George Findlay - The Expositor's Bible - The Epistle to the Ephesians

There lies in the words “in Christ” a principle of exclusion, as well as of wide inclusion. Men cannot be in Christ against their will, who persistently put Him, His gospel and His laws, away from them. When we close with Christ by faith, we begin to enter into the purpose of our being. We find the place prepared for us before the foundation of the world in the kingdom of Divine love. We live henceforth “to the praise of the glory of His grace!”

The blessedness of men in Christ is not matter of purpose only, but of reality and experience. With the word grace in the middle of the sixth verse the apostle’s thought begins a new movement. We have seen Grace hidden in the depths of eternity in the form of sovereign and fatherly election, lodging its purpose in the foundation of the world. From those mysterious depths we turn to the living world in our own breast. There, too, Grace dwells and reigns: “which grace He imparted to us, in the Beloved, – in whom we have redemption through His blood.”

The leading word of this clause we can only paraphrase; it has no English equivalent. St Paul perforce turns grace into a verb; this verb occurs in the New Testament but once besides, – in Luke i. 28, the angel’s salutation to Mary: “Hail thou that art highly favoured (made-an-object-of-grace).” 34 34 Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη. It is impossible to reproduce in English the beautiful assonance – the play of sound and sense – in Gabriel’s greeting, as St Luke renders it. If we could employ our verb to grace in a sense corresponding to that of the noun grace in the apostle’s dialect and nearly the opposite of to disgrace , then graced would signify what he means here, viz., treated with grace , made its recipients.

God “showed us grace in the Beloved ” – or, to render the phrase with full emphasis, “in that Beloved One” – even as He “chose us in Him before the world’s foundation” and “in love predestined us for adoption.” The grace is conveyed upon the basis of our relationship to Christ: on that ground it was conceived in the counsels of eternity. The Voice from heaven which said at the baptism of Jesus and again at the transfiguration, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” uttered God’s eternal thought regarding Christ. And that regard of God toward the Son of His love is the fountain of His love and grace to men.

Christ is the Beloved not of the Father alone, but of the created universe. All that know the Lord Jesus must needs love and adore Him – unless their hearts are eaten out by sin. Not to love Him is to be anathema. “If any man love me,” said Jesus, “my Father will love him.” Nothing so much pleases God and brings us into fellowship with God so direct and joyous, as our love to Jesus Christ. About this at least heaven and earth may agree, that He is the altogether lovely and love-worthy. Agreement in this will bring about agreement in everything. The love of Christ will tune the jarring universe into harmony.

1. Of grace bestowed, the first manifestation, in the experience of Paul and his readers, was the forgiveness of their trespasses (comp. ii. 13–18). This is “the redemption” that “we have .” And it comes “through His blood .” The epistles to the Galatians and Romans 35 35 See Rom. i. 16–18, iii. 19–v. 21, vi. 7, vii. 1–6, viii. 1–4, 31–34, x. 6–9; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 17, 56, 57; 2 Cor. v. 18–21; Gal. ii. 14–iii. 14, vi. 12–14. The latter passages the writer has endeavoured to expound in Chapters X. to XII. and XXVIII. of his Commentary on Galatians in this series. expound at length the apostle’s doctrine touching the remission of sin and the relation of Christ’s death to human transgression. To redemption we shall return in considering verse 14, where the word is used, as again in chapter iv. 30, in its further application.

In Romans iii. 22–26 “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” is declared to be the means by which we are acquitted in the judgement of God from the guilt of past transgressions. And this redemption consists in the “propitiatory sacrifice” which Christ offered in shedding His blood – a sacrifice wherein we participate “through faith.” The language of this verse contains by implication all that is affirmed there. In this connexion, and according to the full intent of the word, redemption is release by ransom . The life-blood of Jesus Christ was the price that He paid in order to secure our lawful release from the penalties entailed by our trespasses. 36 36 It is an error to suppose, as one sometimes hears it said, that trespasses or transgressions are a light and comparatively trivial form of sin. Both words denote, in the language of Scripture, definite offences against known law, departures from known duty. Adam’s sin was the typical “transgression” and “trespass” (Rom. v. 14, 15, etc.; comp. ii. 23; Gal. iii. 19). This Jesus Christ implied beforehand, when He spoke of “giving His life a ransom for many”; and when He said, in handing to His disciples the cup of the Last Supper: “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Using another synonymous term, St Paul tells us that “Christ bought us out of the curse of the law”; and he bases on this expression a strong practical appeal: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” 37 37 Gal. iii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. These sayings, and others like them, point unmistakably to the fact that our trespasses as men against God’s inflexible law, apart from Christ’s intervention, must have issued in our eternal ruin. By His death on the cross Christ has made such amends to the law, that the awful sentence is averted, and our complete release from the power of sin is rendered possible.

On rising from the dead our Saviour commissioned the apostles to “proclaim in His name repentance and remission of sins to all nations” (Luke xxiv. 47). It was thus He proposed to save the world. This proclamation is the “good news” of the gospel. The announcement meets the first need of the serious and awakened human spirit. It answers the question which arises in the breast of every man who thinks earnestly about his personal relations to God and to the laws of his being. We cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the bestowments of God’s grace, and makes it the foundation of all the rest.