GoD's Workmanship.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them. — Eph. ii. lo.
This chapter contains an argument which is a good illustration of the two-edged way in which the sword of the Spirit cuts enemies who come from different directions. On the one hand, St. Paul strikes at those who would teach that licentiousness is possible to men who are saved by grace. "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works. It is true that we do not improve ourselves. It is all of grace, yet good works are binding upon us all the more. On the other hand, let us not take any credit to ourselves. If we are elevated or refined, it is because God has taken pains with us ; otherwise we should be as coarse and foul as any one. Indeed, we should never have come into the workshop but for the heavenly artist. " No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." It is, as old Mr. Honest said, when the rest of the pilgrims came to watch him cross the river, ''Grace reigns."
The teaching of St. Paul, then, is that men and women are not the sole architects of their own characters ; the Supreme Architect who works upon them is God. We are saved by grace — by a long series of Divine interpositions, by Heavenly compulsions and im- pulsions, by the energies of a ceaseless Hand that works upon us and brings out the Heavenly design, and completes the Divine symmetry. It is easy, of course, to turn such a thought into folly. Human nature is, unfortunately, so constituted that very few minds are capable of seeing both sides of the truth. Thus it happens that those who cling most to the consoling thought of a gospel of pure grace often neglect the equally binding gospel of a ceaseless struggle after goodness. And again, the good people who build up a life of flawless honour, integrity, and virtue, often
36 GOD'S WORKMANSHIP
find, because they have not learned to need it, a gospel of grace incomprehensible. Yet both are true, just as it is true that a ship depends for its movement equally on the men who work the pulleys and on the wind that fills the sails. So we work out our own salvation ; but we move to no heavenly shores till the wind comes out of the waste heaven, and God touches us. For it is by grace, by a Divine interference, that we are saved ; nor is salvation possible without it.
^ It was the supreme truth of God's free grace that converted both Luther and Wesley. The one rose from Pilate's staircase in Rome with the dawn upon his brow, as a man enfranchised of a new world ; the other in Aldersgate Street in half-an-hour cast the husk of twenty years of ritualism, and emerged into unbounded spiritual liberty. For us also to grasp this truth is life. Yet so ill-balanced and frail of judgment are we that there is only too much peril of wresting such a truth to our destruction. Eather for us the most necessary truth to-day is that goodness can be found only by effort, that the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, that God will not save us by any spiritual necromancy, that if we are not prepared to be as earnest over religion as we are over our worldly affairs, there is no religion and no salvation for us.^
^ " Hamlet," says Professor Bradley, " usually speaks as one who accepts the received Christian ideas, yet when he meditates profoundly he seems to ignore them." There has been too much of this Hamlet-spirit in the Church. Yet her shortcomings have only thrown into more brilliant relief the quenchless patience of God's love, and the tenacity of His revelation. The vital truths of the faith have refused to be ignored for long. It has been a revelation to the world, as well as to the Church itself, how vital and undying is the sheer grace of God in Christ, often thwarted, often grieved, but never chilled by human imperfections.*
L
A Divine Creation.
" We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus."
1. The term rendered " workmanship " signifies " a poem," and the idea is, that as a poem owes its conception to the singer's
* W. J. Dawson, The Divine Challenge, 107. ' J. Mollatt, Reasons and Leasons, 28.
EPHESIANS II. 10 37
intellect and fancy, so a believer in Christ owes his character and standing to God. We are indebted to the Greeks for the word, and for its beautiful meaning. A poem with them was, first, anything made ; but as beauty and harmony are elements in all truly original or created works, the word "poem" came to be applied more and more exclusively to the expression of truth and beauty in rhythmical form.
^ Only in one other place does the word occur in the New Testament. That place is Eomans, chapter i, verse 20 ; and there the Apostle uses it with reference to the wonders of creation. This bright and beautiful world in which we live is full of God's poetical works. " The heavens are telling the glory of God ; " the starry sky, with the sun and moon, is not only a Divine poem, but also an oratorio, full of celestial harmonies. The little islands are the poetry of the sea. Gems and precious stones, such as the diamond and the emerald, are the poetry of the mineral kingdom. Flowers are the poetry of the vegetable kingdom. The young ones of living creatures are the poetry of the animal kingdom. Children are God's poetical works in the world of mankind ; we remember the lines which Longfellow addresses to them —