileges. (5) They have common honour and reputation. (6) They have common prosperity and adversity. (7) They have common enemies. (8) They have common defence and safety. (9) They have a common history. 3. As a congregation we are professedly a section of this peculiar and spiritual community. (1) Do we seek each other's welfare? (2) Is our intercourse the communion of saints? (3) Are we careful of each other's reputation? 4. Are we as a congregation isolating ourselves from each other? Are we "fellow-citizens with the saints"? 5. The city is above.

+III. Believers are here described as belonging to the household of God.+--1. Believers as citizens are God's subjects. 2. As belonging to God's household they are His children. 3. As in God's household--(1) They are like Him. (2) They are near to Him. (3) They see His face. (4) They enjoy His fellowship. (5) They are provided for by Him. (6) They are under His protection. (7) They serve Him. (8) They worship Him--His house is a temple. 4. These are very tangible privileges and belong to this present life. 5. Many may suppose that they are "fellow-citizens with the saints" whose experience does not prove that they are "of the household of God." 6. For this "household" God has "a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."--_Stewart._

Vers. 20, 21. _The Church a Divine Edifice._--1. Though God Himself be the principal Author and Builder of this spiritual edifice, yet He employs His called ministers and servants as instruments, among whom He made special use of the prophets and apostles for laying the foundation in so far as they first did reveal and preach Jesus Christ, and commit to writings such truths concerning Him as are necessary for salvation, while other ministers are employed in preaching Christ to build up the elect on the foundation laid by them. 2. There is a sweet harmony and full agreement between the doctrines and writings of the prophets and apostles in holding forth Christ for a foundation and rock of salvation, the latter having taught and written nothing but what was prefigured in types and foretold in prophecies by the former. 3. As growth in grace is a privilege which appertains to all parts of this spiritual building who are yet on earth, so this growth of theirs flows from their union and communion with Christ; and the more their union is improved by daily extracting renewed influence from Him, they cannot choose but thrive the better in spiritual growth.--_Fergusson._

Ver. 22. _The Church the Habitation of God._--1. Jesus Christ differs from the foundation of other buildings in this, that every particular believer is not only laid upon Him and supported by Him as in material buildings, but they are also indented in Him, and hid, as it were, in the clefts of the rock by saving faith. 2. As all believers, however far soever removed by distance, are yet more strictly tied and joined together, so by taking band with Christ the foundation, they are fastened one to another as the stones of a building. 3. So inseparable is the union among the persons of the Trinity that the presence and indwelling of One is sufficient to prove the indwelling of all; for believers are a habitation to God the Father and Son, because the Spirit dwells in and sanctifies them.--_Ibid._

* * * * * * * *

+CHAPTER III.+

_CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES._

Ver. 1. +The prisoner of Jesus Christ+ may be regarded as "the prisoner whom the Lord has bound" (so Winer and Meyer), or as "a prisoner belonging to Christ," or again as "the prisoner for Christ's sake." The indignity of an ambassador being "thrown into irons" is lost in the feeling of being, even though bound, the representative of such a Lord.

Ver. 2. +If ye have heard.+--We have the same form of expression at ch. iv. 21--"assuming that is, that ye heard" (cf. Col. i. 23). +Of the grace.+--The favour which God conferred on me in appointing me your apostle. The Divine "Taskmaster" (to use Milton's expression) confers honour upon us when He sets us to work. "He is not served by men's hands as though He needed anything" (Acts xvii. 25).

Ver. 3. +How that by revelation.+--The familiar disavowal of any other source than the will of God (cf. Gal. i. 12).

Ver. 4. +Ye may understand my knowledge.+--You may, as the public reader proceeds to read my letter, discern my insights of the mystery.

Ver. 5. +Which in other ages.+--R.V. "other generations." Might possibly refer to those dim ages of the past national history when the Gentiles were thought of only as left to "unconvenanted mercies." We must note the word for "other"--it means a "different kind." +Was not made known . . . as it is now revealed.+--If any distinction is to be observed, we may say the "revelation" is one of the ways of "making known" (see ver. 3) the intuitional. +Unto His holy apostles and prophets.+--"If all saints were holy _à fortiori_ the apostles" (_Bishop Alexander_).

Ver. 6. +Fellow-heirs . . . the same body . . . partakers.+--"The A.V. loses a point of similarity in the three Gentile privileges by not expressing the force of the Greek compounds by the same English word. Lit. 'heirs together,' 'incorporated together,' 'sharers together,' not heirs after, but together with, the Jews; not attached to the Hebrew body, but incorporated into it together with the element that previously constituted it; not receivers of the promise after others had been satisfied, but partakers of it together with them" (_Bishop Alexander_). "Co-heirs, and concorporate, and comparticipant. The strange English words may perhaps correspond to the strange Greek words which St. Paul invented to express this newly revealed mystery in the strongest form, as though no words could be too strong to express his conception of the reunion in Christ of those who apart from Him are separate and divided" (_Farrar_).

Ver. 7. +Whereof I was made a minister.+--A deacon, a runner of errands. A lowly word, which reminds us of his own self-estimate--"not worthy to be called an apostle"--and prepares us for the strange expression in ver. 8.

Ver. 8. +Less than the least of all saints.+--"As though he said 'leaster than all Christians'" (_Bishop Alexander_). "The greatest sinner, the greatest saint, are equidistant from the goal where the mind rests in satisfaction with itself. With the growth in goodness grows the sense of sin. One law fulfilled shows a thousand neglected" (_Mozley, quoted by Farrar_). +The unsearchable riches.+--"The untrackable wealth" (_Farrar_), inexplicable by creaturely intelligences, unspeakable therefore by human tongues.

Ver. 9. +And to make all men see.+--He says to the Galatians (Gal. iii. 1), "Christ was placarded before you"--so here he wants men to see for themselves.

Ver. 10. +To the intent that now . . . might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.+--The Church as it expands from a "little flock" to a "multitude which no man can number" is to declare the multiform wisdom of God, ever fertile in new modes of operation. "Manifold" represents a word used to describe a floral wreath as consisting of "variegated" flowers.

Ver. 12. +In whom we have boldness.+--Originally meaning as regards speech. In Christ the reconciled child of God has the right of speaking to God without reserve. The same word is translated "confidence" in 1 John v. 14, A.V.: "It is the free, joyful mood of those reconciled to God" (_Meyer_). +And access.+--As in ch. ii. 13. +With confidence.+--Hardly as equal to assurance--certainly never self-assurance, but in quiet leaning on the arm of Christ.

Ver. 13. +I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations.+--Compare 2 Cor. iv. 1-16, where the same word is used. As an agonised sufferer, heroically suppressing every sign of pain, begs those who wait on him not to give way to grief; as Socrates, having quaffed the poison, rallies his friends, who have broken out into uncontrollable weeping, with the words, "What are you doing my friends? What! such fine men as you are! Oh, where is virtue?"; so (with a possible reminiscence of Acts xx. 36-38) St. Paul begs his readers not to lose heart.

Ver. 15. +The whole family.+--R.V. "every family." The word for "family" is only found in the New Testament in St. Luke ii. 4 and Acts iii. 25; in one translated "lineage," in the other "kindreds" in A.V.; consistently as "family" by R.V. Chrysostom, and others who followed him, have surely a special claim to be heard. They translate it "races." Bishop Alexander contends for the A.V. translation, _"the whole."_ He says, "A special force and signification in the expression make this translation necessary" (cf. ch. ii. 19).

Ver. 16. +The riches of His glory.+--"The whole glorious perfection of God." +To be strengthened with might.+--There may be a verbal connection with the "fainting" of ver. 13, but the thought goes far out beyond that. +In the inner man.+--We are reminded again of the text quoted above (2 Cor. iv. 16). A mode of expression derived from the Platonic school, not necessarily presupposing any acquaintance with that system of philosophy.

Ver. 17. +That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.+--The condition of this, declared by Christ Himself, is that a man should keep the word of Christ. +Being rooted and grounded.+--A double metaphor--of a tree that has struck its roots deep into the crevices of the rock, and of a building with a foundation of bed-rock. "Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God" (1 John iv. 7). Love conditions knowledge of things Divine (see ver. 18).

Ver. 18. +May be able.+--Perfectly able. +With all saints.+--The highest and most precious knowledge Paul can desire only as a common possession of all Christians. +What is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.+--"The deeply affected mind with its poetico-imaginative intuition looks upon the _metaphysical_ magnitude as a _physical, mathematical_ one. Every special attempt at interpretation is unpsychological, and only gives scope to that caprice which profanes by dissecting the outpouring of enthusiasm" (_Meyer_).

Ver. 19. +And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.+--"An _adequate_ knowledge of the love of Christ transcends human capacity, but the _relative_ knowledge of the same opens up in a higher degree the more the heart is filled with the Spirit of Christ, and thereby is strengthened in loving. This knowledge is not _discursive,_ but based in the consciousness of experience" (_Meyer_).