The prominent characteristic of a family is mutual affection. A family is held together by love. There is the love of the father for each and all, and there is the love of all for him and for each other. And so it is in the Divine family. " God is love " ; pure, infinite, eternal love. This, as it is the glorious summary of His perfections, the grand resultant expression of all His attributes, is the characteristic of every individual member of His spiritual family. "We love him because he first loved us" and "This commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." That, however, which the Apostle seems to have had more particularly in view is the high privilege which attaches to this Divine relationship. " Ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God": that is — as children of God, born of His Spirit, and genuine members therefore of His spiritual family, you have a peculiar interest in His love and care. He, the Father of all men, is emphatically your Father. Others He regards indeed with the love of benevolence, but you He regards with
64 THE COMMONWEALTH OF CHRIST
the love of complacency. Others participate in His universal goodness, but you are the objects of His special solicitude. A child has a certain right to the consideration of his father which no stranger to the family possesses : and so you, as members of God's family, have a claim upon His affection which none but His spiritual children can allege. Having received from Him not " the spirit of bondage again to fear," not the spirit of a slave, which shuns His presence and quails before His eye, but "the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father," so He privileges and encourages you to come before Him lovingly and trustfully, with all the freedom and confidence of a child, casting all your care upon Him, and looking for all things in that boundless love which has pledged all His attributes and excellences, all His treasures of grace and glory, for your perfection and blessedness.
^ Sin brings separation from God. The word " depart " uttered to the workers of iniquity is not an arbitrary one. It voices a law of God that runs through all His moral realm. Sin pushes the prodigal away from his home and friends, his property, his pleasures, his reputation, his character, even his clothes and his food. The law of the word " depart " has driven him awa} from everything that was beautiful and of good report. Behold him in his rags and loneliness — feeding swine. Think it not strange, if that man is driven from God and goodness who yields himself to sin. By a changeless law of moral repulsion, he is pushed away. Is it hopeless ? Yes, as long as his back is turned toward God. But let him "come to himself," let him feel his sin and degradation, let him long for home, for forgiveness, for his Father's face, and the law of changeless love takes hold of him.^
4. The higher status involves a heavier responsibility. — The en- franchised must do credit to their citizenship ; they must live as becometh saints, and manifest the spirit, not of slaves, but of sons. Christian citizenship must begin with the thought of our individual life and purpose. The truly good citizen is made out of the truly good man. The common life is made of our individual lives, and the whole cannot be better than the constituent parts. If, then, our citizenship is to be a Christian citizenship, we must first of all be Christian men. The first thing that the Spirit of Christ does for every one who is in any real and vital sense a disciple, or, as we say in our modern phrase, a Christian man, is to
' M. D. Babcock, Thoughts/or Every-Day Living, 77.
EPHESIANS II. 19 65
lay hold of the spirit, breathing into it new aspirations, creating, as St. Paul would have said, the new man ; and the new man in Christ thus born of the Spirit finds his heart aglow with new aims and new ambitions, new purposes and ideals of conduct. He is illuminated with new thought and with new conceptions of duty and of happiness.
^ God knows if I could in any way, by preaching that great part of the Communion of Saints, make men generally feel how they are living one in another, and how every single soul has his share of responsibility for his fellows, and every single soul his blessing from undertaking that responsibility, and how any single soul receives a blessing from the fellowship of his fellows in everything that he undertakes — if I could impress that upon my countrymen generally, I would be content to do nothing more in all my life than to preach this greatest of all Christian doctrines.^
^ As Paul waited in his Eoman prison, he had all around him soldiers and civilians, high and low, men of various types and kinds, most of whom claimed, we may suppose, Eoman citizenship, and, moreover, nearly all of whom were members of the household of Caesar ; and we can imagine the discussions of which these great texts in his letters are the echo. Yes, he says, you claim to be citizens of this great Empire of Eome, you are members of the household of Csesar, and you are very proud of it all ; but do you also remember that you have to think of your real calling as something deeper and broader and higher and more enduring than all of these, if you are to be in the best sense good citizens of the Eoman Empire and good members of the Imperial house- hold ; why, then you must bear always in mind that you are called of God to live as members of the commonwealth of Christ, to remember in all circumstances that you are fellow-citizens with the saints and of God's household.^