spirit, are not to be understood as expressing the in- ward concord or fellowship of the Jews and Gentiles in drawing near to God, nor simply that we are influenced by a common spirit of life, but the words are to be understood of the Holy Ghost.—1. Because the ward πνεῦμα, Without as well as with the article so generally refers to the Spirit in the New Testament. 2. Because the obvious reference to the Trinity in the passage, (“to the Father, through Christ, by the Spirit,”) de- mands this interpretation. And 3. Because the same office is elsewhere characteristically referred to the Spirit. The other interpretations are included in this. If Jews and Gentiles are led by the Spirit to draw near to God, it follows that they come with one heart; and are animated by one principle of life. The preposition ἐν may be taken instrumentally, and rendered by, as in the following verse. Or it may mean 77 communion with. The Holy Ghost is designated here as one Spirit, in opposition to the two classes, Jews and Gentiles. Both have access by one and the same Spirit. The two, therefore, are not only one body as stated in verse 16, but they are inhabited and controlled by one Spirit. Thus in 1 Cor. 12, 11, “ one and the self-same Spirit,” is said to divide to every man severally as he wills; and in verse 12, it is, ‘‘ By one Spirit we are all bap- tized into one body.” ‘Thus has the divine purpose of which the apostle spoke in the first chapter—his pur- pose to unite all his people in one harmonious body— been consummated. Christ by his cross has reconciled them, both Jews and Gentiles, unto God; the distine-
CHAP. Il. VER. 19. 147
tion between the two classes is abolished; united in one body, filled and guided by one Spirit, they draw near to God as his common children.
V.19. The consequences of this reconciliation are that the Gentiles are now fellow-citizens of the saints, members of the family of God, and part of that temple in which God dwells by his Spirit. Formerly they were ξένοι, strangers, now they are συμπολῖται, fellow- citizens. Formerly the Gentiles stood in the same relation to the theocracy or commonwealth of Israel, that we do to a foreign State. They had no share in its privileges, no participation in its blessings. Now they are “ fellow-citizens of the saints.” By saints are not to be understood the Jews, nor the ancient patri- archs, but the people of God. Christians have be- come, under the new dispensation, what the Jews once were, viz. saints, men selected and separated from the world, and consecrated to God as his peculiar people. They now constitute the theocracy—which is no longer confined to any one people or country, but embraces all in every country who have access to God by Christ Jesus. In this spiritual kingdom the Gentiles have now the right of citizenship. They are on terms of perfect equality with all other members of that kingdom. And that kingdom is the kingdom of heaven. The same terms of admission are required, and neither more nor less, for membership in that kingdom, and for admis- sion into heaven; all who enter the one enter the other ; the one is but the infancy of the other; we are now, says Paul, the citizens of heaven. It is not, there-