III. The last clause of verse 12, _in the heavenly places_, refuses to combine with the above description of the powers hostile to the Church. The heavenly places are the abode of God and the blessed angels. This is the region where the Father has blessed us in Christ (i. 3); where He seated the Christ at His own right hand (i. 20), and has in some sense seated us with Christ (ii. 6); and where the angelic princedoms dwell who follow with keen and studious sympathy the Church's fortunes (iii. 10). To locate the devil and his angels _there_ seems to us highly incongruous; the juxtaposition is out of the question with St Paul. Chapter ii. 2 gives no real support to this view: supposing "the air" to be literally intended in that passage, it belongs to _earth_ and not to heaven.[165] Nor do the parallels from other Scriptures adduced supply any but the most precarious basis for an interpretation against which the use of the exalted phrase in our epistle revolts.
No; Satan and his hosts do not dwell with Christ and the holy angels "in the heavenly places." But the Church dwells there already, by her faith; and it is in the heavenly places of her faith and hope that she is assailed by the powers of hell. This final prepositional clause should be separated by a comma from the words immediately foregoing; it forms a distinct predicate to the sentence contained in verse 12. It specifies the _locality_ of the struggle; it marks out the battle-field. "Our wrestling is ... in the heavenly places."[166] So we construe the sentence, following the ancient Greek commentators.
The life of the Church "is hid with the Christ in God"; her treasure is laid up in heaven. She is assailed by a philosophy and vain deceit that perverts her highest doctrines, that clouds her vision of Christ and limits His glory, and threatens to drag her down from the high places where she sits with her ascended Lord.[167] Such was, in effect, the aim of the Colossian heresy, and of the great Gnostical movement to which this speculation was a prelude, that for a century and more entangled Christian faith in its metaphysical subtleties and false mysticism. The epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike the leading note of the controversies of the Church in this region during its first ages. Their character was thoroughly transcendental. "The heavenly things" were the subject-matter of the great conflicts of this epoch.
The questions of religious controversy characteristic of our own times, though not identical with those of Colossae or Ephesus, concern matters equally high and vital. It is not this or that doctrine that is now at stake--the nature or extent of the atonement, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son with the Father, the verbal or plenary inspiration of Scripture; but the personal being of God, the historical truth of Christianity, the reality of the supernatural,--these and the like questions, which formed the accepted basis and the common assumptions of former theological discussions, are now brought into dispute. Religion has to justify its very existence. Christianity must answer for its life, as at the beginning. God is denied. Worship is openly renounced. Our treasures in heaven are proclaimed to be worthless and illusive. The entire spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to the region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties of modern religious thought lie at the foundation of things, and touch the core of the spiritual life. Unbelief appears, in some quarters, to be more serious and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics and ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and immortality. The Churches are engaged in trivial contentions with each other, while the enemy pushes his way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.
"The apostle incites the readers," says Chrysostom, "by the thought of the prize at stake. When he has said that our enemies are powerful, he adds thereto that these are great possessions which they seek to wrest from us. When he says _in the heavenly places_, this implies _for the heavenly things_. How it must rouse and sober us to know that the hazard is for great things, and great will be the prize of victory. Our foe strives to take _heaven_ from us." Let the Church be stripped of all her temporalities, and driven naked as at first into the wilderness. She carries with her the crown jewels; and her treasure is unimpaired, so long as faith in Christ and the hope of heaven remain firm in her heart. But let these be lost; let heaven and the Father in heaven fade with our childhood's dreams; let Christ go back to His grave--then we are utterly undone. We have lost our all in all!