2. They now belong to the fellowship of the saints. — They are citizens in the holy state — the commonwealth of the people con- secrated to God — citizens with full rights and no longer strangers or unenfranchised residents. The idea of the chosen people all through the Old Testament is that they are as a whole consecrated to God. Priests and kings appointed by God to their several offices may indeed fulfil special functions in the national life, yet the fundamental idea is never lost, that the entire nation is holy, "a kingdom of priests." It is because this is true that the prophets can appeal as they do to the people in general, as well as to priests and rulers, as sharing altogether the responsibility of the national life. Now the whole of this idea is transferred, only deepened and intensified, to the Christian Church. That too has its divinely-ordained ministers, its differentiation of functions in the one body, but the whole body is priestly, and all are citizens — not merely residents but citizens, that is, intelligent participators in a common corporate life consecrated to God.
* J. G. Greenhough, ChrisHan Festivals and Anniversaries, 159. ^ J. H. Smith, Ilcaling Leaves, 4X0.
62 THE COMMONWEALTH OF CHRIST
^ To the Apostle Paul every Christian was a saint. Turn to the inscriptions of his letters. This is the kind of address we find : " Paul and Timothy, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi." " Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colossae." " Paul, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." It is quite obvious the references here are to living men and women, the men and women who formed the membership of these various churches. These were Paul's " saints." And, further, he does not confine the term to a select few in each church, conspicuous for their special piety. The people whom Paul addresses as " saints," we soon dis- cover, were very far from being perfect people. They were, indeed, full of faults and imperfections and failings. Think of the people at Corinth with their quarrellings and excesses and sensu- alities ! And yet Paul thinks and speaks of them as " saints " ! It is not simply that in these faulty and imperfect Christians he sees the promise of the glorified saint, just as the naturalist may see the giant oak in the tiny acorn ! Faults and all, these Chris- tians were " saints," in this sense, that they were consecrated to God, and had given themselves to Christ. For that is the New Testament meaning of the word "saint"; it means one dedicated, set apart, to the will of God. And, in spite of all their shortcomings and sins, these early Christians had given themselves to Christ ; the deepest thing in them was the love they bore to Christ ; the life they lived, they lived in the faith of Christ. And every one of whom that can be said, according to the Apostle's teaching, is a " saint." ^
^ After being in China more than twenty years Griffith John said to young missionaries, "Preach the Gospel, and take time to be holy as the preparation." In the Mission Conference in Shanghai, in 1877, he said, "The missionary must above every- thing be a holy man ; the Chinese expect it of him. I am persuaded that no minister can be a great spiritual power in whom this is not in good measure seen. He must be more than a good man ; a man who takes time, not only to master the language and the literature of the people, but to be holy. . . . Brethren, this is what we need if this empire is to be moved by us. To this end the throne of grace must be our refuge ; the shadow of the Almighty must every day and every hour be our dwelling, we must take time to be filled with His power, we must take time to be holy." ^
* J. D. Jones, Things Most Surely Believed, 169. 2 A. Murray, Aids to Devotion, 47.
EPHESIANS II. 19 63
3. More inamately still, they belong to the family or household of God. — A household is a place where a family is provided for, where there is a regular and orderly supply of ordinary needs. And the Church is the Divine household, in which God has provided stewards to make regular spiritual provision for men, so that they shall feel and know themselves members of a family, understood, sympathized with, helped, encouraged, disciplined, fed. But there is another idea which, in St. Paul's mind, attaches itself strongly to the idea of the " divine family." It is that in this household we are sons and not servants — that is, intelligent co-operators with God, and not merely submissive slaves. It is noticeable how often he speaks with horror of Christians allowing themselves again to be " subject to ordinances," or to " the weak and beggarly rudiments," the alphabet of that earlier education when even children are treated as slaves under mere obedience. "Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you." " "Why do ye subject yourselves to ordinances ? Handle not, taste not, touch not." It is perfectly true to say that what St. Paul is deprecating is a return to Jewish or pagan observances. But this is not all. He demands, not a change of observance only, but a change of spirit.