The Pulpit Commentary — Ephesians — Section 23

pleasures; they may try to extract from it all the wisdom the worlJ can give; but there is still e. void which nothing can fill till be comes whose right it is to possess and subdue and save the soul for himself.-'£. C. Vi,r. 10.-Tl,e s111mming up in one of all, things in Ohrist. This was the mystery of God hid for ages, but now revealed. l. lT IMPLIES A PBIOB SEPARATION OF THE THINGS Bl!l-COLLECTED OR REGATHERED TO Goo IN.JESUS CHRIST AS CENTRE OB HEAD, Sin is the great divider. It separates rnan fr9m God; it separates man from man; it causes a schism within man himself. Rebellion introduced disorder. There was a break of moral continuity between earth and heaven aaW1ed. by the Fall. " Earth was morally severed from heaven and tha worlds which retained their pristine integrity." The primary reference here may be to the separation or enmity which so long held apart the Jew and the Gentile, but it undoubtedly has a wider reference to the relations between heaven and earth which were so profoundly affected by the .fall of man. IL THE OBJEOTB OF THE REUNION. 1.. Jews and Gentiles, so long apart, are n~w "made both one" through the blood of the cross. Men try in our day to bring a.bout a UI!ion of humanity on a .basis of moral rule, or of socialism, or of the creed of "liberty, equality, and fraternity;" but the cross is the only reconciler of man to man. It is only under Ch,ristianity that any approach has been made toward a juster view of human rights, and toward a more genuine interest in the wellare of individual men. 2. ,'l'he whole Church of God in heaven and in earth is reunited in Christ. This includes the 111Lints of all dispensations, who, whether they lived under the cotLparative twilight of th'e Jewish dispensation, or in the days of antichristian apostasy in our qwn dispensation, found their home at last in glory. There are those who imagine that the pre-Ohristia,n saints do not belong to the Church of God, because this Church, they affirm, :first ea.me into being on the day of Pentecost, and therefore they assign to the saints of Jewish times an inferior place of glory in heaven. The Church of God for which Christ died (eh, v. 2) ml).St include the saints of all time. This is the Church which ho bath purchased with his own blood, and, if the Old Testament saints are not in it, they are lost. There is no redemption apart from union with the person of the Hedeemer; for the orie sentence in the Corinthian Epistle covers the destinies of the whole human raqe.: "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. xv. 22). An.d if we are Abraham's seed, we must have union with Christ; for "they that are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Gal. iii.). Those, therefore, who are to be g11thered together in Christ must include the saints of every dispensation. 3. The angels of heaven are probably included among "the things of heaven." When we con- sider that Jesus Christ is Head of angels as well as men, that the angels are ministeriJg spirits to the heirs of salvation, that they had a profound interest in the work of redemption, that the Church itself was to be the means of instructing them in the wonders of God's plan of salvation (eh.. iii. 10), that the angels, themselves may have been confirmed in their holy steadfastness by the Son of God, that our Divine Redeemer continues to wear in the sight of angels the human nature he wore on earth, -it is no extravagant speculation that all the heavenly hosts are united under a new Head, and in a new bond in virtue of the grand transaction of Calvary. 4. There seems no just reason for believing that the passage sanotions the restoration of lost men and lost angels. The parallel passage in Col. i; 20, which speaks of "things in heaven and things on earth "-that is, the redeemed saints of earth and heaven-seems to exclude such an inte~pretatiou. III., THE OENTR» OF REUNION IS CHRIST. The re-collecting or regathering ls twice- told as. in him. An ancient prophetic voice spoke of him as the One to whom "shall the gathering of the people be" (Gen. x:lix~ 10). ,. He is the Centre of everything in the ur.iverse. He is the Centre of nature, for not only were all things made by him, bot in him thE:y consist; he is the Centre of providence, for he upholds all things by the word of his power;. he ,is. the Centre of Christendom', just as he was the Centre of the old theocracy; he is. the Centre of the Church invisible, for he is its Head and its Life; be is the Centre of heaven, for it is the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne; he is the Centre of the Godhead itself; Father, Son, ancl Holy Ghost. It is, therefore, in him that" all things in earth and all things in heaven" are re-collected or summed up, fur the 'lO THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS, [oH, I, 1-28.