St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition

by Charles Gore

From the point of view of the moral duty of preserving ecclesiastical unity, it is quite clear that the guilt of Christians has been exceedingly great, and also that it has been very widely diffused. The amount of ambition, insolence, and impatience in the Church has, in fact, been so vast that it remains no longer a matter for astonishment that it should have made the havoc that it has made in the divine household, and should have thwarted, as it has thwarted, the divine intention. But the recognition of this fact lays on us the duty of meditating continually on the divine intention, and by all that lies in our power, by prayer and by every other means, to restore the recognition of the divine principle of unity whether in the narrower or the wider circle of church life.

It is not too much to say that the now popular principle of the free voluntary association of Christians in societies organized to suit varying phases of taste, is destructive of the moral discipline intended for us. It was the obligation to belong to one body which was intended as the restraint on the prejudices and eccentricities of race, classes and individuals. If Greeks, Italians, and Englishmen are to be content to belong to different churches; if among ourselves we are to have one church for the well-to-do, and another for 'labour'; if any individual who is offended in one church is to be free to go off to another where he or she likes the minister better—where does the need come in for the forbearance and long-suffering and humility on which St. Paul insists as the necessary virtues of the one body? We, Christians but not in one brotherhood, may not be able to agree at present among ourselves as to the proper basis of ecclesiastical unity, but we ought to be able to agree that, somehow or other, Christians are intended by Christ and by the apostle to be one body, and that the wilful violation of outward unity is truly a refusal of the yoke of Christ.

And a great step would have been taken towards rendering the recovery of ecclesiastical unity more easy if those who recognize the obligation of the principle could be brought to perceive that true Catholicism really requires a large measure of toleration and a deliberate reasonableness. At present it is not too much to say that the idea of the obligation of ecclesiastical unity is widely associated with an emphasis on ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority such as is utterly alien to the mind of the apostle of Catholicism.

v.

In what has been said above we have been attending chiefly to the restraints which St. Paul's idea of church unity appears to set upon what are commonly known as 'ecclesiastical tendencies.' Now it is time to emphasize the other side of the representation. For without a strongly engrained prejudice, there is not, it seems to the present writer, any possibility of doubting that St. Paul meant by 'the Church' in general, a society visible and organized, represented by a number of visible and organized local societies or churches[[18]]. The Church is in fact ideal in its spiritual character, but not one bit the less an association of human beings, a society with quite definite limits, ties, and obligations. For, to begin with, the 'one baptism' which conveyed the spiritual gift of incorporation into Christ was also the initiation into an actual brotherhood, with its rules of conduct, worship, and belief: 'we were all baptized into one body[[19]].' The 'one Spirit' was normally bestowed by the 'laying on of' apostolic 'hands'—that is, the hands of the chief governors of the Christian corporation. This rite followed upon and completed baptism, and its administration had been one of St. Paul's first ministerial acts after he began his preaching at Ephesus[[20]]. Again, 'the breaking of the bread' or eucharist, according to St. Paul's teaching, both nourished the life of Christ in the Church, as being the communion of His body and blood, and also, in the 'one loaf,' symbolized its outward corporate unity[[21]].

Thus the bestowal of gifts of grace through outward rites, which belonged to the corporate life of a society, insured that a Christian should be no isolated and independent individual. More than this, the necessary dependence of each individual Christian upon the one organized society is made further evident by the existence of spiritually endowed officers of the society who were as 'the more honourable limbs of the body'—'some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers'—without whom the body would have lacked its divinely-given equipment for ministry and edification. These were not merely more or less gifted or (as we say) talented individuals who undertook particular sorts of work on their own initiative, or by the invitation of any group of Christian individuals. We find that the apostles at least were a definite body of men who had received special commission from Christ Himself to govern His Church[[22]]. The Christian 'prophets' were men of special supernatural endowment, to know and declare God's will, and foretell His purposes. They ranked after the apostles in virtue of their prophetic gift[[23]]. But even they were to be restrained by the exigencies of church order. 'The spirits of the prophets are subject unto the prophets; for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.' Next to the prophets, St. Paul specifies the 'evangelists.' They were no doubt, as their name implies, officers engaged with the apostles in the general work of spreading the gospel, that is of founding and organizing churches. Timothy, who is exhorted to 'do the work of an evangelist[[24]],' would probably have ranked amongst them; and if so, Titus and other similar companions and delegates of apostles. At any rate, by whatever name they were called, such men belonged to the specially 'gifted' class, if we may judge by the case of Timothy. But he, though marked out by prophecy, received his 'gift,' as a church officer, with the laying on of the hands of a whole presbytery, while the hands of the apostle himself were the divine instruments for imparting the gift to him[[25]]. The 'pastors and teachers'—one class of men and not two—are, we may say certainly, identical with the presbyters or 'bishops' as they were called by St. Paul at Ephesus; and these again were men of spiritual endowment, but also local church officers who had received a definite apostolic appointment[[26]], and there is no reason to doubt by laying on of hands. Thus the Church, as St. Paul conceives it, is a body differentiated by varieties of spiritual endowments imparted to definite officers, for the fulfilment of functions necessary to the life and development of the whole body. Thus the outward unity of the society at any particular moment, and the necessary connexion of each individual Christian with it, is secured both by the existence of social sacraments or means of grace, and by the existence of a ministry spiritually endowed and commissioned, to whom individual Christians owed allegiance, and who ranked as the more honourable limbs of that body to which they must belong if they would belong to Christ.

vi.

St. Paul is not here thinking of the unity of the Church otherwise than at a particular moment. But if one turns one's attention to its continuous unity down the ages, again it must be recognized that one main link of unity has been in fact the apostolic succession of the ministry; that is the permanence in the Church of a spiritually-endowed 'stewardship of divine mysteries' received continually by the original method of the laying on of hands in succession from apostolic men. The necessity for each individual Christian to remain in relation to these commissioned stewards if he wishes to continue to be of the divine household, has kept men together in one body. And any one who looks at St. Paul's method of imparting spiritual authority and office to Timothy and Titus, and directing them in their turn to hand it on by ordaining others, can scarcely doubt that he contemplated the institution in the Church of a permanent ministry deriving its authority from above.

How, in fact, did the later church ministry connect itself with that which we find existing in the apostolic age? The apostolic ministry divides itself broadly into the general and the local. There are 'ministers' or 'stewards' who are officers of the church catholic and have a general commission. Such general commission belonged, of course, to the apostles, though mutual delimitations were arranged among themselves and though St. James, who ranked with the apostles, was settled at Jerusalem. It belonged also, more or less, to 'evangelists' and other 'apostolic men,' who, however, might be temporarily located in particular churches and districts, like Timothy in Ephesus, and Titus in Crete. It belonged also to the prophets, who would have been recognized as men inspired of God in all the churches, and who in the subapostolic age are found in some districts exercising functions like those of the apostles in the first age. The local officers, on the other hand, were the presbyters, who are called also bishops, and the deacons. With this earliest state of things in our mind, we shall perceive that where an apostle or apostolic man was permanently resident in one particular church, a threefold ministry, like that of later church history already existed. So it was at Jerusalem where the presbyters and deacons were presided over by St. James. So it was in Crete under Titus, and in Ephesus under Timothy. So it was a few decades later in all the churches of Asia as organized by St. John. In other parts of the world the exact method by which the ministry developed is a matter of much dispute. But it seems to the present writer most probable that everywhere the threefold ministry came into existence by (1) a change of arrangement, and (2) a change of name. (1) The change of arrangement was the establishment in each local church of a prophet, or one, like Timothy or Titus, who had been ordained to quasi-apostolic office by an apostle or man of apostolic rank; such a change taking place first at the greatest centres, and then in lesser cities. (2) The change of name was the appropriation to this now localized ruler of the title of bishop or 'overseer' which had hitherto appertained more or less to the presbyters generally.