Some practical lessons
We may also pause to recognize one or two ways in which St. Paul's view of the Christian religion, as exhibited in the opening of this epistle, suggests special deficiencies among ourselves.
(1) St. Paul's Christianity is a religion of thankfulness. This epistle is a burst of exuberant praise. Yet he was himself a prisoner, and the church of Ephesus, with the other Asiatic churches, was sorely threatened with moral and spiritual perils of all kinds. The secret of this thankfulness is that he looks straight away from himself and his surroundings up to God. He measures the value of human life and work not by what immediate experience suggests, but by what he knows of the purpose of God. In spite of all the obstacles opposed by human wilfulness and weakness and sin, he knows that His purpose will effect itself: therefore he 'rejoices in the Lord always,' and no discouraging circumstances can quench the springs of his rejoicing. Our Christianity is apt to be of a very 'dutiful' kind. We mean to do our duty, we attend church and go to our communions. But our hearts are full of the difficulties, the hardships, the obstacles which the situation presents, and we go on our way sadly, downhearted and despondent. We need to learn or learn anew from St. Paul that true Christianity is inseparable from deep joy; and the secret of that joy lies in a continual looking away from all else—away from sin and its ways, and from the manifold hindrances to the good we would do—up to God, His love, His purpose, His will. In proportion as we do look up to Him we shall rejoice, and in proportion as we rejoice in the Lord will our religion have tone and power and attractiveness.
(2) St. Paul appeals to the Asiatic Christians not to become something they are not, or to acquire some spiritual gift that they have not received, but simply to realize what they already are, and to claim the privileges of their baptized state. They are already 'adopted as sons[[6]].' They have, like the Galatians, received 'the Spirit of adoption.' The point now is that they should realize and put into practice what already belongs to them. This mode of appeal is based on the doctrine—in spite of its many perversions the most valuable doctrine—of baptismal regeneration. The false method of appeal—as if careless Christians needed to become sons of God—which involves a false idea of 'regeneration,' has been so much identified with popular Protestantism, that I cannot do better than quote some very apposite remarks by the late Congregationalist teacher, Dr. Dale, of blessed memory, from his noble commentary on this very epistle to the Ephesians:—
'This adoption of which Paul speaks is something more than a mere legal and formal act, conveying certain high prerogatives. We are "called the sons of God" because we are really made His sons by a new and supernatural birth. Regeneration is sometimes described as though it were merely a change in a man's principles of conduct in his character, his tastes, his habits. The description is theologically false, and practically most pernicious and misleading. If regeneration were nothing more than this, we should have to speak of a man as being more or less regenerate, according to the extent of his moral reformation; but this would be contrary to the idiom of New Testament thought. That a great change in the moral region of a man's nature will certainly follow regeneration is true; this change, however, is not regeneration itself, but the effect of regeneration; and the moral change which regeneration produces varies in many ways in different men. In some the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete. In others it is extremely gradual, and may be for a long time hardly discernible. In some regenerate men grave sins remain for a time unforsaken, perhaps unrecognized. Look at these Ephesian Christians. The Apostle has to tell them that they must put away falsehood and speak the truth; that they must give up thieving, and foul talk, and covetousness, and gross sensual sin.
'He addresses them as "saints." He describes them as having been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and foreordained by God unto adoption as sons unto Himself; and yet he knows that they are in danger of committing these base and flagrant offences. It was hard for them to escape from the vices of heathenism. They were regenerate; but as yet, in some of them, the moral effects of regeneration were very incomplete, the change which regeneration was ultimately certain to produce in their moral life had only begun, and it was checked and hindered by a thousand hostile influences.
'The simplest and most obvious account of regeneration is the truest. When a man is regenerated he receives a new life and receives it from God. In itself regeneration is not a change in his old life, but the beginning of a new life which is conferred by the immediate and supernatural act of the Holy Spirit. The man is really "born again." A higher nature comes to him than that which he inherited from his human parents; he is "begotten of God," "born of the Spirit."'
This passage, especially as coming from Dr. Dale, supplies a very valuable corrective to still current religious mistakes. But surely we have no ground for saying that the moral effects 'certainly' follow regeneration, or follow it in all cases. It is not 'ultimately certain to produce' them in all persons, but only in those who exhibit, sooner or later, the moral correspondence of a converted will.
(3) Most Christians who have reacted from Calvinism and its false doctrine of predestination have ceased to think about the truth which it represents. But we need to make a right instead of a wrong use of these great ideas of predestination and election, and thus to get rid of all the miserable narrowness and hopelessness which settles down upon us when we allow ourselves to think of religion as mainly a process of saving our own souls, and when we live only in our present feelings.